Thursday News Bucket

24 Comments

1. 

   CabinGirl on March 30, 2006 at 7:36 am

   With our tax dollars:  Insight

   The Bush administration, amid record budget deficits, has been spending huge amounts on advertising and public relations contracts to counter a hostile media environment.

   The administration spent $1.62 billion on advertising and public relations contracts over two and a half years. Most of the money was spent by the Defense Department amid its efforts to recruit soldiers for the war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

   “The extent of the Bush administration’s propaganda effort is unprecedented and disturbing,” said Rep. George Miller, California Democrat.

   And this was from a sister publication of the Washington Times…

   • 

     Nag on March 30, 2006 at 9:25 am

     So that means that we taxpayers are paying to have ourselves propagandized. (is that a word?)

     Actually, we could also say that we are paying to have ourselves spied on, listened to, and no doubt dossiered and categorized.

     Masochistic lot, we taxpayers. 😉

     • 

       Knoxville Progressive on March 30, 2006 at 9:59 am

       So that means that we taxpayers are paying to have ourselves propagandized.

       Every day, in little ways, we keep discovering new parallels between our present circumstances and life in the USSR…

       • 

         Nag on March 30, 2006 at 10:02 am

         So true. sigh.

2. 

   CabinGirl on March 30, 2006 at 7:46 am

   From the WTF department: CNN

   President Bush said Wednesday that Saddam Hussein, not continued U.S. involvement in Iraq, is responsible for ongoing sectarian violence that is threatening the formation of a democratic government.

   Buh-buh-but I thought Saddam had been removed from power…
   I’m so confused.

   • 

     AP on March 30, 2006 at 9:57 am

     …or is the evil chimperor turning into George Hamilton? Which is to say–he was looking mighty orange.

     Perhaps that’s what happened to his last 10 brain cells…

3. 

   CabinGirl on March 30, 2006 at 7:53 am

   California Condors are nesting in Big Sur: AP/Yahoo

   For the first time in more than 100 years, California condors were spotted nesting in the northern part of the state, scientists said.

   The condor couple was found Monday displaying typical nesting behavior inside a hollowed-out redwood tree in Big Sur, a mountainous coastal region south of Monterey, the Ventana Wildlife Society said Tuesday.

   “For the past 10 years when this sort of thing came up, it turned out to be just in my dreams,” Kelly Sorenson, the group’s executive director. “Now it is a reality.”

   • 

     Militarytracy on March 30, 2006 at 12:31 pm

     with earth has just about expired.

     • 

       CabinGirl on March 30, 2006 at 12:35 pm

       I see you found your snark this morning…

   • 

     Arcturus on March 30, 2006 at 1:35 pm

     What fantastic news! It seems only a little while ago (probably 20 years!) that it looked there was no chance whatsoever that the few breeding pairs would ever successfully knock a fledgling out of a nest. I was aware some condors had been released in the Santa Lucias int he Santa Brabara backcountry, but having them range this far north is significant.

     I did my first backpacking trip in the 70’s into Sykes Hot Springs along the Big Sur river in the Ventana Wilderness. Fantastic country!

4. 

   Oui on March 30, 2006 at 8:20 am

   .

   WASHINGTON (CNN) — American hostage Jill Carroll, the freelance journalist who was kidnapped in Baghdad in January, has been released unharmed, U.S. law enforcement officials and The Christian Science Monitor said Thursday.

   
   E&P - Two Months After Abduction:
Little News, But Hope Remains    

   My diary :: BREAKING :: Jill Carroll Released Unharmed

   “But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.”

   ▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY

   • 

     Oui on March 30, 2006 at 8:38 am

     .
     Link to frontpage StevenD’s diary ::

     Good News From Iraq! Jill Carroll Freed ◊ by Steven D

     And that is very good news for a change:

     I’ve deleted my good news diary!

     “But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.”

     ▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY

     • 

       CabinGirl on March 30, 2006 at 8:43 am

       Thanks for posting that here, Oui…I was hoping you would when I saw your diary this morning.  It’s nice to have some good news!

       • 

         idredit on March 30, 2006 at 6:42 pm

         Did anyone catch Imus  on Caroll’s release this morning? Just vile.

         Thinkprogress provides the link, includes the video

         Imus Executive Producer: Carroll is “The Kind of Woman Who Would Wear One of Those Suicide Vests, Sneak Into the Green Zone”
         .

         We’re spring cleaning the barns up here in VT. Perhaps we should get in the pickup and head down to Imus’ studios. You think the Caroll family will get an apology?

