Botswana's Bushmen Return to Native Land
Aaron Glantz, OneWorld US Wed Jan 17, 11:24 AM ET
SAN FRANCISCO, Jan 17 (OneWorld) - Tribal Bushmen began returning to their ancestral lands inside Botswana's largest game reserve this weekend, despite what their supporters describe as a heavy police presence and attempts to persuade them to stay in relocation camps.
"We're very much hoping that doesn't tip over into an intimidating situation," said Miriam Ross of the London-based rights group Survival International, which has supported the local tribesmen in their efforts to regain access to their land. "We're hoping the government will let all those Bushmen who want to return to their lands do so."
Basarwa tribesmen, also known as Bushmen, won a court order in December allowing them to return to land in the massive Central Kalahari Game Reserve, which, at 52,800 square kilometers, is larger than the nations of Denmark and Switzerland.
In its ruling, Botswana's High Court called the government's eviction of the Basarwa "unlawful and unconstitutional" and said that they had the right to live on their ancestral land inside the reserve. The court also ruled that the Basarwa who live in Botswana have the right to hunt and gather in the reserve, and should not have to apply for permits to enter it.
The Bushmen have lived in southern Africa for more than 20,000 years and are thought by some experts to be one of the oldest--if not the oldest--people on the planet, in genetic terms.
According to Survival International, government officials forced nearly all of the Bushmen to leave the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in three separate events in 1997, 2002, and 2005. Their homes were dismantled, their school and health center were closed, and their water supply was destroyed.
Life in relocation camps outside the reserve has been especially difficult for the Bushmen, Survival says. Rarely able to hunt, they have been dependent on government handouts while their society has become gripped by alcoholism, boredom, depression, and illnesses such as tuberculosis and
HIV/
AIDS.
Inside the reserve reside species as diverse as the giraffe, brown hyena, warthog, wild dog, cheetah, leopard, lion, blue wildebeest, eland, gemsbok, kudu, red hartebeest, and springbok.
Botswana's government has sought to evict the local tribesman numerous times over the last 20 years, ostensibly to promote tourism and protect wildlife in the area, although many believe the main reason has more to do with diamond mining aspirations.
"The government has given various different reasons for the evictions," Survival International's Ross told OneWorld. "The government said it's for the people's own good--that they can't live hunting and gathering in this day and age, that they need to become civilized. The president said if the Bushmen want to survive they'll have to change or they'll perish like the Dodo. They've also said it's because the game reserve is for animals and that the Bushmen are a danger to animals."
Activists like Miriam Ross of Survival International doubt the government's opposition to the Bushmen's return has anything to do with preserving nature, however.
"What Survival believes is that the Bushmen were evicted because there were diamonds found under their land in the early 1980s," Ross said. "There isn't mining in the reserve at the moment but we believe the government wanted to get the Bushmen out of the way so future diamond mining could take place."
Ross noted much of Botswana's foreign exchange comes from partnerships with diamond companies like DeBeers.
"DeBeers has a concession in the Kalahari Game Reserve," she said, "so it has the right to explore for diamonds in the reserve. I would ask the government to explain that."
Even after the court ruling, the government continues to dispute the Bushmen's return, maintaining that only the 189 people who filed the lawsuit would be given automatic right of return with their children--well short of the 50,000 Basarwa who live in Botswana, 2,000 of whom say they want to go home.
Government officials also argue that tribesmen cannot take along domestic animals or other items that have become necessities for these descendants of hunter-gatherers.
"There are incompatibilities between domestic animals and a game reserve," Dr. Wayne Getz, a South Africa-trained professor of environmental science, policy, and management at the University of California-Berkeley told OneWorld. "Domestic animals can spread diseases to wild animals and vice versa and humans can be the recipients of this as well."
George Whittemyer, a post-doctoral fellow who works in Samburu National Reserve in Kenya has noticed a sharp drop in the amount of wildlife as a result of human and domestic-animal activity.
"In my system, there's a highly endangered Zebra species and it's basically being out-competed by cattle," he said. "So it no longer has the resources it needs and it looks like it might go extinct. It's going very poorly."
Pop Culture rarely agrees with facts, logic, or Truth!
Disgraced author aims to defend Judas
By DAVID STRINGER, Associated Press Writer Sun Jan 7, 8:10 AM ET
LONDON - Author Jeffrey Archer, who was cast out of Britain's Conservative Party after being jailed on perjury charges, is coming to the defense of another noted black sheep — Judas Iscariot.
Archer announced Sunday that his new novel chronicling the life of the man who betrayed Jesus, "The Gospel According to Judas, by Benjamin Iscariot," will be published in March.
"This is the most important book I have ever worked on. It means an awful lot to me," said a statement from the author, whose novels include "Kane & Abel" and "Not A Penny More, Not A Penny Less."
He said he wrote the book in collaboration with religious scholar Frank Moloney, formerly of the Catholic University of America.
Archer's publisher, Macmillan, said the book imagines Judas as a politician who betrays Jesus not for money, but because of the belief he is an ineffective leader unable to challenge the authority of the Romans. Unlike the Gospels, Judas does not kill himself but instead survives and recounts his story to a son — the narrator of Archer's book.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa recorded an audio version of the novel last week, the statement said.
"It's so authentic. It sounds just like the kind of thing someone's son would do to try to rehabilitate their father's name," the publisher quoted Tutu as saying.
Last April, an Egyptian Coptic text was made public in Switzerland that portrayed Judas not as a sinister betrayer but as Jesus' confidant, chosen to be told spiritual secrets that the other apostles were not.
The gospel was found sometime in the 1970s in a remote burial cave in middle Egypt, said Mario Roberty, Switzerland-based Maecenas Foundation for Ancient Art.
Archer left prison in 2003 after serving two years for perjury and obstructing justice. He was convicted of lying during his successful 1987 libel action against the Daily Star newspaper, which claimed he had hired a prostitute.
The ex-lawmaker had been honored with a life peerage in 1992 for his tireless fundraising for the Conservative Party, but he was kicked out of the party over his perjury conviction.
Thursday, 14 December 2006
Disgraced author aims to defend Judas
By DAVID STRINGER, Associated Press Writer Sun Jan 7, 8:10 AM ET
LONDON - Author Jeffrey Archer, who was cast out of Britain's Conservative Party after being jailed on perjury charges, is coming to the defense of another noted black sheep — Judas Iscariot.
Archer announced Sunday that his new novel chronicling the life of the man who betrayed Jesus, "The Gospel According to Judas, by Benjamin Iscariot," will be published in March.
"This is the most important book I have ever worked on. It means an awful lot to me," said a statement from the author, whose novels include "Kane & Abel" and "Not A Penny More, Not A Penny Less."
He said he wrote the book in collaboration with religious scholar Frank Moloney, formerly of the Catholic University of America.
Archer's publisher, Macmillan, said the book imagines Judas as a politician who betrays Jesus not for money, but because of the belief he is an ineffective leader unable to challenge the authority of the Romans. Unlike the Gospels, Judas does not kill himself but instead survives and recounts his story to a son — the narrator of Archer's book.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa recorded an audio version of the novel last week, the statement said.
"It's so authentic. It sounds just like the kind of thing someone's son would do to try to rehabilitate their father's name," the publisher quoted Tutu as saying.
Last April, an Egyptian Coptic text was made public in Switzerland that portrayed Judas not as a sinister betrayer but as Jesus' confidant, chosen to be told spiritual secrets that the other apostles were not.
The gospel was found sometime in the 1970s in a remote burial cave in middle Egypt, said Mario Roberty, Switzerland-based Maecenas Foundation for Ancient Art.
Archer left prison in 2003 after serving two years for perjury and obstructing justice. He was convicted of lying during his successful 1987 libel action against the Daily Star newspaper, which claimed he had hired a prostitute.
The ex-lawmaker had been honored with a life peerage in 1992 for his tireless fundraising for the Conservative Party, but he was kicked out of the party over his perjury conviction.
...because Democrats are afraid to appear weak on national security...
Democrats Expected to Increase U.S. Military Spending
Aaron Glantz, OneWorld US Wed Dec 13, 3:36 PM ET
SAN FRANCISCO, Dec 13 (OneWorld) - Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress are likely to drive U.S. military budgets even higher in 2007, experts say.
This year's
Pentagon budget is $436 billion. That amount does not include more than $140 billion that's being spent this year alone on the wars in
Iraq and
Afghanistan.
"If you think a new wind is blowing in Washington in terms of security issues because the Democrats are going to take over Congress, you probably have another thing coming," Christopher Hellman of the Washington, DC-based Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation told OneWorld.
Hellman said that because Democrats are afraid to appear weak on national security, they are likely to continue funding Cold War weapons systems like the F-22 fighter plane, which was designed to address projected Soviet capabilities that no longer exist.
This year, the Pentagon requested no F-22 fighters, but Congress added $1.4 billion to purchase 20 of the aircraft.
The House of Representatives passed the annual defense authorization bill 396-31, with only 30 Democrats voting against it. The same bill passed 96-0 in the Senate.
"The issue is jobs, pure and simple," Hellman said. "The F-22, as its builders will proudly tell you, represents 1,000 corporations in 42 states around the country. That represents a huge number of jobs."
Democrats also have specific areas where they want to expand military spending after they assume Congressional leadership positions in January.
"America needs a bigger and better military," reads an October report by Will Marshall of the Progressive Policy Institute, the policy arm of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council that counts Senators
Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Evan Bayh (D-IN) among its members.
"Escalating conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have stretched the all-volunteer force to the breaking point," the report says. "Democrats should step forward with a plan to repair the damage, by adding more troops, replenishing depleted stocks of equipment, and reorganizing the force around the new missions of unconventional warfare, counterinsurgency, and civil reconstruction."
William Hartung, an arms control expert at the New York-based World Policy Institute, believes the Democrats will most closely adhere to a March 2006 plan called "Real Security," which has been endorsed by both the incoming Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), and incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV).
That plan stresses energy efficiency and the use of alternative fuels as well as securing "loose nuclear materials that terrorists could use to build nuclear weapons." Hartung likes those promises but is unhappy the Democrats appear unwilling to stop production of Cold War weapons, reduce the size of America's 10,000-warhead-strong nuclear arsenal, or scrap development of the Pentagon's still unworkable missile defense system, which Hartung says has consumed over $130 billion of taxpayer money since
Ronald Reagan's 1983 "Star Wars" speech.
Col. Dan Smith (ret.) of the Friends Committee on National Legislation cautions that military spending is rising so fast that it threatens to overwhelm every other aspect of American government.
In addition to the Pentagon's $436 billion regular budget and the $140 billion spent on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Smith writes on his blog, "The Quakers' Colonel," taxpayers will be coughing up $11 billion authorized in prior years to cover the costs of retiree health costs. Military construction and "quality of life" issues for the current forces have grown to $59.8 billion, he says. Military nuclear weapons programs that are funded in the
Department of Energy budget add $17 billion more.
In addition, Smith says, "the nation is still paying for past wars. The Veterans Administration is slated to receive $76 billion. The interest on the money borrowed to finance past wars is conservatively estimated at $169.4 billion."
None of that even counts money spent on the Department of
Homeland Security.
Putting it all together, according to Smith, the 2007 costs for past, current, and future wars comes to more than $900 billion--"within hailing distance of the $1 trillion mark."
This type of spending concerns the World Policy Institute's William Hartung too. "I would like to see bolder Democratic positions," he says, "particularly on the war in Iraq and using the power of the purse to move towards withdrawal from Iraq [and] cutting unnecessary military spending.
"But despite that there will be hearings and some accountability," he adds. "At least the terrain on which the debate will take place will be different."
Monday, 27 November 2006
Democrats Expected to Increase U.S. Military Spending
Aaron Glantz, OneWorld US Wed Dec 13, 3:36 PM ET
SAN FRANCISCO, Dec 13 (OneWorld) - Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress are likely to drive U.S. military budgets even higher in 2007, experts say.
This year's
Pentagon budget is $436 billion. That amount does not include more than $140 billion that's being spent this year alone on the wars in
Iraq and
Afghanistan.
"If you think a new wind is blowing in Washington in terms of security issues because the Democrats are going to take over Congress, you probably have another thing coming," Christopher Hellman of the Washington, DC-based Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation told OneWorld.
Hellman said that because Democrats are afraid to appear weak on national security, they are likely to continue funding Cold War weapons systems like the F-22 fighter plane, which was designed to address projected Soviet capabilities that no longer exist.
This year, the Pentagon requested no F-22 fighters, but Congress added $1.4 billion to purchase 20 of the aircraft.
The House of Representatives passed the annual defense authorization bill 396-31, with only 30 Democrats voting against it. The same bill passed 96-0 in the Senate.
"The issue is jobs, pure and simple," Hellman said. "The F-22, as its builders will proudly tell you, represents 1,000 corporations in 42 states around the country. That represents a huge number of jobs."
Democrats also have specific areas where they want to expand military spending after they assume Congressional leadership positions in January.
"America needs a bigger and better military," reads an October report by Will Marshall of the Progressive Policy Institute, the policy arm of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council that counts Senators
Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Evan Bayh (D-IN) among its members.
"Escalating conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have stretched the all-volunteer force to the breaking point," the report says. "Democrats should step forward with a plan to repair the damage, by adding more troops, replenishing depleted stocks of equipment, and reorganizing the force around the new missions of unconventional warfare, counterinsurgency, and civil reconstruction."
William Hartung, an arms control expert at the New York-based World Policy Institute, believes the Democrats will most closely adhere to a March 2006 plan called "Real Security," which has been endorsed by both the incoming Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), and incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV).
That plan stresses energy efficiency and the use of alternative fuels as well as securing "loose nuclear materials that terrorists could use to build nuclear weapons." Hartung likes those promises but is unhappy the Democrats appear unwilling to stop production of Cold War weapons, reduce the size of America's 10,000-warhead-strong nuclear arsenal, or scrap development of the Pentagon's still unworkable missile defense system, which Hartung says has consumed over $130 billion of taxpayer money since
Ronald Reagan's 1983 "Star Wars" speech.
Col. Dan Smith (ret.) of the Friends Committee on National Legislation cautions that military spending is rising so fast that it threatens to overwhelm every other aspect of American government.
In addition to the Pentagon's $436 billion regular budget and the $140 billion spent on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Smith writes on his blog, "The Quakers' Colonel," taxpayers will be coughing up $11 billion authorized in prior years to cover the costs of retiree health costs. Military construction and "quality of life" issues for the current forces have grown to $59.8 billion, he says. Military nuclear weapons programs that are funded in the
Department of Energy budget add $17 billion more.
In addition, Smith says, "the nation is still paying for past wars. The Veterans Administration is slated to receive $76 billion. The interest on the money borrowed to finance past wars is conservatively estimated at $169.4 billion."
None of that even counts money spent on the Department of
Homeland Security.
Putting it all together, according to Smith, the 2007 costs for past, current, and future wars comes to more than $900 billion--"within hailing distance of the $1 trillion mark."
This type of spending concerns the World Policy Institute's William Hartung too. "I would like to see bolder Democratic positions," he says, "particularly on the war in Iraq and using the power of the purse to move towards withdrawal from Iraq [and] cutting unnecessary military spending.
"But despite that there will be hearings and some accountability," he adds. "At least the terrain on which the debate will take place will be different."
Parallel Universes or just repitition of the same stupidity?
AWOL Soldier Gets Day in Court
Aaron Glantz, OneWorld US Tue Nov 21, 8:56 AM ET
SAN FRANCISCO, Nov 21 (OneWorld) - A U.S. serviceman who went AWOL after refusing to return for a second tour of duty in
Iraq is getting a court hearing Tuesday.
Army medic Augustin Aguayo turned himself in this September and is currently incarcerated at the U.S. military prison at Manheim, Germany.
After his first tour in Iraq, Aguayo filed for status as a conscientious objector (CO), which the
Pentagon denied.
He faces up to seven years in prison for refusing to deploy for a second time to Iraq.
His hearing before United States Court of Appeals in Washington, DC is a habeas corpus petition against the Army for wrongfully denying him conscientious objector status. It is believed to be the first such case before a federal court since 1971, during the Vietnam War.
"Under Supreme Court precedent from the Vietnam War, if we prevail--if the civilian court rules that he is a conscientious objector--then the Army will have to terminate court martial proceedings and simply let him go," Aguayo's attorney Peter Goldberger told OneWorld.
That could have implications for other soldiers who apply for apply for CO status, Goldberger said.
"While there [in Iraq] as a non-combatant, I was still required to do guard duty, although I chose to carry only an unloaded gun," Aguayo said in court statements written for the hearing.
"While there as a non-combatant, I was still required to patch up, treat, and help countless soldiers for 'sick-call' in order to facilitate their prompt return to combatant duties. While there as a non-combatant, I was asked to drive soldiers around on patrols, patrols which could have been deadly to Americans and Iraqis alike."
Aguayo wrote he regrets his involvement in those activities because ultimately, he was contributing to and enabling others to do what he opposed.
"By doing guard duty," he wrote, "appearing to be armed, even without bullets, I gave the false impression that I would kill if need be. I am not willing to live a lie to satisfy any deployment operation. By helping countless soldiers for 'sick-call' as well as driving soldiers around on patrols I helped them get physically better and be able to go out and do the very thing I am against--kill.
"This is something my conscience will not allow me to do."
U.S. military records show that between 8,000 and 10,000 soldiers are currently unaccounted for. It is not known how many are AWOL for political or personal reasons.
Hundreds of antiwar soldiers are believed to be AWOL in Canada, however, and hundreds of soldiers who are still on duty have filed an "appeal for redress" under the Pentagon's whistleblower protection laws allowing for protected communication with Congress.
"As a patriotic American proud to serve the nation in uniform, I respectfully urge my political leaders in Congress to support the prompt withdrawal of all American military forces and bases from Iraq," the petition reads. "Staying in Iraq will not work and is not worth the price. It is time for U.S. troops to come home."
David Cortright, who protested the Vietnam war from inside the military and later authored the book Soldiers in Revolt: GI Resistance During the Vietnam War, told OneWorld he sees many parallels between the two wars.
"Many of us who were in the military went in not knowing what we were getting into, maybe not believing in the mission," he said, "but once we saw what was actually happening on the ground and we could see the injustice of this war, we felt compelled to speak out to alert our fellow citizens that the war was unjust. And now we're seeing in Iraq a similar kind of feeling and expression from people in the ranks."
Cortright said during the Vietnam war, like today, the Pentagon did their best to dilute the impact of antiwar servicemen, with similar results.
"They kept transferring us to different bases," he recalled. "They tried to tar us as troublemakers and then send us away. But what we found when we were sent to other bases was that there were many soldiers at these other bases who opposed the war as well."
"When I was sent to Fort Bliss, Texas, within a week or two I hooked up with other soldiers that already opposed the war and began to work with an already existing antiwar committee at Fort Bliss. We're seeing the same thing today.
"There are antiwar networks at maybe six bases. There are groups of soldiers that are discovering that they're not alone. There are others out there that share these opinions and they're starting to connect."
"There's no place like Home! There's no place like Home! There's no place like Home!"
Ruby slippers land at space museum
By BRETT ZONGKER, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 3 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - Dorothy's ruby red slippers are now temporarily nestled near
NASA's rockets and Charles Lindbergh's plane in a new Smithsonian exhibit that has the blessing of two original munchkins from "The Wizard of Oz."
More than 150 well-known objects from the National Museum of American History collection are on public display in the "Treasures of American History" exhibit across the National Mall at the National Air and Space Museum.
Leaders of the popular history museum, which closed in September for a major renovation and will reopen in summer 2008, wanted to keep at least part of the massive 3 million piece collection on view.
Ruth Duccini and Jerry Maren, two of the munchkins from "The Wizard of Oz," helped open the new exhibit last week.
"The city council of Munchkinland nominated me to be part of the welcoming committee for Dorothy," said Maren, 87, who was 17 when he played one of the three "Lollipop Kids." He wore a blue baseball cap that said "The Lollipop Kid," and carried a huge green and purple lollipop over his shoulder.
"We wish to welcome you to Smithsonian Institute," he sang to the tune of the "Lollipop Guild" song in the 1939 film.
"It's just an honor to see this," said Duccini, 88, as she stood near a display of the slippers worn by Judy Garland and the rarely seen scarecrow suit worn by Ray Bolger in the legendary movie. She said she doesn't watch "The Wizard of Oz" very often because "most of the people I knew are gone already. It's kind of sad."
The slippers, scarecrow costume and a bulky Technicolor camera used to film "The Wizard of Oz" are in the first of the exhibit's four galleries. The Creativity and Innovation section also includes one of the oldest known pairs of Levi Strauss jeans and Thomas Edison's light bulb.
The American Biography section includes Jacqueline Kennedy's inaugural gown, the robe worn by Supreme Court Justice
Sandra Day O'Connor when she was sworn is as the first woman justice and Ray Charles' tuxedo, among other famous relics.
"It's very hard to choose a treasure when you go into the collection," said Brent Glass, director of the National Museum of American History. "Each object is important in and of itself. It tells a whole story."
A portion of the
AIDS Memorial Quilt, the top hat Abraham Lincoln wore the night he was assassinated and the Greensboro, N.C., lunch counter where four black college students protested segregation by sitting down at the "whites-only" counter highlight the exhibit section called National Challenges. The lunch counter is elevated so visitors can see the scuff marks and chewing gum still stuck below the counter.
Kermit the Frog and other objects from television highlight the fourth section, American Identity.
Some of the Smithsonian's newest acquisitions from Hurricane Katrina are on display for the first time in a case that will feature different objects every few months. Katrina artifacts include a piece of the failed levee wall from New Orleans, a rosary that provided solace to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration lead forecaster Robert Ricks and a mailbox that was the only object left standing at a house destroyed in the storm.
Smithsonian curators are still trying to get in touch with owners of the mailbox, which is labeled "The Alexanders" and was found in New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward.
The central core of the history museum has been emptied, and heavy construction is scheduled to begin in December, Glass said. He said the Air and Space Museum was chosen for the temporary exhibit because a gallery was available and the space museum draws millions of visitors each year.
"There's also a connection with some of the objects here," he said, "especially in the area of innovation and creativity."
___
On the Net:
National Museum of American History: http://americanhistory.si.edu/
I'd be looking for the source of the pain, not to lock her up...but this is Amerikkka!
Tawny Kitaen's Cocaine Rap
by Natalie Finn Mon Nov 27, 6:23 AM ET
Los Angeles (E! Online) - Actress
Tawny Kitaen, best known for a handful of '80s-era roles before supposedly clocking baseball-playing ex-hubby Chuck Finley with her high-heeled shoes, was rung up Tuesday on a felony drug charge.
Prosecutors said that the Bachelor Party bride-to-be is facing one count of possessing a controlled substance after police found 15 grams of cocaine in her apartment.
According to Jim Amormino of the Orange County Sheriff's Department, deputies showed up at Kitaen's San Juan Capistrano, California, apartment to perform a "welfare check" on her and her two daughters with Finley, Wynter and Raine.
Police said that Kitaen was not under the influence of any drugs or alcohol at the time but that the children, ages 8 and 13, were home when officers arrived and found the cocaine.
Kitaen, 45, who's scheduled to be arraigned Dec. 18, is facing up to three years in prison if convicted. But, she can avoid hard time if she qualifies for a drug diversion program and enters rehab, O.C. District Attorney's Office spokeswoman Susan Schroeder said.
Whitesnake's favorite hood ornament previously pleaded guilty in 2002 to attacking Finley, then a pitcher for the Cleveland Indians, in exchange for the court's dismissal of two misdemeanor spousal abuse charges. Kitaen agreed to attend anger management and conflict resolution counseling and donate $500 to a battered-women's shelter.
The case wasn't closed until October 2003, however, when Kitaen issued a written apology for saying in an interview on The Howard Stern Show that she had been forced into a guilty plea. The onetime music video muse also denied having a drug problem, which Finley had alleged in court documents and Kitaen later admitted, saying she had developed an addiction to prescription meds for depression and migraines.
Finley filed for divorce on Apr. 4, three days after he accused Kitaen of kicking him with her stiletto boots and viciously twisting his ear while the two were driving to their home in Newport Beach, California. The Louisiana-born southpaw, who also pitched for the then-California (and later Anaheim) Angels, finished off his career with the St. Louis Cardinals in 2002.
Kitaen was a cast member on the sixth season of The Surreal Life earlier this year, becoming perhaps the first person ever to yell at Mrs. Brady on camera.
Simplest Answer: Combat Rookies, and maybe intoxicated! We hope they were tested on the spot!
Last Updated: Monday, 27 November 2006, 18:43 GMT
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has condemned the shooting of an unarmed black man by police but said he will support the city's police chief.
Mr Bloomberg also pledged a fair and thorough investigation, following talks with Police Commissioner Ray Kelly.
Sean Bell, 23, was killed when police shot 50 rounds at his car after he left a strip club on the eve of his wedding.
It is alleged that police began firing after the man's car hit an unmarked police car. Two men were also injured.
Following the talks with the city's police commissioner and community leaders at City Hall, Mr Bloomberg said he was "deeply disturbed" by the violent incident.
"I can tell you that it is to me unacceptable or inexplicable how you can have 50-odd shots fired, but that is up to the investigation to find out what really happened," Mr Bloomberg said.
Reverend Al Sharpton, a prominent civil rights activist, called it a "very candid, a very blunt meeting".
He said the message to the mayor was: "This city must show moral outrage that 50 shots were fired on three unarmed men."
The talks come a day after several hundred people held a vigil for Mr Bell, during which protesters called for the resignation of the city police chief.
A Constitution that fails to protect children from molesters and killers is no Constitution!
Time Served
Zoning Laws That Bar Pedophiles Raise Concerns
Dith Pran/The New York Times
In Franklin Township, N.J., recreation areas like Malaga Lake Park are off limits to convicted pedophiles. In some cities, many such zones overlap.
By LAURA MANSNERUS
Published: November 27, 2006, New York Times
FRANKLIN TOWNSHIP, N.J., Nov. 21 — The man identified in court documents as A. B. does not talk to his neighbors or tarry at the convenience store. Seventy-seven years old, soft-spoken and sometimes confused, he hardly ever leaves the little ranch house he bought in 1969. “People know what’s what with me,” he said.
What’s what with A. B. is that he moved back here last year after serving seven years in prison for sexually molesting two grandchildren and another youngster. And because his home is in a “child safety zone” drawn by the township, he may be forced to leave it.
But the public defender’s office in New Jersey, a state government agency, filed suit against the township on his behalf last month, claiming that the ordinance not only violates his right to due process, but also conflicts with a state law requiring that parole officers decide where registered sex offenders live. It is the first such case the agency has taken up, and could herald a curb on the rapidly proliferating local ordinances that threaten to push pedophiles to the fringes of civilization.
Such regulations — more than 100 have been enacted in New Jersey municipalities — are popular around the nation. More than 20 states have broad laws keeping sex offenders from schools, churches, playgrounds and the like. This month 70 percent of California voters approved expanding statewide restrictions to include more sex offenders, and authorized towns to designate even stricter limits.
On Long Island, the East Rockaway Village Board voted on Nov. 13 to add areas in which sex offenders are barred: Now they cannot live within 1,000 feet of day care centers, community centers, places of worship, libraries and recreational facilities. And the Village of Babylon announced Tuesday that it had evicted seven offenders who were violating its residency restrictions.
The steady march of more and more restrictive regulations, though, is sending sex offenders into rural territory, which in New Jersey and on Long Island is scarce — or worse, into vagrancy, law enforcement officials say. Now these officials fear that uprooting sex offenders makes them less stable and harder to track.
“It certainly makes our job difficult,” said Thomas James, New Jersey’s director of parole, explaining that because his officers often have to find housing and social services for offenders, their banishment by local governments is “an ever-increasing problem.”
But Michael DiGiorgio, chief of police here in Franklin Township, said, “We’re not telling any of these individuals they can’t live in Franklin Township; they just can’t live where the children are.”
“That’s the whole purpose of the ordinance,” he added. “To protect children.”
A. B.’s name is on the state’s registry — “I’m broadcast on the Internet,” he said — but he was identified by randomly chosen initials in court papers, and granted anonymity for this article, so as not to expose his victims. His lawsuit, filed in State Superior Court in Gloucester County, is one of a handful filed across New Jersey in recent months to overturn the local rules, part of a national wave of litigation that is beginning to follow the multiplying new laws.
An Ohio court ruled in October that the state’s buffer-zone law could not be enforced against offenders who lived in such zones before it took effect. Citing several constitutional concerns, a federal judge in California issued a temporary restraining order barring enforcement of the residency restrictions set forth in the state’s recent ballot proposition.
In Georgia, plaintiffs in a class-action suit include several offenders who would seem to pose little further threat: an elderly man with Alzheimer’s disease and another living in a hospice, along with a woman whose long-ago conviction was for having consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old boy when she was 17.
“We’ve represented people on death row, we’ve represented what I thought were some pretty unpopular people,” said Stephen B. Bright, president of the Southern Center for Human Rights, which is handling the Georgia case. “I didn’t know what unpopular was until we started representing sex offenders.”
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Spending us further into debt, robbing Peter to Pay Paul, and refusing to raise Taxes on the Rich...is Hell!
Dollar may drop if US c/a deficit remains: OECD
11 minutes ago
MADRID (Reuters) - Investors may move out of the dollar if the U.S. current account deficit remains as high as it is at the moment while Asian countries run a surplus, OECD Secretary General Angel Gurria said on Monday,
"If this situation continues and these imbalances keep accumulating, at some point there will have to be a market reaction," Gurria told reporters.
Earlier, the dollar hit a 20-month low before strengthening back to $1.3116 to the euro.
Can Dolphin stem cells lead to cure for Parkinsons and spinal cord injury?
Humpback whales have "human" brain cells: study
1 hour, 39 minutes ago
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Humpback whales have a type of brain cell seen only in humans, the great apes, and other cetaceans such as dolphins, U.S. researchers reported on Monday.
This might mean such whales are more intelligent than they have been given credit for, and suggests the basis for complex brains either evolved more than once, or has gone unused by most species of animals, the researchers said.
The finding may help explain some of the behaviors seen in whales, such as intricate communication skills, the formation of alliances, cooperation, cultural transmission and tool usage, the researchers report in The Anatomical Record.
Patrick Hof and Estel Van der Gucht of the Department of Neuroscience at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York studied the brains of humpback whales and discovered a type of cell called a spindle neuron in the cortex, in areas comparable to where they are seen in humans and great apes.
Although the function of spindle neurons is not well understood, they may be involved in cognition -- learning, remembering and recognizing the world around oneself. Spindle cells may be affected by
Alzheimer's disease and other debilitating brain disorders such as autism and schizophrenia.
'COMPLEX SOCIAL PATTERNS'
The researches found spindle neurons in the same location in toothed whales with the largest brains, which the researchers said suggests that they may be related to brain size. Toothed whales such as orcas are generally considered more intelligent than baleen whales such as humpbacks and blue whales, which filter water for their food.
The humpbacks also had structures that resembled "islands" in the cerebral cortex, also seen in some other mammals.
These islands may have evolved in order to promote fast and efficient communication between neurons, the researchers said.
Spindle neurons probably first appeared in the common ancestor of hominids, humans and great apes about 15 million years ago, the researchers said -- they are not seen in lesser apes or monkeys.
In cetaceans they would have evolved earlier, possibly as early as 30 million years ago, the researchers said.
Either the spindle neurons were only kept in the animals with the largest brains or they evolved several times independently, the researchers said.
"In spite of the relative scarcity of information on many cetacean species, it is important to note in this context that sperm whales, killer whales, and certainly humpback whales, exhibit complex social patterns that included intricate communication skills, coalition-formation, cooperation, cultural transmission and tool usage," the researchers wrote.
"It is thus likely that some of these abilities are related to comparable histologic complexity in brain organization in cetaceans and in hominids."
George and Gracie, phone home!
Humpback whales have "human" brain cells: study
1 hour, 39 minutes ago
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Humpback whales have a type of brain cell seen only in humans, the great apes, and other cetaceans such as dolphins, U.S. researchers reported on Monday.
This might mean such whales are more intelligent than they have been given credit for, and suggests the basis for complex brains either evolved more than once, or has gone unused by most species of animals, the researchers said.
The finding may help explain some of the behaviors seen in whales, such as intricate communication skills, the formation of alliances, cooperation, cultural transmission and tool usage, the researchers report in The Anatomical Record.
Patrick Hof and Estel Van der Gucht of the Department of Neuroscience at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York studied the brains of humpback whales and discovered a type of cell called a spindle neuron in the cortex, in areas comparable to where they are seen in humans and great apes.
Although the function of spindle neurons is not well understood, they may be involved in cognition -- learning, remembering and recognizing the world around oneself. Spindle cells may be affected by
Alzheimer's disease and other debilitating brain disorders such as autism and schizophrenia.
'COMPLEX SOCIAL PATTERNS'
The researches found spindle neurons in the same location in toothed whales with the largest brains, which the researchers said suggests that they may be related to brain size. Toothed whales such as orcas are generally considered more intelligent than baleen whales such as humpbacks and blue whales, which filter water for their food.
The humpbacks also had structures that resembled "islands" in the cerebral cortex, also seen in some other mammals.
These islands may have evolved in order to promote fast and efficient communication between neurons, the researchers said.
Spindle neurons probably first appeared in the common ancestor of hominids, humans and great apes about 15 million years ago, the researchers said -- they are not seen in lesser apes or monkeys.
In cetaceans they would have evolved earlier, possibly as early as 30 million years ago, the researchers said.
Either the spindle neurons were only kept in the animals with the largest brains or they evolved several times independently, the researchers said.
"In spite of the relative scarcity of information on many cetacean species, it is important to note in this context that sperm whales, killer whales, and certainly humpback whales, exhibit complex social patterns that included intricate communication skills, coalition-formation, cooperation, cultural transmission and tool usage," the researchers wrote.
"It is thus likely that some of these abilities are related to comparable histologic complexity in brain organization in cetaceans and in hominids."
Bush agenda kills Hawaiian Cop in motorcade crash!
Officer dies after Bush motorcade crash
2 hours, 39 minutes ago
HONOLULU (Reuters) - A Honolulu police officer died on Sunday from injuries suffered when his motorcycle crashed while escorting
President George W. Bush during his Hawaii visit last week.
Steve Favella, 30, of Ewa Beach on Oahu, died at The Queen's Medical Center, said Honolulu Police Department spokesman Captain Frank Fujii.
Favella had been in critical condition with internal injuries following the crash on November 21 as the presidential motorcade left Hickam Air Force Base. Favella had been with the Honolulu Police Department for eight years.
In a statement issued on Sunday by the White House, the president and the first lady, who were both in the motorcade at the time of the accident, offered condolences to the officer's family. Favella left behind a wife and four children.
"Laura and I are deeply saddened by the death of Officer Steve Favela of the Honolulu Police Department," the president said. "We send our condolences to his wife, Barbara, his entire family, and his fellow law enforcement officers."
Sunday, 26 November 2006
AWOL Soldier Gets Day in Court
Aaron Glantz, OneWorld US Tue Nov 21, 8:56 AM ET
SAN FRANCISCO, Nov 21 (OneWorld) - A U.S. serviceman who went AWOL after refusing to return for a second tour of duty in
Iraq is getting a court hearing Tuesday.
Army medic Augustin Aguayo turned himself in this September and is currently incarcerated at the U.S. military prison at Manheim, Germany.
After his first tour in Iraq, Aguayo filed for status as a conscientious objector (CO), which the
Pentagon denied.
He faces up to seven years in prison for refusing to deploy for a second time to Iraq.
His hearing before United States Court of Appeals in Washington, DC is a habeas corpus petition against the Army for wrongfully denying him conscientious objector status. It is believed to be the first such case before a federal court since 1971, during the Vietnam War.
"Under Supreme Court precedent from the Vietnam War, if we prevail--if the civilian court rules that he is a conscientious objector--then the Army will have to terminate court martial proceedings and simply let him go," Aguayo's attorney Peter Goldberger told OneWorld.
That could have implications for other soldiers who apply for apply for CO status, Goldberger said.
"While there [in Iraq] as a non-combatant, I was still required to do guard duty, although I chose to carry only an unloaded gun," Aguayo said in court statements written for the hearing.
"While there as a non-combatant, I was still required to patch up, treat, and help countless soldiers for 'sick-call' in order to facilitate their prompt return to combatant duties. While there as a non-combatant, I was asked to drive soldiers around on patrols, patrols which could have been deadly to Americans and Iraqis alike."
Aguayo wrote he regrets his involvement in those activities because ultimately, he was contributing to and enabling others to do what he opposed.
"By doing guard duty," he wrote, "appearing to be armed, even without bullets, I gave the false impression that I would kill if need be. I am not willing to live a lie to satisfy any deployment operation. By helping countless soldiers for 'sick-call' as well as driving soldiers around on patrols I helped them get physically better and be able to go out and do the very thing I am against--kill.
"This is something my conscience will not allow me to do."
U.S. military records show that between 8,000 and 10,000 soldiers are currently unaccounted for. It is not known how many are AWOL for political or personal reasons.
Hundreds of antiwar soldiers are believed to be AWOL in Canada, however, and hundreds of soldiers who are still on duty have filed an "appeal for redress" under the Pentagon's whistleblower protection laws allowing for protected communication with Congress.
"As a patriotic American proud to serve the nation in uniform, I respectfully urge my political leaders in Congress to support the prompt withdrawal of all American military forces and bases from Iraq," the petition reads. "Staying in Iraq will not work and is not worth the price. It is time for U.S. troops to come home."
David Cortright, who protested the Vietnam war from inside the military and later authored the book Soldiers in Revolt: GI Resistance During the Vietnam War, told OneWorld he sees many parallels between the two wars.
"Many of us who were in the military went in not knowing what we were getting into, maybe not believing in the mission," he said, "but once we saw what was actually happening on the ground and we could see the injustice of this war, we felt compelled to speak out to alert our fellow citizens that the war was unjust. And now we're seeing in Iraq a similar kind of feeling and expression from people in the ranks."
Cortright said during the Vietnam war, like today, the Pentagon did their best to dilute the impact of antiwar servicemen, with similar results.
"They kept transferring us to different bases," he recalled. "They tried to tar us as troublemakers and then send us away. But what we found when we were sent to other bases was that there were many soldiers at these other bases who opposed the war as well."
"When I was sent to Fort Bliss, Texas, within a week or two I hooked up with other soldiers that already opposed the war and began to work with an already existing antiwar committee at Fort Bliss. We're seeing the same thing today.
"There are antiwar networks at maybe six bases. There are groups of soldiers that are discovering that they're not alone. There are others out there that share these opinions and they're starting to connect."
Ruby slippers land at space museum
By BRETT ZONGKER, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 3 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - Dorothy's ruby red slippers are now temporarily nestled near
NASA's rockets and Charles Lindbergh's plane in a new Smithsonian exhibit that has the blessing of two original munchkins from "The Wizard of Oz."
More than 150 well-known objects from the National Museum of American History collection are on public display in the "Treasures of American History" exhibit across the National Mall at the National Air and Space Museum.
Leaders of the popular history museum, which closed in September for a major renovation and will reopen in summer 2008, wanted to keep at least part of the massive 3 million piece collection on view.
Ruth Duccini and Jerry Maren, two of the munchkins from "The Wizard of Oz," helped open the new exhibit last week.
"The city council of Munchkinland nominated me to be part of the welcoming committee for Dorothy," said Maren, 87, who was 17 when he played one of the three "Lollipop Kids." He wore a blue baseball cap that said "The Lollipop Kid," and carried a huge green and purple lollipop over his shoulder.
"We wish to welcome you to Smithsonian Institute," he sang to the tune of the "Lollipop Guild" song in the 1939 film.
"It's just an honor to see this," said Duccini, 88, as she stood near a display of the slippers worn by Judy Garland and the rarely seen scarecrow suit worn by Ray Bolger in the legendary movie. She said she doesn't watch "The Wizard of Oz" very often because "most of the people I knew are gone already. It's kind of sad."
The slippers, scarecrow costume and a bulky Technicolor camera used to film "The Wizard of Oz" are in the first of the exhibit's four galleries. The Creativity and Innovation section also includes one of the oldest known pairs of Levi Strauss jeans and Thomas Edison's light bulb.
The American Biography section includes Jacqueline Kennedy's inaugural gown, the robe worn by Supreme Court Justice
Sandra Day O'Connor when she was sworn is as the first woman justice and Ray Charles' tuxedo, among other famous relics.
"It's very hard to choose a treasure when you go into the collection," said Brent Glass, director of the National Museum of American History. "Each object is important in and of itself. It tells a whole story."
A portion of the
AIDS Memorial Quilt, the top hat Abraham Lincoln wore the night he was assassinated and the Greensboro, N.C., lunch counter where four black college students protested segregation by sitting down at the "whites-only" counter highlight the exhibit section called National Challenges. The lunch counter is elevated so visitors can see the scuff marks and chewing gum still stuck below the counter.
Kermit the Frog and other objects from television highlight the fourth section, American Identity.
Some of the Smithsonian's newest acquisitions from Hurricane Katrina are on display for the first time in a case that will feature different objects every few months. Katrina artifacts include a piece of the failed levee wall from New Orleans, a rosary that provided solace to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration lead forecaster Robert Ricks and a mailbox that was the only object left standing at a house destroyed in the storm.
Smithsonian curators are still trying to get in touch with owners of the mailbox, which is labeled "The Alexanders" and was found in New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward.
The central core of the history museum has been emptied, and heavy construction is scheduled to begin in December, Glass said. He said the Air and Space Museum was chosen for the temporary exhibit because a gallery was available and the space museum draws millions of visitors each year.
"There's also a connection with some of the objects here," he said, "especially in the area of innovation and creativity."
___
On the Net:
National Museum of American History: http://americanhistory.si.edu/
Tawny Kitaen's Cocaine Rap
by Natalie Finn Mon Nov 27, 6:23 AM ET
Los Angeles (E! Online) - Actress
Tawny Kitaen, best known for a handful of '80s-era roles before supposedly clocking baseball-playing ex-hubby Chuck Finley with her high-heeled shoes, was rung up Tuesday on a felony drug charge.
Prosecutors said that the Bachelor Party bride-to-be is facing one count of possessing a controlled substance after police found 15 grams of cocaine in her apartment.
According to Jim Amormino of the Orange County Sheriff's Department, deputies showed up at Kitaen's San Juan Capistrano, California, apartment to perform a "welfare check" on her and her two daughters with Finley, Wynter and Raine.
Police said that Kitaen was not under the influence of any drugs or alcohol at the time but that the children, ages 8 and 13, were home when officers arrived and found the cocaine.
Kitaen, 45, who's scheduled to be arraigned Dec. 18, is facing up to three years in prison if convicted. But, she can avoid hard time if she qualifies for a drug diversion program and enters rehab, O.C. District Attorney's Office spokeswoman Susan Schroeder said.
Whitesnake's favorite hood ornament previously pleaded guilty in 2002 to attacking Finley, then a pitcher for the Cleveland Indians, in exchange for the court's dismissal of two misdemeanor spousal abuse charges. Kitaen agreed to attend anger management and conflict resolution counseling and donate $500 to a battered-women's shelter.
The case wasn't closed until October 2003, however, when Kitaen issued a written apology for saying in an interview on The Howard Stern Show that she had been forced into a guilty plea. The onetime music video muse also denied having a drug problem, which Finley had alleged in court documents and Kitaen later admitted, saying she had developed an addiction to prescription meds for depression and migraines.
Finley filed for divorce on Apr. 4, three days after he accused Kitaen of kicking him with her stiletto boots and viciously twisting his ear while the two were driving to their home in Newport Beach, California. The Louisiana-born southpaw, who also pitched for the then-California (and later Anaheim) Angels, finished off his career with the St. Louis Cardinals in 2002.
Kitaen was a cast member on the sixth season of The Surreal Life earlier this year, becoming perhaps the first person ever to yell at Mrs. Brady on camera.
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Updated: Monday, 27 November 2006 2:18 PM CST
Updated: Monday, 27 November 2006 2:18 PM CST
Last Updated: Monday, 27 November 2006, 18:43 GMT
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has condemned the shooting of an unarmed black man by police but said he will support the city's police chief.
Mr Bloomberg also pledged a fair and thorough investigation, following talks with Police Commissioner Ray Kelly.
Sean Bell, 23, was killed when police shot 50 rounds at his car after he left a strip club on the eve of his wedding.
It is alleged that police began firing after the man's car hit an unmarked police car. Two men were also injured.
Following the talks with the city's police commissioner and community leaders at City Hall, Mr Bloomberg said he was "deeply disturbed" by the violent incident.
"I can tell you that it is to me unacceptable or inexplicable how you can have 50-odd shots fired, but that is up to the investigation to find out what really happened," Mr Bloomberg said.
Reverend Al Sharpton, a prominent civil rights activist, called it a "very candid, a very blunt meeting".
He said the message to the mayor was: "This city must show moral outrage that 50 shots were fired on three unarmed men."
The talks come a day after several hundred people held a vigil for Mr Bell, during which protesters called for the resignation of the city police chief.
Time Served
Zoning Laws That Bar Pedophiles Raise Concerns
Dith Pran/The New York Times
In Franklin Township, N.J., recreation areas like Malaga Lake Park are off limits to convicted pedophiles. In some cities, many such zones overlap.
By LAURA MANSNERUS
Published: November 27, 2006, New York Times
FRANKLIN TOWNSHIP, N.J., Nov. 21 — The man identified in court documents as A. B. does not talk to his neighbors or tarry at the convenience store. Seventy-seven years old, soft-spoken and sometimes confused, he hardly ever leaves the little ranch house he bought in 1969. “People know what’s what with me,” he said.
What’s what with A. B. is that he moved back here last year after serving seven years in prison for sexually molesting two grandchildren and another youngster. And because his home is in a “child safety zone” drawn by the township, he may be forced to leave it.
But the public defender’s office in New Jersey, a state government agency, filed suit against the township on his behalf last month, claiming that the ordinance not only violates his right to due process, but also conflicts with a state law requiring that parole officers decide where registered sex offenders live. It is the first such case the agency has taken up, and could herald a curb on the rapidly proliferating local ordinances that threaten to push pedophiles to the fringes of civilization.
Such regulations — more than 100 have been enacted in New Jersey municipalities — are popular around the nation. More than 20 states have broad laws keeping sex offenders from schools, churches, playgrounds and the like. This month 70 percent of California voters approved expanding statewide restrictions to include more sex offenders, and authorized towns to designate even stricter limits.
On Long Island, the East Rockaway Village Board voted on Nov. 13 to add areas in which sex offenders are barred: Now they cannot live within 1,000 feet of day care centers, community centers, places of worship, libraries and recreational facilities. And the Village of Babylon announced Tuesday that it had evicted seven offenders who were violating its residency restrictions.
The steady march of more and more restrictive regulations, though, is sending sex offenders into rural territory, which in New Jersey and on Long Island is scarce — or worse, into vagrancy, law enforcement officials say. Now these officials fear that uprooting sex offenders makes them less stable and harder to track.
“It certainly makes our job difficult,” said Thomas James, New Jersey’s director of parole, explaining that because his officers often have to find housing and social services for offenders, their banishment by local governments is “an ever-increasing problem.”
But Michael DiGiorgio, chief of police here in Franklin Township, said, “We’re not telling any of these individuals they can’t live in Franklin Township; they just can’t live where the children are.”
“That’s the whole purpose of the ordinance,” he added. “To protect children.”
A. B.’s name is on the state’s registry — “I’m broadcast on the Internet,” he said — but he was identified by randomly chosen initials in court papers, and granted anonymity for this article, so as not to expose his victims. His lawsuit, filed in State Superior Court in Gloucester County, is one of a handful filed across New Jersey in recent months to overturn the local rules, part of a national wave of litigation that is beginning to follow the multiplying new laws.
An Ohio court ruled in October that the state’s buffer-zone law could not be enforced against offenders who lived in such zones before it took effect. Citing several constitutional concerns, a federal judge in California issued a temporary restraining order barring enforcement of the residency restrictions set forth in the state’s recent ballot proposition.
In Georgia, plaintiffs in a class-action suit include several offenders who would seem to pose little further threat: an elderly man with Alzheimer’s disease and another living in a hospice, along with a woman whose long-ago conviction was for having consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old boy when she was 17.
“We’ve represented people on death row, we’ve represented what I thought were some pretty unpopular people,” said Stephen B. Bright, president of the Southern Center for Human Rights, which is handling the Georgia case. “I didn’t know what unpopular was until we started representing sex offenders.”
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Dollar may drop if US c/a deficit remains: OECD
11 minutes ago
MADRID (Reuters) - Investors may move out of the dollar if the U.S. current account deficit remains as high as it is at the moment while Asian countries run a surplus, OECD Secretary General Angel Gurria said on Monday,
"If this situation continues and these imbalances keep accumulating, at some point there will have to be a market reaction," Gurria told reporters.
Earlier, the dollar hit a 20-month low before strengthening back to $1.3116 to the euro.
Humpback whales have "human" brain cells: study
1 hour, 39 minutes ago
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Humpback whales have a type of brain cell seen only in humans, the great apes, and other cetaceans such as dolphins, U.S. researchers reported on Monday.
This might mean such whales are more intelligent than they have been given credit for, and suggests the basis for complex brains either evolved more than once, or has gone unused by most species of animals, the researchers said.
The finding may help explain some of the behaviors seen in whales, such as intricate communication skills, the formation of alliances, cooperation, cultural transmission and tool usage, the researchers report in The Anatomical Record.
Patrick Hof and Estel Van der Gucht of the Department of Neuroscience at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York studied the brains of humpback whales and discovered a type of cell called a spindle neuron in the cortex, in areas comparable to where they are seen in humans and great apes.
Although the function of spindle neurons is not well understood, they may be involved in cognition -- learning, remembering and recognizing the world around oneself. Spindle cells may be affected by
Alzheimer's disease and other debilitating brain disorders such as autism and schizophrenia.
'COMPLEX SOCIAL PATTERNS'
The researches found spindle neurons in the same location in toothed whales with the largest brains, which the researchers said suggests that they may be related to brain size. Toothed whales such as orcas are generally considered more intelligent than baleen whales such as humpbacks and blue whales, which filter water for their food.
The humpbacks also had structures that resembled "islands" in the cerebral cortex, also seen in some other mammals.
These islands may have evolved in order to promote fast and efficient communication between neurons, the researchers said.
Spindle neurons probably first appeared in the common ancestor of hominids, humans and great apes about 15 million years ago, the researchers said -- they are not seen in lesser apes or monkeys.
In cetaceans they would have evolved earlier, possibly as early as 30 million years ago, the researchers said.
Either the spindle neurons were only kept in the animals with the largest brains or they evolved several times independently, the researchers said.
"In spite of the relative scarcity of information on many cetacean species, it is important to note in this context that sperm whales, killer whales, and certainly humpback whales, exhibit complex social patterns that included intricate communication skills, coalition-formation, cooperation, cultural transmission and tool usage," the researchers wrote.
"It is thus likely that some of these abilities are related to comparable histologic complexity in brain organization in cetaceans and in hominids."
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Updated: Monday, 27 November 2006 6:21 AM CST
Updated: Monday, 27 November 2006 6:21 AM CST
Humpback whales have "human" brain cells: study
1 hour, 39 minutes ago
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Humpback whales have a type of brain cell seen only in humans, the great apes, and other cetaceans such as dolphins, U.S. researchers reported on Monday.
This might mean such whales are more intelligent than they have been given credit for, and suggests the basis for complex brains either evolved more than once, or has gone unused by most species of animals, the researchers said.
The finding may help explain some of the behaviors seen in whales, such as intricate communication skills, the formation of alliances, cooperation, cultural transmission and tool usage, the researchers report in The Anatomical Record.
Patrick Hof and Estel Van der Gucht of the Department of Neuroscience at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York studied the brains of humpback whales and discovered a type of cell called a spindle neuron in the cortex, in areas comparable to where they are seen in humans and great apes.
Although the function of spindle neurons is not well understood, they may be involved in cognition -- learning, remembering and recognizing the world around oneself. Spindle cells may be affected by
Alzheimer's disease and other debilitating brain disorders such as autism and schizophrenia.
'COMPLEX SOCIAL PATTERNS'
The researches found spindle neurons in the same location in toothed whales with the largest brains, which the researchers said suggests that they may be related to brain size. Toothed whales such as orcas are generally considered more intelligent than baleen whales such as humpbacks and blue whales, which filter water for their food.
The humpbacks also had structures that resembled "islands" in the cerebral cortex, also seen in some other mammals.
These islands may have evolved in order to promote fast and efficient communication between neurons, the researchers said.
Spindle neurons probably first appeared in the common ancestor of hominids, humans and great apes about 15 million years ago, the researchers said -- they are not seen in lesser apes or monkeys.
In cetaceans they would have evolved earlier, possibly as early as 30 million years ago, the researchers said.
Either the spindle neurons were only kept in the animals with the largest brains or they evolved several times independently, the researchers said.
"In spite of the relative scarcity of information on many cetacean species, it is important to note in this context that sperm whales, killer whales, and certainly humpback whales, exhibit complex social patterns that included intricate communication skills, coalition-formation, cooperation, cultural transmission and tool usage," the researchers wrote.
"It is thus likely that some of these abilities are related to comparable histologic complexity in brain organization in cetaceans and in hominids."
Officer dies after Bush motorcade crash
2 hours, 39 minutes ago
HONOLULU (Reuters) - A Honolulu police officer died on Sunday from injuries suffered when his motorcycle crashed while escorting
President George W. Bush during his Hawaii visit last week.
Steve Favella, 30, of Ewa Beach on Oahu, died at The Queen's Medical Center, said Honolulu Police Department spokesman Captain Frank Fujii.
Favella had been in critical condition with internal injuries following the crash on November 21 as the presidential motorcade left Hickam Air Force Base. Favella had been with the Honolulu Police Department for eight years.
In a statement issued on Sunday by the White House, the president and the first lady, who were both in the motorcade at the time of the accident, offered condolences to the officer's family. Favella left behind a wife and four children.
"Laura and I are deeply saddened by the death of Officer Steve Favela of the Honolulu Police Department," the president said. "We send our condolences to his wife, Barbara, his entire family, and his fellow law enforcement officers."
In the year 2525, if humankind is still alive, someone is going to be pissed when a windshield is broken!
Russia, Outer Space and the Profit Motive
By CHRIS CONWAY
Published: November 26, 2006
With a foot jammed into a ladder to hold him steady, Russian astronaut Mikhail V. Tyurin sliced a lightweight golf ball into orbit last week with a one-handed swing during a space walk outside the International Space Station.
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The Basics | Altman's Unfinished Business
The shot some 200 miles above the Earth was a promotion for a Canadian golf club manufacturer, which paid an undisclosed sum to the Federal Space Agency of the Russian Federation in the latest venture by the Russians to subsidize their space program.
In recent years, the Russians have allowed a Kodak banner on their side of the space station, launched a rocket with a Pizza Hut logo, and used its program to promote Pepsi, RadioShack and Lego.
The Russian space agency’s tourism business is booming, too. Since 2002, four tourists have shelled out about $20 million each to ride into space aboard a Russian Soyuz craft. The most recent was Anousheh Ansari, a telecom entrepreneur, in September.
The Russians recently said they had raised the ticket price by $1 million and that all seats were booked for the next two years.
What’s next? Space Adventures Ltd., which has worked with the Russian space agency to send wealthy tourists into orbit, announced this summer that for a mere $15 million (on top of the $20 million or so spent to reach space), a tourist will be able to take an hour-and-a-half space walk.
The company has also partnered with the Russians to send two tourists on a trip around the moon, with a departure sometime in 2010. The price? $100 million. Each.
So with all that money being made on the final frontier, why is it that NASA, with its own funding problems, has not pursued the ventures that the Russians have exploited with entrepreneurial zeal?
“It’s not our charter; it’s not our mandate; it’s not what we do,” said Allard Beutel, a NASA spokesman. “Our job is space exploration and science and R&D.” CHRIS CONWAY
Canadian man on trial for putting baby in freezer
Ed: Ignorance and stupidity are often considered criminal in societies with underfunded and restricted educational systems, resulting from ignorance, stupidity, and plain old-fashioned selfishness! but why is it happening in Canada?
Fri Nov 24, 4:35 PM ET
OTTAWA (Reuters) - A Canadian man who could not figure out how to deal with his girlfriend's feverish 10-month-old daughter put the baby into a freezer to cool her down, a local newspaper reported on Friday.
Derrick Hardy faces charges of criminal negligence and assaulting the infant, who was rescued when her mother came home, the Charlottetown Guardian said.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corp. said the mother found the girl crammed into the freezer alongside ice cubes and hamburger meat. Hardy said he had left the door ajar but the mother said it had been closed when she returned.
He told a court in the eastern province of Prince Edward Island on Thursday the child had only been in the freezer for about 40 seconds.
Hardy, 21, who admitted to police that he had no real parenting skills to deal with a sick child, said he had noticed the girl was very hot and put a cool cloth on her face, but this had no effect.
He then carried the girl outside into the night air but, frustrated that this also did not work and worried she might drown if placed in a cold bath, he put the baby into the kitchen freezer. She was wearing only an undershirt.
A local doctor said the mother had described her baby as "crying, sobbing and terrified." The child spent several days in hospital to recover from first- and second-degree freezer burns on her head and torso.
Hardy has pleaded not guilty to the charges. The baby's grandmother now has custody of the girl.
Swingers swap sex partners in prudish Singapore
Ed: Quote... "Genuine swingers would want to establish trust -- you can't trust by meeting a person one time, ...then think they can do your wife."
By Wee Sui Lee Fri Nov 24, 6:23 AM ET
SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Every two months, dozens of couples meet in a pub in Singapore, have drinks, mingle, and then decide whether they want to sleep with one another.
In Sydney or Seattle nobody would bat an eyelid, but the couples are part of a thriving underground swinging scene that is an anomaly for a country where oral sex is illegal and Playboy magazine is banned.
There are at least 10 swingers clubs in Singapore, most of them private, some of them online. With more than 6,000 members, the Web-based United SG Swingers is one of the biggest.
"There are a lot more people that are open to the idea. It's so widespread now," said a 42-year-old Singaporean company executive who only wanted to be identified as Jack.
"Swinging is all about sex. It's satisfying the urge to have casual sex and doing it with somebody you're comfortable with," said Jack, who has been swinging for 10 years.
For all their enthusiasm, few swingers tell family and friends about their lifestyle, although the practice is not illegal in Singapore.
"In Singapore, most people will perceive us as perverts," said a 39-year-old publisher who has been swinging for five years. "Look at our government policies, they say: 'Let's open up.' But our policies have always remained very conservative."
Wealthy Singapore, which has consistently ranked near the bottom in a global survey of sexually active nations, has been struggling to shake off its reputation for prudishness.
Friday, it opened Sexpo 2006, the country's second sex exhibition, featuring an array of toys and seminars.
SINGAPORE SWING
At United SG Swingers, people share erotic photographs, exchange personal ads and correspond about the next gathering. It is a close-knit community in which couples recommend good sex partners and criticize those who aren't.
A police spokesman confirmed that swinging is not illegal as long as it is done behind closed doors, is consensual and no money changes hands.
This year, the organizers of United SG Swingers started holding "on premise" parties, where couples can engage in group sex in houses and hotel rooms across Singapore.
At these parties, the bedrooms have a strict clothes-off rule and the "hard swingers" can engage in partner swapping. The "soft swingers" are couples who stand around and watch, or have sex with their own partners in full view of others.
Couples who swing say that seeing their own partners in action keeps their passion burning.
"It's like looking at cake and wanting to eat it," said the main organizer of United SG Swingers, 37-year-old IT specialist Josh, as his 32-year-old wife nodded in agreement.
But some swingers disapprove of these parties, saying they can degenerate into orgies.
"You can't establish pure friendships when there's a large group," said Ishak. "Genuine swingers would want to establish trust -- you can't trust a person just by meeting them one time and then think they can do it with your wife."
A 34-year-old Australian who attends swinging parties told Reuters that Singapore's scene is just evolving.
"It's very innocuous here, it's not like other countries," he said. "Compared to Australia and Europe, it's more discreet and less lively. Singaporeans are pretty reserved in a lot of ways."
10th Anniversary: Diana's Death...Sons remember...
Princes planning Wembley concert for Diana: papers
44 minutes ago
LONDON (Reuters) - Princes William and Harry plan to mark the 10th anniversary of their mother Princess Diana's death with a pop concert at the new Wembley Stadium in London, newspapers reported on Sunday.
The event, to be hosted by the princes, would be held on July 1, which would have been Diana's 46th birthday.
A spokesman for the princes said they were considering a number of events to mark the anniversary but stressed that a final decision had yet to be made.
An announcement would be made in due course, he said.
Diana died in a car crash in Paris on August 31, 1997.
It's a gimmy, withdraw to Kurdistan and fight to the death if anyone objects!
Iran says will help U.S. if it quits Iraq
Sun Nov 26, 9:45 AM ET
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Sunday
Iran was ready to help the United States and Britain in
Iraq but only if they pledged to change their attitude and withdraw their troops.
The remark comes amid growing calls for Washington to engage Iraq's neighbors, Iran and
Syria, to help prevent Iraq plunging into civil war.
A senior U.S. official said this month Washington was "in principle" ready to discuss Iraq with Iran but said the timing of such talks was unclear. Ahmadinejad has previously said he would talk but only if Washington changed its behavior.
"The Iranian nation is ready to help you get out of that swamp (in Iraq) on one condition ... you should pledge to correct your attitude," Ahmadinejad said in a televised speech to a parade of the Basij religious militia.
"Go back and take your forces to behind your borders and serve your own nations," he added.
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani should make a delayed visit to Tehran on Monday to discuss Iraq after a curfew in place since a mass car bombing on Thursday was due to be lifted.
Ahmadinejad regularly condemns the U.S. occupation of Iraq and complains about U.S. bases in the region. Washington accuses Iran of seeking to foment unrest, while Iran blames the violence on the presence of U.S. troops.
The Iranian president also criticizes what he says is a hostile U.S. and British attitude to Iran, particularly over its disputed nuclear programme.
Western countries, including the United States and Britain, accuse Iran of seeking to develop atomic bombs, a charge Iran denies. It says its aim is to generate electricity.
Ahmadinejad urged countries in the region to work together to expel foreign forces from their soil.
"Let us put our hands together and expel enemies who are against humanity from our countries and our sacred lands," he said.
Iran has in the past called for a security pact between Iran and other regional states, but Gulf Arab countries, dominated by Sunni Muslims, have long been suspicious of Shi'ite Muslim Iran's intentions in the region.
WHO made them accessable to the killer? Voters who think Democracy runs on thin air!
Prostitutes fear serial killer in Atlantic City
By Matthew Verrinder 2 hours, 44 minutes ago
ATLANTIC CITY, New Jersey (Reuters) - In Atlantic City, the prostitutes toil not far from this gambling city's famed Boardwalk hoping to turn a trick even though many know a serial killer on the loose has murdered their sister streetwalkers.
The grisly murders of four prostitutes, their shoeless bodies found last week lined up in a drainage ditch behind a strip of sleazy motels, has left many in the trade terrified.
"There is some deranged psycho out there killing people," said Samantha, an Asian transvestite prostitute who said she knew all four victims.
"But some of these girls have pimps they have to make quotas with," she said, adding that the four dead women were, like most streetwalkers, caught in the endless cycle of trading their bodies for drug money.
The transient women had been dumped in the reedy ditch at different times. Two of them -- Kim Raffo, 35, and Tracy Roberts, 23, both strangled -- have been identified. The bodies of the others were too decomposed to identify after at least two weeks and perhaps a month in the water.
On Saturday, Atlantic County Prosecutor Jeffrey Blitz made a public plea for help and released photos of tattoos from one of the unidentified victims -- a bulldog and a Playboy bunny inside a heart.
"Identifying all the victims is crucial to the investigation of these homicides," Blitz said. Authorities declined to say if the murders were being treated as the work of a serial killer.
Samantha and other prostitutes said they knew the unidentified pair, calling them "Lena" and "Puerto Rican Jen."
Many of Atlantic City's streetwalkers claim to know more about the victims than do the detectives, who bounce between the flophouse where two of the victims were staying and the greasy spoon "Papa Joe's." There, owner Joe Boccino is known for feeding the needy and is one of the last to have seen Raffo.
Around Papa Joe's, prostitutes are back at work.
"I haven't been out here in a week," said Jen, a prostitute with scabs on her face who says her drug addiction and four felony convictions, including aggravated assault, prevent her from getting a casino job.
"I can't believe Kim is dead. I had just seen her the night before that. I'm scared to death. This is crazy," she said before disappearing down an alley with a young client.
CHANGING RULES
Naya, a prostitute in knee-high black boots, stood in front of a cash-for-gold shop and says the rules for turning tricks have changed. She no longer gets in cars with "methodical, quiet" men or those who can overpower her, she said.
"It's stupid, but I guess I think I can tell the good guys from the bad guys," she said.
That can be hard in Atlantic City, the location for the famous Monopoly board game, where a stone's throw from the glamour and lights of the Boardwalk casinos is a down-and-out neighborhood of boarded-up row houses, pawn shops, strip clubs and open-air crack deals.
Raffo's estranged husband, Hugh Auslander, roams the neighborhood, trying to dig up clues about his wife's murder. He said their two children are in foster care near Philadelphia and that they had been trying to regain custody of them.
Sitting in a pub on Tennessee Avenue, Auslander showed his and Raffo's Florida marriage certificate. Then he unsuccessfully fought back tears.
"I know whoever this guy is, she must've known him," Auslander said. "I got a feeling this guy is still around."
Bill Southrey, president of the Atlantic City Rescue Mission, said Raffo had stayed there a few days last year and that she had been smoking cocaine, but that she needed a few days "to get her feet under her."
"A year ago she walked through the door and ... you wonder if there was any kind of prevention you could have offered before her life was snuffed out," Southrey said. "Whether she was a prostitute or not, her life was valuable."
Maybe "Short People" jokes are created by "Short People" in order to cope in a "Tall People's World."
Missing woman found dead behind bookcase
Sat Nov 25, 9:52 PM ET
NEW PORT RICHEY, Fla. - A woman's body was found wedged upside-down behind a bookcase in the home she shared with relatives who had spent nearly two weeks looking for her.
A spokesman for the Pasco County Sheriff's Office said Mariesa Weber's death was not suspicious. Family members said they believe she fell over as she tried to adjust the plug of a television behind the bookshelf.
Weber, 38, returned home Oct. 28 and greeted her mother, then wasn't seen again. Her family thought she had been kidnapped and contacted authorities. Family members scoured her room for clues but found nothing, though they did notice a strange smell.
On Nov. 9, Weber's sister went into her bedroom and looked behind a bookcase, where she saw the woman's foot. Using a flashlight the family saw Weber was wedged upside-down behind the unit.
"I'm sleeping in the same house as her for 11 days, looking for her," her mother, Connie Weber, told the St. Petersburg Times. "And she's right in the bedroom."
Both Weber and her sister had previously adjusted the television plug by standing on a bureau next to the shelf and leaning over the top. Her family believes Weber, who was 5-foot-3 and barely 100 pounds, may have fallen headfirst into the space.
"She's a little thing," her mother said. "And the bookcase is 6 feet tall and solid. And she couldn't get out."
The sheriff's office said Weber appeared to have died because she was unable to breathe in the position she was in.
Whom do YOU want to manage the precious Galapagos Islands?
Leftist and pro-U.S. tycoon square off in Ecuador vote
By Patrick Markey 23 minutes ago
QUITO, Ecuador (Reuters) - A leftist reformer vowing to sweep away Ecuador's political old guard and a banana tycoon offering jobs squared off on Sunday in a tight vote to choose the country's eighth president in a decade.
A poll released on Saturday showed Rafael Correa, a former economy minister who calls Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez a friend, had gained a slim margin over rival Alvaro Noboa after trailing for weeks following his first-round loss in October.
The contrast between the two candidates reflects a broader split in Latin America, where the populist Chavez is engaged in a turf war to counter U.S. influence and free-trade policies with his own brand of socialist proposals.
Correa, a charismatic, U.S.-trained economist, marketed himself as an outsider to woo Ecuadoreans frustrated with a traditional political class who many blame for poverty and years of instability in the world's top banana exporter.
"All the figures indicate that we are going to win," said a confident Correa, wearing cream jacket and blue shirt, after voting in Quito. "The popular victory is irreversible, so we have to keep an eye on the ballots."
Correa, 43, rattled Wall Street and Washington with vows to renegotiate foreign debt and oppose a U.S. free trade pact and a local U.S. military base. Noboa, Ecuador's wealthiest man, has promised closer U.S. ties and market-friendly policies.
A Cedatos poll out on Saturday showed support for Correa climbed to 54 percent while backing for Noboa dipped to 46 percent with a 3 percentage point margin of error. But 17 percent of Ecuadoreans were still undecided.
While campaigning for the second round, Correa toned down his aggressive calls to dissolve the discredited congress and take on Ecuador's political elite, which worried many centrist voters looking for more stability. He has been rewarded with a steady rise in the polls.
Noboa, 56, whose family made a fortune from bananas, lured voters with a populist campaign mixing cash handouts, religion and offers of jobs and housing. The tycoon, who hobnobs with the jet set, is on his third run at the presidency.
INSTABILITY, INDECISION
More than nine million Ecuadoreans are required to vote, from the wealthy Quito neighborhoods to remote, Indian villages nestled in the Andes mountains, where many feel they have not benefited from a recent surge in oil wealth.
After 1999 debt default crisis and street protests by Indian leaders earlier this year, voters are debating which candidate offers remedies to the political turmoil that has forced out three presidents in the last 10 years.
"Neither one of them is going to fulfill anything, one offers a lot and the other offers to create problems and instability, which is not what we need," said Armando Fierro, an architect voting in a poor district north of Quito.
Polls close at 5 p.m. (2200 GMT) and electoral authorities said they expect initial results late Sunday evening. But the very tight race and Correa's charges of fraud in the first round have raised concerns of possible post-election protests.
Political analysts say Noboa's Institutional Renewal Party for National Action will manage to forge a majority alliance in congress after his lawmakers won 28 out of 100 seats in October's legislative election.
That could make it difficult for Correa to push through his promised reforms if he wins. Correa has no representatives in congress and an inexperienced political movement.
Ecuador's last elected president, former coup leader and soldier Lucio Gutierrez, was toppled in April last year by street protests and lawmakers who charged him with meddling with the independence of the Supreme Court.
(Additional reporting by Alonso Soto in Quito)
Newer | Latest | Older
Russia, Outer Space and the Profit Motive
By CHRIS CONWAY
Published: November 26, 2006
With a foot jammed into a ladder to hold him steady, Russian astronaut Mikhail V. Tyurin sliced a lightweight golf ball into orbit last week with a one-handed swing during a space walk outside the International Space Station.
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Related
The Basics | Altman's Unfinished Business
The shot some 200 miles above the Earth was a promotion for a Canadian golf club manufacturer, which paid an undisclosed sum to the Federal Space Agency of the Russian Federation in the latest venture by the Russians to subsidize their space program.
In recent years, the Russians have allowed a Kodak banner on their side of the space station, launched a rocket with a Pizza Hut logo, and used its program to promote Pepsi, RadioShack and Lego.
The Russian space agency’s tourism business is booming, too. Since 2002, four tourists have shelled out about $20 million each to ride into space aboard a Russian Soyuz craft. The most recent was Anousheh Ansari, a telecom entrepreneur, in September.
The Russians recently said they had raised the ticket price by $1 million and that all seats were booked for the next two years.
What’s next? Space Adventures Ltd., which has worked with the Russian space agency to send wealthy tourists into orbit, announced this summer that for a mere $15 million (on top of the $20 million or so spent to reach space), a tourist will be able to take an hour-and-a-half space walk.
The company has also partnered with the Russians to send two tourists on a trip around the moon, with a departure sometime in 2010. The price? $100 million. Each.
So with all that money being made on the final frontier, why is it that NASA, with its own funding problems, has not pursued the ventures that the Russians have exploited with entrepreneurial zeal?
“It’s not our charter; it’s not our mandate; it’s not what we do,” said Allard Beutel, a NASA spokesman. “Our job is space exploration and science and R&D.” CHRIS CONWAY
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Updated: Sunday, 26 November 2006 1:27 PM CST
Updated: Sunday, 26 November 2006 1:27 PM CST
Ed: Ignorance and stupidity are often considered criminal in societies with underfunded and restricted educational systems, resulting from ignorance, stupidity, and plain old-fashioned selfishness! but why is it happening in Canada?
Fri Nov 24, 4:35 PM ET
OTTAWA (Reuters) - A Canadian man who could not figure out how to deal with his girlfriend's feverish 10-month-old daughter put the baby into a freezer to cool her down, a local newspaper reported on Friday.
Derrick Hardy faces charges of criminal negligence and assaulting the infant, who was rescued when her mother came home, the Charlottetown Guardian said.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corp. said the mother found the girl crammed into the freezer alongside ice cubes and hamburger meat. Hardy said he had left the door ajar but the mother said it had been closed when she returned.
He told a court in the eastern province of Prince Edward Island on Thursday the child had only been in the freezer for about 40 seconds.
Hardy, 21, who admitted to police that he had no real parenting skills to deal with a sick child, said he had noticed the girl was very hot and put a cool cloth on her face, but this had no effect.
He then carried the girl outside into the night air but, frustrated that this also did not work and worried she might drown if placed in a cold bath, he put the baby into the kitchen freezer. She was wearing only an undershirt.
A local doctor said the mother had described her baby as "crying, sobbing and terrified." The child spent several days in hospital to recover from first- and second-degree freezer burns on her head and torso.
Hardy has pleaded not guilty to the charges. The baby's grandmother now has custody of the girl.
Ed: Quote... "Genuine swingers would want to establish trust -- you can't trust by meeting a person one time, ...then think they can do your wife."
By Wee Sui Lee Fri Nov 24, 6:23 AM ET
SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Every two months, dozens of couples meet in a pub in Singapore, have drinks, mingle, and then decide whether they want to sleep with one another.
In Sydney or Seattle nobody would bat an eyelid, but the couples are part of a thriving underground swinging scene that is an anomaly for a country where oral sex is illegal and Playboy magazine is banned.
There are at least 10 swingers clubs in Singapore, most of them private, some of them online. With more than 6,000 members, the Web-based United SG Swingers is one of the biggest.
"There are a lot more people that are open to the idea. It's so widespread now," said a 42-year-old Singaporean company executive who only wanted to be identified as Jack.
"Swinging is all about sex. It's satisfying the urge to have casual sex and doing it with somebody you're comfortable with," said Jack, who has been swinging for 10 years.
For all their enthusiasm, few swingers tell family and friends about their lifestyle, although the practice is not illegal in Singapore.
"In Singapore, most people will perceive us as perverts," said a 39-year-old publisher who has been swinging for five years. "Look at our government policies, they say: 'Let's open up.' But our policies have always remained very conservative."
Wealthy Singapore, which has consistently ranked near the bottom in a global survey of sexually active nations, has been struggling to shake off its reputation for prudishness.
Friday, it opened Sexpo 2006, the country's second sex exhibition, featuring an array of toys and seminars.
SINGAPORE SWING
At United SG Swingers, people share erotic photographs, exchange personal ads and correspond about the next gathering. It is a close-knit community in which couples recommend good sex partners and criticize those who aren't.
A police spokesman confirmed that swinging is not illegal as long as it is done behind closed doors, is consensual and no money changes hands.
This year, the organizers of United SG Swingers started holding "on premise" parties, where couples can engage in group sex in houses and hotel rooms across Singapore.
At these parties, the bedrooms have a strict clothes-off rule and the "hard swingers" can engage in partner swapping. The "soft swingers" are couples who stand around and watch, or have sex with their own partners in full view of others.
Couples who swing say that seeing their own partners in action keeps their passion burning.
"It's like looking at cake and wanting to eat it," said the main organizer of United SG Swingers, 37-year-old IT specialist Josh, as his 32-year-old wife nodded in agreement.
But some swingers disapprove of these parties, saying they can degenerate into orgies.
"You can't establish pure friendships when there's a large group," said Ishak. "Genuine swingers would want to establish trust -- you can't trust a person just by meeting them one time and then think they can do it with your wife."
A 34-year-old Australian who attends swinging parties told Reuters that Singapore's scene is just evolving.
"It's very innocuous here, it's not like other countries," he said. "Compared to Australia and Europe, it's more discreet and less lively. Singaporeans are pretty reserved in a lot of ways."
Princes planning Wembley concert for Diana: papers
44 minutes ago
LONDON (Reuters) - Princes William and Harry plan to mark the 10th anniversary of their mother Princess Diana's death with a pop concert at the new Wembley Stadium in London, newspapers reported on Sunday.
The event, to be hosted by the princes, would be held on July 1, which would have been Diana's 46th birthday.
A spokesman for the princes said they were considering a number of events to mark the anniversary but stressed that a final decision had yet to be made.
An announcement would be made in due course, he said.
Diana died in a car crash in Paris on August 31, 1997.
Iran says will help U.S. if it quits Iraq
Sun Nov 26, 9:45 AM ET
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Sunday
Iran was ready to help the United States and Britain in
Iraq but only if they pledged to change their attitude and withdraw their troops.
The remark comes amid growing calls for Washington to engage Iraq's neighbors, Iran and
Syria, to help prevent Iraq plunging into civil war.
A senior U.S. official said this month Washington was "in principle" ready to discuss Iraq with Iran but said the timing of such talks was unclear. Ahmadinejad has previously said he would talk but only if Washington changed its behavior.
"The Iranian nation is ready to help you get out of that swamp (in Iraq) on one condition ... you should pledge to correct your attitude," Ahmadinejad said in a televised speech to a parade of the Basij religious militia.
"Go back and take your forces to behind your borders and serve your own nations," he added.
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani should make a delayed visit to Tehran on Monday to discuss Iraq after a curfew in place since a mass car bombing on Thursday was due to be lifted.
Ahmadinejad regularly condemns the U.S. occupation of Iraq and complains about U.S. bases in the region. Washington accuses Iran of seeking to foment unrest, while Iran blames the violence on the presence of U.S. troops.
The Iranian president also criticizes what he says is a hostile U.S. and British attitude to Iran, particularly over its disputed nuclear programme.
Western countries, including the United States and Britain, accuse Iran of seeking to develop atomic bombs, a charge Iran denies. It says its aim is to generate electricity.
Ahmadinejad urged countries in the region to work together to expel foreign forces from their soil.
"Let us put our hands together and expel enemies who are against humanity from our countries and our sacred lands," he said.
Iran has in the past called for a security pact between Iran and other regional states, but Gulf Arab countries, dominated by Sunni Muslims, have long been suspicious of Shi'ite Muslim Iran's intentions in the region.
Prostitutes fear serial killer in Atlantic City
By Matthew Verrinder 2 hours, 44 minutes ago
ATLANTIC CITY, New Jersey (Reuters) - In Atlantic City, the prostitutes toil not far from this gambling city's famed Boardwalk hoping to turn a trick even though many know a serial killer on the loose has murdered their sister streetwalkers.
The grisly murders of four prostitutes, their shoeless bodies found last week lined up in a drainage ditch behind a strip of sleazy motels, has left many in the trade terrified.
"There is some deranged psycho out there killing people," said Samantha, an Asian transvestite prostitute who said she knew all four victims.
"But some of these girls have pimps they have to make quotas with," she said, adding that the four dead women were, like most streetwalkers, caught in the endless cycle of trading their bodies for drug money.
The transient women had been dumped in the reedy ditch at different times. Two of them -- Kim Raffo, 35, and Tracy Roberts, 23, both strangled -- have been identified. The bodies of the others were too decomposed to identify after at least two weeks and perhaps a month in the water.
On Saturday, Atlantic County Prosecutor Jeffrey Blitz made a public plea for help and released photos of tattoos from one of the unidentified victims -- a bulldog and a Playboy bunny inside a heart.
"Identifying all the victims is crucial to the investigation of these homicides," Blitz said. Authorities declined to say if the murders were being treated as the work of a serial killer.
Samantha and other prostitutes said they knew the unidentified pair, calling them "Lena" and "Puerto Rican Jen."
Many of Atlantic City's streetwalkers claim to know more about the victims than do the detectives, who bounce between the flophouse where two of the victims were staying and the greasy spoon "Papa Joe's." There, owner Joe Boccino is known for feeding the needy and is one of the last to have seen Raffo.
Around Papa Joe's, prostitutes are back at work.
"I haven't been out here in a week," said Jen, a prostitute with scabs on her face who says her drug addiction and four felony convictions, including aggravated assault, prevent her from getting a casino job.
"I can't believe Kim is dead. I had just seen her the night before that. I'm scared to death. This is crazy," she said before disappearing down an alley with a young client.
CHANGING RULES
Naya, a prostitute in knee-high black boots, stood in front of a cash-for-gold shop and says the rules for turning tricks have changed. She no longer gets in cars with "methodical, quiet" men or those who can overpower her, she said.
"It's stupid, but I guess I think I can tell the good guys from the bad guys," she said.
That can be hard in Atlantic City, the location for the famous Monopoly board game, where a stone's throw from the glamour and lights of the Boardwalk casinos is a down-and-out neighborhood of boarded-up row houses, pawn shops, strip clubs and open-air crack deals.
Raffo's estranged husband, Hugh Auslander, roams the neighborhood, trying to dig up clues about his wife's murder. He said their two children are in foster care near Philadelphia and that they had been trying to regain custody of them.
Sitting in a pub on Tennessee Avenue, Auslander showed his and Raffo's Florida marriage certificate. Then he unsuccessfully fought back tears.
"I know whoever this guy is, she must've known him," Auslander said. "I got a feeling this guy is still around."
Bill Southrey, president of the Atlantic City Rescue Mission, said Raffo had stayed there a few days last year and that she had been smoking cocaine, but that she needed a few days "to get her feet under her."
"A year ago she walked through the door and ... you wonder if there was any kind of prevention you could have offered before her life was snuffed out," Southrey said. "Whether she was a prostitute or not, her life was valuable."
Missing woman found dead behind bookcase
Sat Nov 25, 9:52 PM ET
NEW PORT RICHEY, Fla. - A woman's body was found wedged upside-down behind a bookcase in the home she shared with relatives who had spent nearly two weeks looking for her.
A spokesman for the Pasco County Sheriff's Office said Mariesa Weber's death was not suspicious. Family members said they believe she fell over as she tried to adjust the plug of a television behind the bookshelf.
Weber, 38, returned home Oct. 28 and greeted her mother, then wasn't seen again. Her family thought she had been kidnapped and contacted authorities. Family members scoured her room for clues but found nothing, though they did notice a strange smell.
On Nov. 9, Weber's sister went into her bedroom and looked behind a bookcase, where she saw the woman's foot. Using a flashlight the family saw Weber was wedged upside-down behind the unit.
"I'm sleeping in the same house as her for 11 days, looking for her," her mother, Connie Weber, told the St. Petersburg Times. "And she's right in the bedroom."
Both Weber and her sister had previously adjusted the television plug by standing on a bureau next to the shelf and leaning over the top. Her family believes Weber, who was 5-foot-3 and barely 100 pounds, may have fallen headfirst into the space.
"She's a little thing," her mother said. "And the bookcase is 6 feet tall and solid. And she couldn't get out."
The sheriff's office said Weber appeared to have died because she was unable to breathe in the position she was in.
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Updated: Sunday, 26 November 2006 12:21 PM CST
Updated: Sunday, 26 November 2006 12:21 PM CST
Leftist and pro-U.S. tycoon square off in Ecuador vote
By Patrick Markey 23 minutes ago
QUITO, Ecuador (Reuters) - A leftist reformer vowing to sweep away Ecuador's political old guard and a banana tycoon offering jobs squared off on Sunday in a tight vote to choose the country's eighth president in a decade.
A poll released on Saturday showed Rafael Correa, a former economy minister who calls Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez a friend, had gained a slim margin over rival Alvaro Noboa after trailing for weeks following his first-round loss in October.
The contrast between the two candidates reflects a broader split in Latin America, where the populist Chavez is engaged in a turf war to counter U.S. influence and free-trade policies with his own brand of socialist proposals.
Correa, a charismatic, U.S.-trained economist, marketed himself as an outsider to woo Ecuadoreans frustrated with a traditional political class who many blame for poverty and years of instability in the world's top banana exporter.
"All the figures indicate that we are going to win," said a confident Correa, wearing cream jacket and blue shirt, after voting in Quito. "The popular victory is irreversible, so we have to keep an eye on the ballots."
Correa, 43, rattled Wall Street and Washington with vows to renegotiate foreign debt and oppose a U.S. free trade pact and a local U.S. military base. Noboa, Ecuador's wealthiest man, has promised closer U.S. ties and market-friendly policies.
A Cedatos poll out on Saturday showed support for Correa climbed to 54 percent while backing for Noboa dipped to 46 percent with a 3 percentage point margin of error. But 17 percent of Ecuadoreans were still undecided.
While campaigning for the second round, Correa toned down his aggressive calls to dissolve the discredited congress and take on Ecuador's political elite, which worried many centrist voters looking for more stability. He has been rewarded with a steady rise in the polls.
Noboa, 56, whose family made a fortune from bananas, lured voters with a populist campaign mixing cash handouts, religion and offers of jobs and housing. The tycoon, who hobnobs with the jet set, is on his third run at the presidency.
INSTABILITY, INDECISION
More than nine million Ecuadoreans are required to vote, from the wealthy Quito neighborhoods to remote, Indian villages nestled in the Andes mountains, where many feel they have not benefited from a recent surge in oil wealth.
After 1999 debt default crisis and street protests by Indian leaders earlier this year, voters are debating which candidate offers remedies to the political turmoil that has forced out three presidents in the last 10 years.
"Neither one of them is going to fulfill anything, one offers a lot and the other offers to create problems and instability, which is not what we need," said Armando Fierro, an architect voting in a poor district north of Quito.
Polls close at 5 p.m. (2200 GMT) and electoral authorities said they expect initial results late Sunday evening. But the very tight race and Correa's charges of fraud in the first round have raised concerns of possible post-election protests.
Political analysts say Noboa's Institutional Renewal Party for National Action will manage to forge a majority alliance in congress after his lawmakers won 28 out of 100 seats in October's legislative election.
That could make it difficult for Correa to push through his promised reforms if he wins. Correa has no representatives in congress and an inexperienced political movement.
Ecuador's last elected president, former coup leader and soldier Lucio Gutierrez, was toppled in April last year by street protests and lawmakers who charged him with meddling with the independence of the Supreme Court.
(Additional reporting by Alonso Soto in Quito)