So, let us not be blind to our differences – but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved.
– John F. Kennedy
KUFA, Iraq (Reuters) – A suicide bomber pulled his minivan into a busy market on Tuesday, lured labourers onboard with the promise of jobs and then blew himself up, killing 59 people in one of the bloodiest attacks in Iraq this year.
The blast in the Shi’ite city of Kufa wounded 132 people and sparked clashes between police and angry protesters, dealing a fresh blow to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s efforts to promote national reconciliation and avoid a slide towards civil war.
(snip)
Police at the scene were pelted with rocks by angry crowds, many of whom demanded that militias loyal to radical Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr take over security in Kufa, near the holy city of Najaf, 160 km (100 miles) south of Baghdad.
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – World powers pressed Sudan on Tuesday to accept a United Nations peacekeeping mission in Darfur to replace an ill-equipped African Union force that has been unable to stem the violence that Washington calls genocide.
The United Nations and aid agencies also urged donors at talks in Brussels involving U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the EU, the United States and Sudan to finance the 7,000-strong AU force for a few more months before a U.N. takeover.
Tens of thousands of people have been killed and 2.5 million forced into exile in three years of fighting in lawless Sudan.
(snip)
World powers were set to clash with Sudan’s Foreign Minister Lam Akol, as Foreign Ministry spokesman Jamal Ibrahim reiterated on Monday Sudan’s rejection of a U.N. mission.
The AU had wanted to hand its operation to the United Nations at the end of September but its leaders decided earlier this month to extend the mission until the end of the year because of Sudan’s opposition to any U.N. deployment.
Eight leading aid agencies called on Tuesday for the international community to focus on funding the AU to stop the killings now, rather than discuss the transfer.
The mission only has enough money to run until August and will then need at least 23 million euros (16 million pounds) per month — and more if it has to take on more tasks and prepare for the transition to the U.N., EU officials said.
Washington, D.C. (November 8, 2005) — Although armed conflict in Darfur continues to leave millions of people homeless, vulnerable to violence, and susceptible to potentially life-threatening diseases, a report released today by the Brookings Institution-University of Bern Project on Internal Displacement says that, contrary to popular belief, African Union (AU) peacekeeping troops have made a difference in the region.
According to the report, their presence has deterred the rape of women, reduced the recruitment of children into armed forces, protected humanitarian corridors and aid convoys, reduced the looting of animals belonging to Arab nomads, and helped displaced persons who returned to their homes. However, the report also finds many shortcomings and offers detailed recommendations to deal with the deteriorating situation in Darfur, including an increase in AU troop strength to at least 20,000.
(more)
Katherine Harris has taken back $100,000 of the $3.5 million she gave her campaign for Senate. The reason: she’s finishing renovating her home in Washington, D.C…
…The announcement comes the same week Harris lost much of her core campaign staff for the second time since getting in the race last summer. Her campaign manager, Glenn Hodas, resigned after three months on the job, saying Harris was uncontrollable.
Hodas said Harris “hasn’t kept any of her promises,” about her behavior, including those “not to have tantrums, not to berate staff, not to micromanage and nitpick, and not to get flustered on inconsequential details,” the Palm Beach Post reported.
Seems her strange turn has continued unabated. But wait till you read about her GOP hypocrisy:
Hodas lamented Harris’ recent decision to criticize Sen. Nelson’s acceptance of campaign contributions from Riscorp, an insurance company tied to a massive campaign finance scandal involving Florida politicians in the 1990s. Harris had also received money from Riscorp and her 1994 state senate campaign manager was named as a co-conspirator for attempting to cover-up the source of the money, the Palm Beach Post said.
“We had more to lose on Riscorp than anyone else,” Hodas argued.
The hope is that the vaccine could teach his immune system to recognize nicotine in his bloodstream and keep it from entering his brain. As smoking becomes less pleasurable and less reinforcing, it might be easier for him to combat his cravings. “Once I put the physical part behind me, then I can concentrate on the mental battle,” Darmiento says.
The vaccine, called NicVAX, is far from proven technology. But it has shown promise in early trials even in smokers who had no plans to quit.
In March, the Food and Drug Administration granted NicVAX’s manufacturer, Nabi Biopharmaceuticals of Boca Raton, Fla., a fast-track application to help speed the drug’s review process.
Now nine centers across the U.S., including UCLA, are recruiting smokers for a Phase 2 clinical trial. Initial results of the trial, funded in part by a recent $4.1-million grant to Nabi from the National Institute on Drug Abuse at the National Institutes of Health, are expected in mid-2007.
Some interesting staistics from the same article:
Better quit-smoking therapies are sorely needed to treat today’s smokers, who appear to smoke more heavily and be more addicted than in the past, says Elbert Glover, professor of public and community health at the University of Maryland and head of the Maryland trial. This year, more than 400,000 smokers in the U.S. will die from smoking-related illnesses, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 70% of the 49 million adults and 6 million teenagers who smoke in the U.S. say they would like to quit, and every year about 40% of them try.
I’m waiting for the anti-stupidity vaccine. I hope they force-feed innoculations of the stuff to all Bush administration officials first with giant needles.
With Congress unlikely to agree on a chemical plant security bill this year, Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) offered an amendment to the fiscal 2007 Department of Homeland Security (DHS) appropriation bill that requires the DHS secretary to set interim regulations for chemical plant security until final regulations are enacted under other laws. The appropriation bill, including the Bryd amendment, passed the Senate on July 13. Environmental organizations and representatives from the chemical industry have called the Byrd amendment a stopgap measure. Both communities are prodding Congress to pass risk-based comprehensive legislation.
If you think you’re reading the news, be warned that this story — and any story on the web — will be barely read by anyone 36 hours after it was first posted. That’s the message from a team of statistical physicists who have analyzed how people access information online. Albert-László Barabási of the University of Notre Dame in the US and colleagues in Hungary have calculated that the number of people who read news stories on the web decays with time in a power law, and not exponentially as commonly thought. Most news becomes old hat within a day and a half of being posted — a finding that could help website designers or people trying to understand how information gets transferred in biological cells and social networks. (Ironically, that story was posted July 7 so what does that say about me?)
For Immediate Release: June 29, 2006
Contact: Carol Goldberg (202) 265-7337
10,000 EPA SCIENTISTS PROTEST LIBRARY CLOSURES — Loss of Access to Collections Will Hamper Emergency Response and Research
Washington, DC — In an extraordinary letter of protest, representatives for 10,000 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency scientists are asking Congress to stop the Bush administration from closing the agency’s network of technical research libraries. The EPA scientists, representing more than half of the total agency workforce, contend thousands of scientific studies are being put out of reach, hindering emergency preparedness, anti-pollution enforcement and long-term research, according to the letter released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).
(…)
“The Bush administration apparently decided that it was politically easier to close the libraries than to burn the books, although the end result will be the same,” Ruch added, noting that the EPA Administrator brushed aside an earlier request by the scientist unions to bargain about the library shutdowns internally.
Actually I had, but it’s an issue that deserves all the publicity we can give it, so thanks for bringing it up. The libraries are more than just collections of technical reports. They also:
Perform research and interpret results for EPA scientists and technical staff, EPA enforcement staff (e.g., legal, business and scientific/technical research), and the general public
Distribute information and bibliographic resources to patrons (e.g., through inter-library loan)
Develop current awareness alerts for EPA staff
Access information collections within and outside EPA (e.g., search of EPA and commercial databases)
Train the public to use EPA databases; train EPA staff to use EPA and commercial databases
Develop and maintain library Web pages on EPA’s intranet as well as the public Website
Manage and administer the individual libraries, including the selection, acquisition, and cataloging of EPA reports and guidance documents, scientific and technical journals (print and electronic), and other legal documents.
EPA currently operates a network of 27 libraries operating out of its Washington, D.C. Headquarters and ten regional offices across the country. The size of the cuts will force the Headquarters library and most of the regional libraries to shut their doors and cease operations. Each year, the EPA libraries –
Handle more than 134,000 research requests from its own scientific and enforcement staff;
House and catalog an estimated 50,000 “unique” documents that are available nowhere else; and
Operate public reading rooms and provide the public with access to EPA databases.
Israel expresses deep sorrow over the death of seven Canadian citizens in southern Lebanon and extends its sympathies to the victims’ families.
Israel Foreign Minister Livni spoke yesterday with Foreign Minister MacKay and expressed concern for the safety of Canadian nationals in Lebanon adding that Israel will be ready to assist in the efforts to safely transport Canadian nationals out of Lebanon.
At an emotional news conference in Ahuntsic yesterday, members of the Al-Akhrass family accused Israel of deliberately killing civilians in Lebanon, and criticized Ottawa for siding with Israel and not doing enough to help Lebanese Canadians get out of Lebanon. “I am crying for all the innocents that are dying,” said Maysoun Al-Akhrass, her voice shaking, surrounded by sobbing members of her family at the Centre Islamique Lebanais.
(…)
The young pharmacist, who owned a Jean Coutu franchise on Queen Mary Rd., had brought his young wife, Amira, and his four children to Lebanon in late June to spend time with the children’s grandparents and the rest of the large extended family in Aitaroun, a small village about three kilometres from Israel’s border.
They had intended to stay five weeks. When bombs began to fall around them last week, the family members hid in the basements of their four houses, all close together.
Family members said yesterday that the family had contacted the Canadian embassy in Beirut for help getting out of Lebanon, but had been told to stay put. All four houses were destroyed in the blasts.
In all, 11 members of the Al-Akhrass family are dead, eight of them Canadian citizens. Three other family members, Canadian citizen Ahmed Al-Akhrass (grandfather to the four dead children), Canadian citizen Souda El-Akhras (great-aunt to the children) and Lebanese national Fatima Al-Akhrass (also a great-aunt) were wounded.
Appalling, which means typical behavior for this overgrown adolescent.
It’s wrong on so many levels–shocking disrespect for a head of state, a disgusting attempt to show dominance over a woman, and, well, just ewwwwww. Merkel was obviously creeped out. She’s probably watching nervously, expecting him to pee in the corners to mark his territory.
The tired old adage in our media that Israel must be allowed to do whatever it takes to defend herself, apparently doesn’t extend to its Arab citizens:
As the vulnerability of the village to a repeat of last Thursday’s Katyusha attack was underlined by a volley of rockets on Karmiel three kilometres away, Mrs Ayub said that Hizbollah appeared not “to make a difference between Jews and Arabs. But we all eat from the same plate.”
Najib Sjeer, 63, a former deputy superintendent of schools, echoed the frequent complaints about discrimination against Israel’s Arab citizens by saying there were no warning sirens in the village and no shelters in the schools. While the village had not been caught up in a war since 1948, he added: “There are no public shelters. We have no protection.
“We are a part of Israel but Israel does not see us as part of the country,” he said.link
WASHINGTON, July 18 U.S. Newswire — House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi released the following statement today on news reports that American citizens who are trying to leave Lebanon must agree to repay the U.S. government for the cost of their evacuation:
“The United States government has an obligation to get thousands of its citizens out of harm’s way in Lebanon quickly and safely. That means making it clear to the combatants that we will not tolerate any interference with our evacuation activities.
“The immediate risk to American lives also means this is no time for quibbling over payment for evacuation. Whatever resources are needed to assist Americans in danger in Lebanon must be provided. Americans should not be held hostage by a requirement to sign an agreement to repay transportation costs before evacuation. A nation that can provide more than $300 billion for a war in Iraq can provide the money to get its people out of Lebanon.
“I call upon the President to remove one worry from the minds of stranded American citizens in Lebanon and their families back home by declaring immediately that their country will bear the costs of bringing them to safety.”
It is neverending.
Suicide bomber in Iraq’s Kufa kills 59
World powers press Sudan on Darfur
The articel doesn’t say, but has the AU force been able to accomplish anything thus far?
Hi CG,
I am a sceptic, but the Brookings Institution had this to say last November:
from CBS News
Seems her strange turn has continued unabated. But wait till you read about her GOP hypocrisy:
Classic.
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well at least the keyboard on my desktop is working. It’s pretty gross and dirty though, and the keys are HUGE.
currently under investigation: LA Times
Some interesting staistics from the same article:
I’m waiting for the anti-stupidity vaccine. I hope they force-feed innoculations of the stuff to all Bush administration officials first with giant needles.
I like that…and how about we just vaccinate the US population with that anti-stupidity vaccine, so people like Bush aren’t ever (s)elected again.
New concerns have been expressed about leakage of carbon dioxide stored underground in dissolved gaseous form to fight global warming. The resulting acid formed reacts with carbonate rocks and may create new routes for escape to the surface.
Space roundup: The space shuttle Discovery touched down safely at the Kennedy Space Center after a 13-day mission, and the Genesis I prototype inflatable spacecraft continues to operate with no significant technical or mechanical problems and is transmitting video images to mission controllers, Bigelow Aerospace announced Monday. At the Russian spaceport, launch of a European weather satellite was delayed, and South Korea plans to launch an environmental monitoring satellite (or that’s what they say they are…) in a few weeks.
A long-awaited report by the United Nations shows the need for an international moratorium on bottom-trawling and other destructive fishing practices that damage deep sea life.
Many countries — including India, China and Malaysia — still produce and sell consumer paints containing lead, and health experts are calling for a worldwide ban. Low-level lead poisoning from paint can damage the nervous system, especially in children, lowering IQ and increasing the tendency to violence. (that last link is an eye opener!)
With Congress unlikely to agree on a chemical plant security bill this year, Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) offered an amendment to the fiscal 2007 Department of Homeland Security (DHS) appropriation bill that requires the DHS secretary to set interim regulations for chemical plant security until final regulations are enacted under other laws. The appropriation bill, including the Bryd amendment, passed the Senate on July 13. Environmental organizations and representatives from the chemical industry have called the Byrd amendment a stopgap measure. Both communities are prodding Congress to pass risk-based comprehensive legislation.
Global warming could lead to the destruction of more than half the mangrove wetlands of some Pacific islands, wiping out or reducing marine breeding grounds that support multi-million dollar fisheries, a UN report says. The worst hit-islands would be American Samoa, Fiji, Tuvalu and the Federated States of Micronesia.
If you think you’re reading the news, be warned that this story — and any story on the web — will be barely read by anyone 36 hours after it was first posted. That’s the message from a team of statistical physicists who have analyzed how people access information online. Albert-László Barabási of the University of Notre Dame in the US and colleagues in Hungary have calculated that the number of people who read news stories on the web decays with time in a power law, and not exponentially as commonly thought. Most news becomes old hat within a day and a half of being posted — a finding that could help website designers or people trying to understand how information gets transferred in biological cells and social networks. (Ironically, that story was posted July 7 so what does that say about me?)
Have you heard about this:
10,000 EPA SCIENTISTS PROTEST LIBRARY CLOSURES
Actually I had, but it’s an issue that deserves all the publicity we can give it, so thanks for bringing it up. The libraries are more than just collections of technical reports. They also:
More information on the issue here, including action items. More information:
When I saw the part about bottom trawling, I thought for sure that Republicans would be involved in what, for them, is a perennial pursuit.
Go sign the petition against conservative hate speech at Media Matters.
Thanks for pointing that out!
Israel expresses deep sorrow over the death of seven Canadian citizens in Southern Lebanon
‘I’m crying for the innocents’
this one?
Where the heck was his babysitter on this trip?
Appalling, which means typical behavior for this overgrown adolescent.
It’s wrong on so many levels–shocking disrespect for a head of state, a disgusting attempt to show dominance over a woman, and, well, just ewwwwww. Merkel was obviously creeped out. She’s probably watching nervously, expecting him to pee in the corners to mark his territory.
The tired old adage in our media that Israel must be allowed to do whatever it takes to defend herself, apparently doesn’t extend to its Arab citizens:
US Gov’t charging stranded Americans in Lebanon for their rescue: