Deadly tsunami strikes American Samoa
A quake near the Samoas triggers towering waves that leave a growing death toll.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Deadly tsunami strikes American Samoa
Baby-sitting comes under attack
Baby-sitting comes under attack
Michigan is threatening a mom with legal action if she keeps watching her neighbors' kids.
Snake 'Boxing Matches' Draw Tourists in Thailand
Residents of a village in northern Thailand make their living from what they call boxing matches with snakes.Nero's unusual dining room unearthed
Nero's unusual dining room unearthed
The Roman emperor's banquet room pioneered a unique feature some restaurants use today.
Americans' top destinations
Americans' top destinations
Eight of the 10 countries that U.S. tourist like most saw declines from 2007 to last year.
Surprising power of teen popularity
Surprising power of teen popularity
Kashmir girl fights off militants
Rukhsana Kauser said she 'fired endlessly'
A teenage girl says she killed a militant with his own gun after insurgents attacked their home in Indian-administered Kashmir.
Full Story
A teenage girl says she killed a militant with his own gun after insurgents attacked their home in Indian-administered Kashmir.
Full Story
Health Care Hell in America
This is total BULLSHIT!
Because of the real 'death panels' ... the so called "insurance" companies ... denying her, her medical needs a woman must loose her eyesight so her kids might not loose theirs - and I do emphasize MIGHT NOT, because the same 'death panels' that are forcing their mother to loose her eyesight are "in charge" of theirs, too.
We need real health care reform NOW!
Because of the real 'death panels' ... the so called "insurance" companies ... denying her, her medical needs a woman must loose her eyesight so her kids might not loose theirs - and I do emphasize MIGHT NOT, because the same 'death panels' that are forcing their mother to loose her eyesight are "in charge" of theirs, too.
We need real health care reform NOW!
Most overhyped products of recent history
Most overhyped products of recent history
The Segway scooter was supposed to transform personal travel — it didn't happen.
Dominance of the internet is no longer the US’s domain
America’s decade-long control of the internet will end today when it bows to pressure and gives other countries a greater say in how the web is run.The US Department of Commerce is expected to sign an agreement that will give the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann), the body that co-ordinates the internet’s address system and ensures the smooth running of the web, much greater independence and loosen the American grip on it.
The move — which is expected to lead to the creation of a “G12 for internet governance” that will review and contribute to critical areas, such as web security — marks the “privatisation” of internet management and comes before the release of a flood of new web addresses early next year.
America’s grip on internet oversight dates back to Arpanet, the military network that was the forerunner to the modern internet. In 1998, while retaining control, the US Government delegated some of its authority to Icann, a not-for-profit California-based body.
Bodies including the European Commission have lobbied for a change in the system, which they say is unfair and outdated. Viviane Reding, the European Information Commissioner, has said that it was “not defendable that the government department of only one country has oversight of an internet function which is used by hundreds of millions of people in countries all over the world”.
The European Commission says that day-to-day management of the web should be left to Icann, but it has demanded the creation of a panel including representatives from North and South America, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia, which would discuss and recommend policies.
Other countries, such as China and Russia, have pointed out that the next billion web-users are expected to be drawn mainly from the developing world.
The recent debacle over giving adult websites their own domain is among examples cited by critics of the unfair dominance of American authorities over the web.
While supporters of the idea argued that the cyber adultentertainment industry could be better regulated if the websites were kept within their own domain by moving from .com or .co.uk to addresses ending in .xxx, the Icann board rejected it.
“It was the US Bible Belt deciding on issues of public morality on the net,” one critic said.
The loosening of US control is the latest in a series of steps to liberalise web management. Last year Icann announced new rules that would enable anyone to apply for any “top-level” name at the end of a web address and allow brands to be turned into web addresses. Names already requested include .Berlin .eco and .green.
The United States will not sever its links with Icann. Last week Rod Beckstrom,[pictured] head of Icann, told Congress that it would seek to maintain a “long-term formal relationship with the United States Government”.
How to stay slim without the gym
How to stay slim without the gym
Most French women don't run endless miles on the treadmill yet still manage to stay trim.
Birthers = Idiots
More from the "Idiots Are Us" People (and I use the term people loosely)
Infomercial reignites 'birther' controversy
The group that made waves questioning the president's birthplace is back with a new TV pitch.
Giant diamond unearthed in South Africa
Giant diamond unearthed in South Africa
Its size isn't the only thing that makes this newly discovered white diamond both rare and valuable.
Arizona congressman calls Obama an 'enemy of humanity'
A repugican congressman who called President Barack Obama an "enemy of humanity" said Tuesday through a spokeswoman that he should have made clear that he was referring to the president's policies related to abortion.
Yeah, right, that is exactly what he meant.
Arizona congressman calls Obama an 'enemy of humanity'
When are we going to put these dangerous wing-nuts behind bars where they belong?!
Yeah, right, that is exactly what he meant.
Arizona congressman calls Obama an 'enemy of humanity'
When are we going to put these dangerous wing-nuts behind bars where they belong?!
Toyota orders its largest U.S. recall
Toyota orders its largest U.S. recall
The automaker is recalling 3.8 million cars to replace floor mats that could cause a crash.
Most workers live paycheck to paycheck
Most workers live paycheck to paycheck
Even some people earning six-figure salaries worry about making ends meet.
Craigslist goes down
If you were trying to search for apartments, free stuff, a job, or a pair of Red Sox tickets, you may have had a hard time finding them this afternoon.That’s because Craigslist, the Internet classified site, went down this afternoon for a few hours – and for some areas of the country the site is still struggling to load.
A bunch of Tweets began circulating the Internet this afternoon asking if the site was down and if others were experiencing Craiglist withdrawal.
ceseco: Not sure if I’m the only one but looks like CraigsList is down down down… that bytes..
JaysonElliot Both CraigsList.org and AmericanExpress.com are down - and it’s not just me. What’s going on today?
friedoxygen Craigslist is down. I have two jobs that require this site to function. What do I do now?
What now?
It looks like the site is now loading in certain areas (Western Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Indiana worked around 3:45 pm EST, but The UK and the Caribbean didn’t load).
Last week, Google News shutdown. Gmail Contacts went berserk. And earlier this month, Gmail shut down for a few hours after a server error.
How a tiny bug slew T. rex
Could an oral hygienist have extended the life of many a Tyrannosaurus rex'?How a tiny bug slew T. rex
Another Wing Nut Liar (as if there are any other kind)
James O'Keefe, the wing-nut who made those idiotic but widely-hyped videos posing as a pimp at Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) offices, has always maintained he is "absolutely independent" and funded his 'investigative films' himself.
That, of course, was a lie, a revelation which is hardly surprising.
That, of course, was a lie, a revelation which is hardly surprising.
Wheel crate driver loses ride after speeding
A biker has been banned by police after converting a beer crate into a mini quad bike.The micro machine was given its last orders after Matthias Krankl tried to outrun cops in Maulburg, Germany.
"It has a tiny one cylinder engine but somehow he managed to break the speed limit," said one officer.
"It wasn't legal so we had to confiscate it but it looked like a lot of fun and would certainly make drink driving more risky," they added.
Shrub officials face liability for terror policies
Former Attorney General John Ashcroft and one of his hardline lieutenants face being held personally liable for alleged violations of individuals' rights in the aggressive aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attacks.
Full Story
Full Story
You Don't Love Me
The Allman Brothers Band on The Late Show with David Letterman singing You Don't Love Me
Man asks to be deported, can't afford U.S.
Now here is something you won't see everyday (that is until the repugicans screwed the world's economy up the whazoo).
Police in Framingham, Massachusetts, say an illegal immigrant from Guatemala entered a police station, told officers he had stolen another man's identity and asked to be deported because he could no longer make ends meet in America.
Taiwan teen chops off dad's hands
A 17-year-old Taiwanese boy has been arrested for chopping off his father's hands, allegedly to avenge years of physical abuse, a police official said.
Chia Obama back after presidential nod
Ya gotta luv it - a man with a sense of humor is back in the White House.
After sitting in a warehouse for half a year, the Chia Obama is available again.
Chia Obama back after presidential nod
After sitting in a warehouse for half a year, the Chia Obama is available again.
Chia Obama back after presidential nod
Adolf Hitler alive: weird conspiracy theories
Adolf Hitler: alive and well and living on the Moon?
And now for a view from Science:
In countless biographies of Adolf Hitler the story of his final hours is recounted in the traditional version: committing suicide with Eva Braun, he took a cyanide pill and then shot himself on 30 April 1945, as the Russians bombarded Berlin.Some historians expressed doubt that the Führer had shot himself, speculating that accounts of Hitler's death had been embellished to present his suicide in a suitably heroic light. But a fragment of skull, complete with bullet hole, which was taken from the bunker by the Russians and displayed in Moscow in 2000, appeared to settle the argument.
Until now. In the wake of new revelations, the histories of Hitler's death may need to be rewritten – and left open-ended. American researchers claim to have demonstrated that the skull fragment, secretly preserved for decades by Soviet intelligence, belonged to a woman under 40, whose identity is unknown. DNA analyses performed on the bone, now held by the Russian State Archive in Moscow, have been processed at the genetics lab of the University of Connecticut. The results, broadcast in the US by a History Channel documentary, Hitler's Escape, astonished scientists.
According to Connecticut archaeologist and bone specialist Nick Bellantoni, it was clear from the outset that something was amiss. "The bone seemed very thin; male bone tends to be more robust," he said. "And the sutures where the skull plates come together seemed to correspond to someone under 40." In April 1945 Hitler turned 56.
Bellantoni had flown to Moscow to inspect the gruesome Hitler trophies at the State Archive, which included the skull fragment as well as bloodstains from the bunker sofa on which Hitler and Braun were believed to have committed suicide. He was allowed only one hour with the Hitler trove, during which time he applied cotton swabs and took DNA samples. "I had the reference photos the Soviets took of the sofa in 1945 and I was seeing the exact same stains on the fragments of wood and fabric in front of me, so I knew I was working with the real thing."
The samples were then flown back to Connecticut. At the university's centre for applied genetics, Linda Strausbaugh closed her lab for three days to work exclusively on the Hitler project. "We used the same routines and controls that would have been used in a crime lab," she said. To her surprise, a small amount of viable DNA was extracted. She then replicated this through a process known as molecular copying to provide enough material for analysis. "We were very lucky to get a reading, despite the limited amount of genetic information," she said.
The result was extraordinary. According to witnesses, the bodies of Hitler and Braun had been wrapped in blankets and carried to the garden just outside the Berlin bunker, placed in a bomb crater, doused with petrol and set ablaze.
But the skull fragment the Russians dug up outside the Führerbunker in 1946 could never have belonged to Hitler. The skull DNA was incontestably female. The only positive physical proof that Hitler had shot himself had suddenly been rendered worthless. The result is a mystery reopened and, for conspiracy theorists the tantalizing possibility that Hitler did not die in the bunker.
For decades after the war the fate of Hitler's corpse was shrouded in secrecy. No picture or film was made public. As the Soviet Army secured control of Berlin in May 1945, Russian forensic specialists under the command of the counterintelligence unit Smersh (an acronym for "Death to Spies") dug up what was presumed to be the dictator's body outside the bunker and performed a post-mortem examination behind closed doors. A part of the skull was absent, presumably blown away by Hitler's suicide shot, but what remained of his jaw coincided with his dental records, a fact reportedly confirmed when the Russians showed his surviving dental work to the captured assistants of Hitler's dentist. The autopsy also reported that Hitler, as had been rumored, had only one testicle.
But Stalin remained suspicious. In 1946 a second secret mission was dispatched to Berlin. In the same crater from which Hitler's body had been recovered, the new team found what it believed was the missing skull fragment with a bullet exit wound through it. The Russians also took fragments of Hitler's bloodstained sofa.
Even this failed to satisfy Stalin, who clamped a secrecy order on all matters related to Hitler's death. Unknown to the world, Hitler's corpse was interred at a Smersh center in Magdeburg, East Germany. There it remained long after Stalin's death in 1953. Finally, in 1970, the KGB dug up the corpse, cremated it and secretly scattered the ashes in a river. Only the jawbone, the skull fragment and the bloodstained sofa segments were preserved in the deep archives of Soviet intelligence. The bunker was destroyed in 1947 and eventually paved over. Then, in 2000, the Russian State Archive in Moscow staged an exhibition, The Agony of the Third Reich. The skull fragment was displayed, but only photographs of Hitler's jawbone were on view. The head of the archive, Sergei Mironenko, said he had no doubt the skull fragment was authentic. "It is not just some bone we found in the street, but a fragment of a skull that was found in a hole where Hitler's body had been buried," he said.
In the wake of Bellantoni and Strausbaugh's findings, Mironenko's confidence was clearly misplaced. But could the fragment of skull belong to Eva Braun, who died at 33 and was laid alongside her beloved Führer in the same crater? "We know the skull corresponds to a woman between the ages of 20 and 40," said Bellantoni, but he is sceptical about the Braun thesis. "There is no report of Eva Braun having shot herself or having been shot afterward. It could be anyone. Many people were killed around the bunker area."
Sixty-four years later, the world is still in the dark about what really happened in Hitler's bunker on 30 April 1945.
*****
It's been a slow news day.
Horse is shoe in for world record
News that matters
OK, so it is just fun
Deal with it
OK, so it is just fun
Deal with it
Measuring a whopping Ten Feet tall this giant horse is definitely the Mane attraction on his farm.
Full story
Full story
One World Dollar
More bad news for the dollar. The head of the World Bank says the importance of American currency will continue to diminish in relation to the euro and the Chinese renminbi.
"The United States would be mistaken to take for granted the dollar's place as the world's predominant reserve currency," the World Bank president, Robert B. Zoellick, said in a speech at the School for Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins. "Looking forward, there will increasingly be other options to the dollar."
Full Story.
Despite one wing-nut's freakout about one world currency (which by the way already exists and everybody uses it - it's called the American Dollar, but that's not what she in her deluded rant thought ... Oh, well), it appears the 'threat' of just such a senairo as her deluded dreams conjured up aren't likely to occur.
Despite one wing-nut's freakout about one world currency (which by the way already exists and everybody uses it - it's called the American Dollar, but that's not what she in her deluded rant thought ... Oh, well), it appears the 'threat' of just such a senairo as her deluded dreams conjured up aren't likely to occur.
What a long strange trip it's been ...
It's Deja Vu all over again - LSD makes a comeback (in the lab at least).
Nearly 40 years after widespread fear over recreational abuse of LSD and other hallucinogens forced dozens of scientists to abandon their work, researchers at a handful of major institutions - including UCSF and Harvard University - are reigniting studies. Scientists started looking at less controversial drugs, like ecstasy and magic mushrooms, in the late 1990s, but LSD studies only began about a year ago and are still rare.
The study at UCSF, which is being run by a UC Berkeley graduate student, is looking into the mechanisms of LSD and how it works in the brain. The hope is that such research might support further studies into medical applications of LSD - for chronic headaches, for example - or psychiatric uses. [...]
In 1966, the federal government made LSD illegal, and by the early 1970s, research into all psychedelic drugs in humans had come to a halt, although some scientists continued to study the drugs in animals.
U.S. Job Seekers Exceed Openings by Record Ratio
Unemployement Rate for Young People at 52.2%
Job seekers now outnumber openings six to one, the worst ratio since the government began tracking open positions in 2000. According to the Labor Department’s latest numbers, from July, only 2.4 million full-time permanent jobs were open, with 14.5 million people officially unemployed.
U.S. Job Seekers Exceed Openings by Record Ratio
The number of young Americans without a job has exploded to 52.2 percent — a post-World War II high, according to the Labor Dept. — meaning millions of Americans are staring at the likelihood that their lifetime earning potential will be diminished and, combined with the predicted slow economic recovery, their transition into productive members of society could be put on hold for an extended period of time.
*****
Can't find a job? Thank a repugican!
Can't find a job? Thank a repugican!
Why pregnant women can't get a flu shot
Why pregnant women can't get a flu shot
Despite their high-risk status, pregnant women are having a hard time getting vaccinated.
Germy habits you should break
5 germy habits you should break
Touching your eyes introduces all kinds of harmful bacteria and viruses.
Ways to annoy your job interviewer
15 ways to annoy your job interviewer
Hiring managers really do look for these off-putting mannerisms in applicants.
Science News
From BBC-Science:
 | | A three-year survey fails to find a single Chinese paddlefish, one of the largest freshwater fish in the world. |
| Nasa’s Messenger probe will use its third and final fly-by of Mercury to slow itself sufficiently to get into orbit in 2011. | | Coral reefs where lots of different fish species swim are healthier than overfished ones, scientists show. |
Recession's impact on religion
Recession's impact on religion
Fallout from the economic crisis will significantly change religious life in America.
And this is a good thing!
Organized religion was already in trouble before the fall of 2008. Denominations were stagnating or shrinking, and congregations across faith groups were fretting about their finances.
The Great Recession made things better for our nation as far has religious ne'r-do'wells are concerned for it has brought us closer to the ideal of Freedom From Religion and religious interference which is what our founding fathers intended.
The 18th century use of the word "of" in place of "from" has confused the already confused even further in their knee jerk efforts to claim this nation as a 'christian' nation whereas the reality is we are no such thing - never were and never will be -
Daily Almanac
Today is Tuesday, Sept. 29, the 272nd day of 2009.
There are 93 days left in the year.
Today in History, September 29.
There are 93 days left in the year.
Today in History, September 29.
Our Readers
Some of our readers today have been in:
Prague, Hlavni Mesto Praha, Czech Republic
Blackburn, England, United Kingdom
Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
Grenoble, Rhone-Alpes, France
London, England, United Kingdom
Sandvika, Akershus, Norway
Istanbul, Istanbul, Turkey
Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
as well as India, and the United States
Prague, Hlavni Mesto Praha, Czech Republic
Blackburn, England, United Kingdom
Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
Grenoble, Rhone-Alpes, France
London, England, United Kingdom
Sandvika, Akershus, Norway
Istanbul, Istanbul, Turkey
Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
as well as India, and the United States
Daily Horoscope
Today's horoscope says:
Your recent dreams have been vivid and rather entertaining, but do they hold valuable insight into how you can find happiness?
No.
They're just ideas your subconscious is playing with, and nothing more.
Be careful not to read too much into the numbers that keep popping up.
You can play them in the lottery, but don't expect a big win.
Your prosperity is much more likely to come as a result of your hard work right now.
Money still has to be earned.
Drat, there goes the villa on the Riviera.
Your recent dreams have been vivid and rather entertaining, but do they hold valuable insight into how you can find happiness?
No.
They're just ideas your subconscious is playing with, and nothing more.
Be careful not to read too much into the numbers that keep popping up.
You can play them in the lottery, but don't expect a big win.
Your prosperity is much more likely to come as a result of your hard work right now.
Money still has to be earned.
Drat, there goes the villa on the Riviera.
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