Marine biologists were standing watch on Tuesday over a young whale that lost its way in New York harbor and nearly wandered into a narrow waterway notorious for industrial pollution.
The animal, described as a juvenile minke whale about 15 feet long, was cruising around Gowanus Bay, the outlet from the mile-long Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn. It appeared to be in good health and not distressed, said Kim Durham, rescue program director for the Riverhead Foundation for Marine Research and Preservation.
Two Secret Service officers were injured on Tuesday after a gun held by another Secret Service officer accidentally fired inside the White House gate, according to a spokesman, Darrin Blackford.
Their injuries are non-life threatening, the spokesman said.
One officer suffered a shrapnel wound to the face, and the other was wounded in the leg.
They were taken to George Washington Hospital.
Poor George. First he decides he doesn’t want to be the war decider anymore, but no one wants the job. Now, the people who are supposed to be protecting him are accidentally shooting each other…oy.
A Pakistani man whose family says was abducted as part of the U.S.-led war on terror is in custody in Pakistan after 18 months of secret detention, human rights group Amnesty International said.
Khalid Rashid, who vanished after being arrested in South Africa as an illegal alien in 2005, appeared before a federal review board in the Supreme Court building in Islamabad on April 12, Amnesty said in a press release late on Tuesday.
The group said Rashid was still in the custody of Pakistan’s intelligence service as of Monday, although it said authorities reportedly had been ordered to transfer him to a prison and allow him access to his family and medical care.
“Mr. Rashid has already suffered 18 months of secret detention, and it is totally unacceptable for the Pakistan authorities to continue to deny him access to his lawyer, family and medical care,” Erwin Van Der Borght, acting director of Amnesty International’s Africa program, said in a statement.
How many more of them do you think there are? What was it, 1,248 secret flights?
The United Nations Security Council has held its first ever debate on climate change with some members arguing it was not the place for such a discussion.
British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett justified the debate by linking the issue to security.
But Russia and China said that as an international security watchdog, the 15-member council was not the right forum to debate climate change.
Mrs Beckett said an unstable climate could lead to increased world conflict.
why we have laws about wearing seatbelts and observing speed limits, if the lawmakers and enforcers won’t abide by them? Chicago Tribune
The sport-utility vehicle carrying Gov. Jon Corzine was traveling about 91 m.p.h. moments before it crashed, the superintendent of state police said Tuesday.
The governor was critically injured when the vehicle crashed into a guardrail on the Garden State Parkway just north of Atlantic City last week. He apparently was not wearing his seat belt in the front passenger’s seat.
The speed limit along that stretch of the parkway is 65 m.p.h.
The SUV, driven by a state trooper, was in the left lane with its emergency lights flashing when a pickup tried to get out of its way. Instead, it set off a chain reaction that resulted in the crash.
I really think it’s sad when I’m using the governor of the state of New Jersey as an example of why you should (A) always wear your seatbelt, and (B) observe the speed limit.
I can’t even believe there was even consideration of charging the driver of the red pickup in this…look at all the traffic laws Corzine and Co were breaking.
Under some circumstances it IS legal for LEOs to disregard traffic speed limits in some places, and as a working rule they get the benefit of the doubt in any case, so…
Seatbelts? I dunno; I believe a good starting point for the question of why Corzine wouldn’t be wearing his would be to take the twin concepts of “dumber than a box of rocks” and “evolution doesn’t take prisoners” and see where that combination of ideas took me, just as an intellectual experiment.
The Trib story says they’re considering charges against trooper wossisname, presumably the trooper who was driving the GovSUV. The pickup driver wasn’t mentioned by name, nor did there seem to be any suggestion that he actually broke any laws not directly related to the physics of abrupt maneuver in heavy unwieldy vehicles at speed. Those carry their own penalties, obviously, but I don’t think he’s being charged with anything else.
on April 18, 2007 at 5:21 pm
I wouldn’t put observing the speed limit under the same category as wearing safety belts. There can be conditions under which driving considerably faster on an interstate highway than the speed limit is quite reasonable.
Sitting in the front seat of a car moving at 91 mph and not wearing seat belts is completely crazy. I just can’t understand how anyone can do that. I remember when I was in college, I would go through months of not being in a car. When my parents would pick me up to drive me home, I would have to go through a few minutes of adjustment to get used to the idea again of moving at 65 mph in a metal shell.
I think Corzine’s having been in an SUV might have something to do with it. The whole point of SUVs is to give the impression that something that is inherently dangerous is perfectly safe: they are designed to make you feel as if you are sitting in your living room.
The Supreme Court upheld the nationwide ban on a controversial abortion procedure Wednesday, handing abortion opponents the long-awaited victory they expected from a more conservative bench.
The 5-4 ruling said the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act that Congress passed and President Bush signed into law in 2003 does not violate a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion.
[snip]
The decision pitted the court’s conservatives against its liberals, with President Bush’s two appointees, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, siding with the majority.
Thanks NARAL, for doing nothing.
Thanks Joe Lieberman. Thanks Arlen Specter. Thanks Olympia Snowe. Thanks Ken Salazar. Thanks Maria Cantwell. Thanks Dan Akaka. Thanks Jeff Bingaman. Thanks Tom Carper, and an emeritus thanks to Lincoln Chaffee, you fuckwad. Big props to Kent Conrad and Byron Dorgan. Way to go Mary Landrieu. Thanks to the Nelsons and Tim Johnson as well. Blanche Lincoln, way to stick up for women!
What I wish for you is so hideously ugly and personal I had to delete it from this post. But I hope each and everyone of you suffers personally because of this decision.
SYDNEY (AFP)
An Australian scientist called Wednesday for an end to the age-old tradition of cremation, saying the practice contributed to global warming.
Professor Roger Short said people could instead choose to help the environment after death by being buried in a cardboard box under a tree.
[…]
“You can actually do, after your death, an enormous amount of good for the planet,” he said. “The more forests you plant, the better.”
Stephanie Peatling in Sydney
for National Geographic News
Starting in the late 1990s Tasmanian wildlife authorities began receiving unusual reports: Some of the island’s Tasmanian devils were spied with their faces marred by ulcerated sores.
[…]
But what was initially a bit of a scientific curiosity soon became a potential catastrophe. The results of the first investigative survey revealed that tens of thousands of Tasmanian devils had died from a disease now known as Devil Facial Tumor Disease.
[…]
“Mapping and monitoring showed it was across 65 percent of the state,” Scott said. “The maximum population estimate [before the disease struck] was between 130,000 and 150,000. So from that, we believe we’ve lost up to 75,000. This has had a major impact on the devil population.”
MALATYA, Turkey (ABC) April 18 – Attackers slit the throats of three people at a publishing house in eastern Turkey that had been threatened for distributing Bibles and printing books on Christianity.
Interior Minister Abdulkadir Aksu said five suspects, including a man who jumped out of a window to escape capture, were taken into custody over the killings. “Four suspects were detained by police at the crime scene with the murder weapons, the fifth suspect has been hospitalised.”
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan pledged to shed light on the killings which he condemned as ‘brutality’. “There are suspects in custody, but the prosecutor’s office is investigating the incident to reveal at once the real perpetrators,” he said.
The Anatolia news agency said the suspects were young men aged 19 and 20 years of age who were all found to be carrying a letter that read: “We all five are brothers, we are going to our deaths and may not return”.
Malatya Governor Halil Ibrahim Dasoz told the NTV news channel that the victims were found with their hands and feet tied to chairs and their throats slit.
visits the Big Apple: Houston Chronicle
Photo here.
anymore: Reuters
Poor George. First he decides he doesn’t want to be the war decider anymore, but no one wants the job. Now, the people who are supposed to be protecting him are accidentally shooting each other…oy.
Did they mention if Darth was perhaps conducting a training session?
man turns up in Pakistan: Reuters
How many more of them do you think there are? What was it, 1,248 secret flights?
The White House is claiming executive privilege with regard to the RNC emails that COnyers is asking for.
First climate debate divides UN
why we have laws about wearing seatbelts and observing speed limits, if the lawmakers and enforcers won’t abide by them? Chicago Tribune
I really think it’s sad when I’m using the governor of the state of New Jersey as an example of why you should (A) always wear your seatbelt, and (B) observe the speed limit.
I can’t even believe there was even consideration of charging the driver of the red pickup in this…look at all the traffic laws Corzine and Co were breaking.
Under some circumstances it IS legal for LEOs to disregard traffic speed limits in some places, and as a working rule they get the benefit of the doubt in any case, so…
Seatbelts? I dunno; I believe a good starting point for the question of why Corzine wouldn’t be wearing his would be to take the twin concepts of “dumber than a box of rocks” and “evolution doesn’t take prisoners” and see where that combination of ideas took me, just as an intellectual experiment.
The Trib story says they’re considering charges against trooper wossisname, presumably the trooper who was driving the GovSUV. The pickup driver wasn’t mentioned by name, nor did there seem to be any suggestion that he actually broke any laws not directly related to the physics of abrupt maneuver in heavy unwieldy vehicles at speed. Those carry their own penalties, obviously, but I don’t think he’s being charged with anything else.
I wouldn’t put observing the speed limit under the same category as wearing safety belts. There can be conditions under which driving considerably faster on an interstate highway than the speed limit is quite reasonable.
Sitting in the front seat of a car moving at 91 mph and not wearing seat belts is completely crazy. I just can’t understand how anyone can do that. I remember when I was in college, I would go through months of not being in a car. When my parents would pick me up to drive me home, I would have to go through a few minutes of adjustment to get used to the idea again of moving at 65 mph in a metal shell.
I think Corzine’s having been in an SUV might have something to do with it. The whole point of SUVs is to give the impression that something that is inherently dangerous is perfectly safe: they are designed to make you feel as if you are sitting in your living room.
Are we getting immune to these news:
More than 80 dead in Iraq blast
Thanks NARAL
Thanks NARAL, for doing nothing.
Thanks Joe Lieberman. Thanks Arlen Specter. Thanks Olympia Snowe. Thanks Ken Salazar. Thanks Maria Cantwell. Thanks Dan Akaka. Thanks Jeff Bingaman. Thanks Tom Carper, and an emeritus thanks to Lincoln Chaffee, you fuckwad. Big props to Kent Conrad and Byron Dorgan. Way to go Mary Landrieu. Thanks to the Nelsons and Tim Johnson as well. Blanche Lincoln, way to stick up for women!
What I wish for you is so hideously ugly and personal I had to delete it from this post. But I hope each and everyone of you suffers personally because of this decision.
this is getting inane
wonder who financed that insightful study….just curious.
seems that gaia may be getting a bit cranky
first the fishes and the bees, bird flu, west nile decimating bird populations, now this….may be a pattern appearing….ya think?
we’re destroying the planet.
.
MALATYA, Turkey (ABC) April 18 – Attackers slit the throats of three people at a publishing house in eastern Turkey that had been threatened for distributing Bibles and printing books on Christianity.
The murders in Malatya, 650 kilometres east of Ankara, appeared to be the latest attack on minorities in Turkey following the killings of a Roman Catholic priest, Father Andrea Santoro, last year and an ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in January.
Interior Minister Abdulkadir Aksu said five suspects, including a man who jumped out of a window to escape capture, were taken into custody over the killings. “Four suspects were detained by police at the crime scene with the murder weapons, the fifth suspect has been hospitalised.”
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan pledged to shed light on the killings which he condemned as ‘brutality’. “There are suspects in custody, but the prosecutor’s office is investigating the incident to reveal at once the real perpetrators,” he said.
The Anatolia news agency said the suspects were young men aged 19 and 20 years of age who were all found to be carrying a letter that read: “We all five are brothers, we are going to our deaths and may not return”.
Malatya Governor Halil Ibrahim Dasoz told the NTV news channel that the victims were found with their hands and feet tied to chairs and their throats slit.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."