5. 

   boran2 on March 30, 2006 at 9:06 am

   Down with Monsanto:

   ENS Link

   County in Maine Votes to Ban GMOs
   Waldo County town votes to ban GMOs
   Residents have voted to include a ban of genetically
   March 28, 2006
   http://www.eco-farm.org/

   MONTVILLE, Maine – Residents have voted to include a ban of genetically engineered seeds in the town’s land use ordinances.

   At their annual town meeting on Saturday, residents gave overwhelming approval to a resolution that declared that the town would commit to banning genetically modified organisms, or GMO’s, and develop land-use ordinances to support the policy. The policy will be included in the town’s comprehensive plan.

6. 

   olivia on March 30, 2006 at 9:19 am

   Bush will find soul mate in Canada’s Harper:

   President Bush arrives in Cancún today for a two-day summit with Mexican President Vicente Fox and new conservative Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, a political soul mate who is bent on improving his country’s frosty relations with Washington.

   (…)

   Harper, a 46-year-old economist, rose to Canada’s highest office by talking about his religious faith, vowing to cut taxes and end government corruption and promising to reconsider a same-sex marriage law that Canada’s Parliament approved last June — all themes that Bush campaigned on in 2000 and 2004.

   (…)

   “If George Bush can’t get along with Stephen Harper, he can’t get along with any world leader,” said David Taras, a political science professor at the University of Calgary. “They’re ideological cousins, if not twins.“

   (…)

   “That was to show the cavalry is back in town, that they’re not going to be anti-American,” he said. “Harper, like Bush, has a black-and-white, good-and-evil view of the world — they’re cut from the same cloth.”

   • 

     CabinGirl on March 30, 2006 at 9:25 am

     that’s why Bush has Speedos on his mind?

     • 

       olivia on March 30, 2006 at 9:33 am

       Digusting mental image CG!

7. 

   Nag on March 30, 2006 at 9:52 am

   link

   
   Iran To Stage Massive Gulf Military Maneuver
   Thousands of Iranian troops will on Friday start a week-long military maneuver in the Gulf to ready armed forces for warding off “threats”, a senior commander announced on state television.

   [snip]

   In addition, the spokesman of the maneuvers, Rear Admiral Mohammad Ebrahim Dehghan told state television that the strait of Hormouz will be one of the focal points of the exercise.

   “Some 80 percent of the Persian Gulf’s oil is shipped out of this strait over which Iran has dominant and accurate control,” he said.

   “If the enemy wants to make the area insecure, he should be rest assured that he will also suffer from the insecurity, since we know the location of their vessels,” he added.

   also, there’s this link

   Iranian commander warns against threats to Iran nuclear sites

   Tehran – A senior Iranian military commander on Wednesday warned that any military threats against Iran’s nuclear sites could endanger the security of the Persian Gulf and hence global oil export.

   [snip]

   Iran has several times warned that military attacks against its nuclear sites would have grave consequences, including a global oil crisis.

   There have also been several indications that Iran might block the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf which is a vital gateway for global oil export.

   ‘We are not after confrontation, are no threat to any country and follow a policy of detente but will not hesitate to defend our country if threatened by warmongers,’ the commander said …

   Juan Cole says : “The mouth of the Persian Gulf is so narrow that a single sunken supertanker would effectively block it, provoking an oil crisis.

   The Iranians can deliver on their threats.

8. 

   Knoxville Progressive on March 30, 2006 at 9:55 am

   Here’s an eye-opener:  A new study of melted rock ejected far from the Yucatan’s Chicxulub impact crater bolsters the idea that the famed impact was too early to have caused the mass extinction that killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.  A careful geochemical fingerprinting of glass spherules found in multiple layers of sediments from northeast Mexico, Texas, Guatemala, Belize, and Haiti all point back to Chicxulub as their source. But the analysis places the impact at about 300,000 years before the infamous extinctions marking the boundary between the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods, a.k.a. the K-T boundary.  The elevated levels of the metal iridium, believed to be associated with incoming material from space, are still associated with the K-T boundary in this new, more detailed analysis, however.  This may be due to the solar system passing through a thick cloud of cosmic dust in its orbit through the galaxy at the time.  It may also mean that there’s another, as-yet undiscovered crater associated with the K-T boundary, which would make sense of the fact that the levels of iridium are higher in places like Denmark than in Latin America.  Some have proposed that the Chicxulub impact may still have killed off the ammonites, sea creatures similar to the chambered nautilus, but it appears it did not cause a “nuclear winter” as creatures like crocodiles made it through the Chicxulub impact OK.  So even major impacts may not always be totally catastrophic…

   Oxygen depletion in the world’s oceans, primarily caused by agricultural run-off and pollution, could spark the development of far more male fish than female, thereby threatening some species with extinction, according to a study published today on the Web site of the American Chemical Society journal, Environmental Science & Technology.  Although some hypoxic areas — dead zones — develop naturally, scientific evidence suggests in many coastal areas and inland waters, hypoxia is primarily caused by agricultural run-off (particularly fertilizers) and discharge of domestic and industrial wastewaters.  Dead zones are developing along the coasts of the major continents, and they are spreading over larger areas of the sea floor, Wu says. The United Nations Environmental Programme estimates nearly 150 permanent and recurring dead zones exist worldwide, including 43 in U.S. coastal waters.  In the Gulf of Mexico, for instance, a dead zone the size of New Jersey, some 7,000 square miles, develops each summer. Other affected areas of the United States include coastal Florida and California, the Chesapeake Bay and Long Island Sound.

   Cornell University astronomers report finding four small, embedded moonlets among propeller-shaped disturbances in Saturn’s A ring – a finding that suggests the planet’s ring system could harbor millions more such objects.  The discovery marks the first evidence of moonlets that bridge the size gap between Saturn’s larger ring moons Pan and Daphnis (which are several miles each in diameter), and much smaller ice particles that scientists think comprise the bulk of the giant rings.  If scientists confirm the existence of a continuum of particle sizes within Saturn’s rings, it would lend strong support to the hypothesis that Saturn’s rings were formed when another object fragmented by moving too close to the planet, breaking into pieces which were then captured by Saturn’s gravitational pull, rather than leftover debris from a moon that never fully formed.  More Saturn news here and here.

   Researchers in Switzerland report that extreme rains in Europe may grow stronger and more frequent in the near future due to climate change, and have significant effects on the region’s infrastructure and natural systems.  Their analysis shows that Alpine regions and northern European locations above 45 degrees latitude (including such major cities as London, Berlin, and Stockholm) are likely to experience increases in the frequency and strength of fall, winter and springtime extreme precipitation events by the year 2100. They report, for example, that in Scandinavia, unusually strong events that are now expected to occur once per century will occur at approximately 20-40 year intervals.

   Yet another trial of an H5N1 bird flu vaccine in humans has ended in disappointment, with only high doses giving a good immune response.

   A year-long study has failed to explain why 36 whales stranded themselves along the North Carolina coast in January 2005. At the time the mass stranding attracted much media attention because of possible links to military sonar.  But researchers were unable to pinpoint a single cause for the strandings, which involved three species overa two day period.   Aleta Hohn of the National Marine Fisheries Service said “It’s possible that a couple of sick animals led others to the beach.” Local ocean conditions may have contributed to the stranding.  Hohn says the main problem is that scientists lack a lot of basic information on whale behaviour, strandings and sound effects. “We need to learn a lot more than we know now,” he said.

   The U.S. Transportation Department made some of the most far-reaching changes to its fuel economy standards in the 27-year history of the program yesterday. But environmental groups expressed disappointment at the regulations, saying they will only save the equivalent of one month’s worth of gasoline over a 20 year period.

   Funding was a central issue at the eighth Conference of Parties to the Convention on Biodiversity, which ended Wednesday in Curitiba, Brazil.  Developing nations explored alternative options for funding protection of biodiversity, as first-world nations, in particular the US, have failed to meet funding commitments for such projects.  <snark>Oh year, we have a war on terra to fight…</snark&gt

   Truly no-pain glucose testing method is on the way:  Using gold nanoparticles, researchers at the University of Central Florida in Orlando can noninvasively detect low levels of glucose in human tears (which correlates with the levels in blood).  “The detection limit is low enough to detect levels of glucose in healthy persons,” chemistry professor Florencio Hernandez said. “The idea is to use this method to determine glucose concentrations at very early stages. You can actually detect potential diabetic problems before diabetes becomes a problem.”

   Around the world, seagrass beds — shallow-water ecosystems that are important habitats, food sources, and sediment stabilizers — are in decline.  More here.

   Mannopeptimycins, a family of antibiotics recently rediscovered from a fifty-year-old research effort, could give doctors the weapon they’ve been looking for in the fight against antibiotic-resistant infections. The compounds feature a biochemical mechanism that’s distinct from other antibiotics and “a novel cyclic peptide structure.”  [That’s chemist-talk for “Hey, come look at this really cool molecular structure!!”  (It really is, BTW; if you’re a chemist, check it out – it has a neat six-nitrogen-containing ring to wrap around a metal ion. – OK, I’m returning to my nerd cave now…)]

   • 

     olivia on March 30, 2006 at 10:59 am

     Sounds like a fun place to hang out KP. Oh, and seconding CG’s thanks for the news bucket yesterday. 🙂

9. 

   CabinGirl on March 30, 2006 at 12:17 pm

   Thursday’s undercovered news stories from stories in america.

10. 

    Arcturus on March 30, 2006 at 1:18 pm

    The FBI’s paid informant in the terrorism trial of Hamid & Umer Hayat told agents shortly after 9-11 that he had seen Ayman al-Zawahri and Ahmed Mohammed Hamed Ali at the mosque in Lodi in 1999, which earlier news reports indicate spurred the FBI investigation of the small CA town’s muslim community. Zawahri is reputed to be #2 in the al Qaeda hierarchy & both men were wanted at the time for their roles in the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Africa.

    FBI Special Agent Rachel Pifer testified Wednesday that after investigating Khan’s claim, she concluded it “probably was not true.”   {snip}

    Much of the government’s case against the Hayats rests on secretly recorded conversations the pair had with Khan in 2003. Khan wore a concealed recording device while working as an FBI informant.   {snip}

    Two FBI agents wrote, in a report of an interview with Khan on Oct. 17, 2001, that he “could still picture the priest-like al Zawahri standing up in front of the audience (at the Lodi mosque), speaking Urdu, and lecturing about Allah.” That interview was conducted in Khan’s apartment in Bend, Ore.

    The agents stumbled upon Khan, who at the time was managing a Circle K mini mart in Bend, in the course of an unrelated investigation. He was quickly signed up as a paid informant and has since received nearly $230,000 in salary and expenses.

    One of the agents who discovered him, Eric Barnhart, was the defense’s first witness Wednesday, but he testified he doesn’t remember much about his encounters with Khan.

    Under questioning by Umer Hayat’s attorney, Johnny Griffin III, the agent said he doesn’t recall Khan telling him about seeing the two top terrorists.

    Griffin showed the agent the report on the interview, which Barnhart helped prepare, but he said that didn’t refresh his memory.

    Asked if he later told an agent in Sacramento about the Khan interview, Barnhart again testified that he doesn’t remember.

    “Did you advise your superior immediately after the interview?” Griffin asked.

    “I don’t recall, sir,” Barnhart replied. “I don’t recall what importance I attached to it.”

    “Sir, do you consider yourself a competent agent?” a frustrated Griffin then asked.

    “Yes, sir,” the agent said.

    Griffin asked Barnhart if he had been coached by prosecutors not to recall what Khan had told him about al Zawahri. He denied that had occurred.

    When Griffin questioned Pifer, she too could not recall details of her early dealings with Khan.

    Shown a report on her first meeting with Khan in a Sacramento park on Nov. 15, 2001, Pifer said, “I don’t recall, but that’s what I wrote, so that’s what happened.”

    Griffin asked if her poor memory was brought on by prosecutors’ coaching. Pifer answered that prosecutors told her to tell the truth.

    Griffin, a former state and federal prosecutor, said outside of court: “At no time in my entire career have I witnessed such a spectacle as two seasoned FBI agents simultaneously afflicted with an inability to recall significant events.”   link

11. 

    Oui on March 30, 2006 at 2:47 pm

    .

    Taliban Continue Attacks in Afghanistan

    KANDAHAR (ABC/AP) Mar 30, 2006 — Suspected Taliban militants killed a district chief and three of his staff in an ambush in eastern Afghanistan, while in the south rebels killed a police commander and his brother, officials said.

    Separately, a suicide car bomber killed himself and wounded six Afghans in a botched attack on a U.S.-led coalition convoy in Kandahar city, the former Taliban stronghold in the country’s south, police said.

    
    Wreckage of a destroyed vehicle, used as a suicide car bomber against foreign military convoy, rests on the spot with a Canadian armored personnel carrier man in the area in Kandahar, southern Afghanistan. AP Photo/Rahim Faiez

    Today’s violence followed a rare attack a day earlier on a coalition military base in Helmand’s Sangin district, which killed an American and a Canadian soldier and sparked fierce U.S.-led retaliation that left 32 insurgents dead in the bloodiest fighting in months.

    Dawlat Shah district chief Qadeer Khan and three of his staff were killed by Taliban militants firing rockets and rifles at their car as Khan drove home, said Habib Rasool Memawal, deputy governor in the eastern Laghman province.

    The police commander of Musa Qala, a district in the southern Helmand province, and his brother were killed when their vehicle was attacked on the road between Musa Qala and the nearby town of Toughi, said Mullah Amir Akhandzada, Helmand’s deputy governor.

    ≈ Cross-posted from my diary — UK policy cheated local farmers and fueled support for Taliban and al-Qaida insurgents ≈

    “But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.”

    ▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY