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• September 03, 2010
• 2:00

  California to use new type of nationwide school tests

   » ‎ Los Angeles Times - Top News
  Through a federal grant, California will join 43 other states in replacing oft-maligned standardized exams.
  
  With a federal award of $330 million, California and 43 other states joined Thursday to replace the much-maligned year-end English and math standardized tests with new nationwide tests that could better measure student learning and teacher performance.

  
  

  

• 0:40

  How Much Will Digital Records Cost You?- VIDEO

   » ‎ FOXNews.com
  How Much Will Digital Records Cost You?- VIDEO
• 0:40

  Hamas Looms as Spoiler in Peace Talks- Mideast Leaders Begin Talks

   » ‎ FOXNews.com
  Hamas Looms as Spoiler in Peace Talks- Mideast Leaders Begin Talks
• 0:40

  More Explosives Linked to Discovery Gunman- Anti-Abortion Group Confronted by Gunman

   » ‎ FOXNews.com
  More Explosives Linked to Discovery Gunman- Anti-Abortion Group Confronted by Gunman
• 0:40

  Family of Stoning Lawyer Flees Iran

   » ‎ FOXNews.com
  Family of Stoning Lawyer Flees Iran
• 0:40

  Teacher Suspended for Teaching Holocaust

   » ‎ FOXNews.com
  Teacher Suspended for Teaching Holocaust
• 0:40

  Mexican Military Says 25 Killed in Shootout

   » ‎ FOXNews.com
  Mexican Military Says 25 Killed in Shootout
• 0:40

  Hawking Picks Physics Over God in Big Bang

   » ‎ FOXNews.com
  Hawking Picks Physics Over God in Big Bang
• 0:40

  Blair and Bush 'Shoulder to Shoulder'

   » ‎ FOXNews.com
  Blair and Bush 'Shoulder to Shoulder'
• 0:40

  Muslim GI: Koran Says I Can't Fight for U.S.- Gates: Troops in Afghanistan for 'Years'

   » ‎ FOXNews.com
  Muslim GI: Koran Says I Can't Fight for U.S.- Gates: Troops in Afghanistan for 'Years'
• 0:40

  Left-Leaning Media Form Tea Party Tracking Site- OPINION: Liberals Are Losing It

   » ‎ FOXNews.com
  Left-Leaning Media Form Tea Party Tracking Site- OPINION: Liberals Are Losing It
• 0:40

  Candidate Indicted for 'Sex Conduct' With Minor

   » ‎ FOXNews.com
  Candidate Indicted for 'Sex Conduct' With Minor
• 0:40

  Flooding Won't Stop Pakistani Militants- Attacks Target Religious Procession

   » ‎ FOXNews.com
  Flooding Won't Stop Pakistani Militants- Attacks Target Religious Procession
• 0:40

  Treasury Urged to Reject Lawyer Tax Change

   » ‎ FOXNews.com
  Treasury Urged to Reject Lawyer Tax Change
• 0:40

  Indonesian Volcano Spews New Burst of Ash

   » ‎ FOXNews.com
  Indonesian Volcano Spews New Burst of Ash

• 0:19

  Indiana football explodes for 51-17 win over Towson

   » ‎ courier-journal.com.com -
  Ben Chappell has talked throughout preseason camp about just how explosive the Indiana University offense could be. On Thursday night, he backed up his words with action.

• 0:11

  Titans beat Saints, 27-24

   » ‎ Tennessean.com Top News
  Tennessee turns focus to season opener vs. Oakland on Sept. 12
• 0:11

  PHOTOS: Brooks & Dunn wrap up their final tour at Bridgestone Arena

   » ‎ Tennessean.com Top News
  PHOTOS: Brooks & Dunn wrap up their final tour at Bridgestone Arena

• 0:11

  Americas HS runs over Oñate

   » ‎ New & Updated
  LAS CRUCES -- Americas running back Jack Fields went wherever he wanted to on the field, tallying 21 carries for 209 yards and three touchdowns as Americas hammered Oñate, 54-6, at the Field of Dreams Thursday night.

• 0:11

  Judge Blocks Nebraska Ban on Flag Mutilation

   » ‎ FOXNews.com
  Federal judge overturns state's ban on flag mutilation, clearing the way for the Westboro Baptist Church from Kansas to continue trampling on Old Glory when it protests at military funerals
• 0:11

  Hurricane Earl Weakens as Rain Pounds the Outer Banks

   » ‎ FOXNews.com
  URGENT: Earl packs 105 mph winds as it passes over North Carolina's Outer Banks, delivering heavy rain to the state's coast and prompting new tropical storm warnings in New England. | | VIDEO
• Coast Guard Preps for Hurricane Earl
• FULL COVERAGE: Hurricane Earl | VIDEO
• | WEATHER CENTER | TRACKER
• Wind Scale | Following Earl
• LOCAL COVERAGE | UREPORT | VIDEO

0:11

With Cap Off BP Well, Will Mud Plug Hold?

 » ‎ FOXNews.com

Engineers remove temporary cap that stopped oil from gushing into Gulf as a lot will be riding on the stability of a plug that was created when mud and cement were pumped down into the well from the top

Oil Crew Rescued |

Another Gulf Oil Explosion

0:11

Arpaio: Justice Dept. 'Sandbagged' Me

 » ‎ FOXNews.com

Controversial Ariz. sheriff slams the department over lawsuit filed against him claiming he refused to turn over records in an investigation into allegations his office discriminates against Hispanics

• 0:09

  Eric Crawford | IU looks worthy of big screen

   » ‎ courier-journal.com.com -
  I know I'm in Memorial Stadium to cover an Indiana University football game. I know that. There's a game going on right now. Trust me. Indiana is playing a team called Tow Truck. No, wait, Towson. It's midway through the fourth quarter: Indiana 51, Towson 17. (That would be the final score.)

• 0:08

  Montwood Rams edge Trojans in overtime

   » ‎ New & Updated

  Enclosure: [download]

  What a finish. Sophomore quarterback Ebrahim Britton hit Pascual Mendoza with a 22-yard touchdown pass in overtime to lift Montwood to a come-from-behind 34-31 overtime victory against Mayfield on

• 0:04

  Laird’s HR in 13th lifts Tigers

   » ‎ The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment
  MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Gerald Laird hit a solo home run in the 13th inning to lift the Detroit Tigers to a 10-9 victory over the Minnesota Twins on Thursday night. Ryan Raburn added three hits and two RBIs after entering the game in the sixth inning for the injured Miguel Cabrera and Jose Valverde (2-3) pitched [...]
• 0:04

  Laird’s HR in 13th lifts Tigers

   » ‎ The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment
  MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Gerald Laird hit a solo home run in the 13th inning to lift the Detroit Tigers to a 10-9 victory over the Minnesota Twins on Thursday night. Ryan Raburn added three hits and two RBIs after entering the game in the sixth inning for the injured Miguel Cabrera and Jose Valverde (2-3) pitched [...]

• 0:04

  Powell is face of U of L program but not voice of program

   » ‎ courier-journal.com.com -
  As much as University of Louisville football coach Charlie Strong touts Bilal Powell as the face of the program, the extremely shy senior running back would rather let his feet speak for him.

• 0:03

  Japan approves economic sanctions against Iran

   » ‎ The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment
  TOKYO (AP) — Japan approved fresh economic sanctions against Iran on Friday after the United Nations asked Tokyo to tighten restrictions against Tehran over its controversial nuclear enrichment program, an official said. The measures approved by the Cabinet of Prime Minister Naoto Kan include an asset freeze on 88 entities, 15 banks and 24 individuals, trade [...]
• 0:01

  Tigers 10, Twins 9, 13 innings,, BBA

   » ‎ The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment
  E_Inge (7), Rhymes (2), Hardy (8), A.Casilla (3). DP_Detroit 1. LOB_Detroit 15, Minnesota 10. 2B_Inge (26), Avila (10). 3B_A.Jackson (9). HR_C.Wells (1), Jh.Peralta (14), Kelly (5), Raburn (11), Laird (5). SB_Damon (9). S_Laird, Hardy. SF_Valencia, Hardy. WP_Verlander. PB_Avila. Umpires_Home, Dan Bellino; First, Rob Drake; Second, Joe West; Third, Angel Hernandez. T_4:47. A_39,551 (39,504).
• 0:01

  Tigers 10, Twins 9, 13 innings,, BBA

   » ‎ The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment
  E_Inge (7), Rhymes (2), Hardy (8), A.Casilla (3). DP_Detroit 1. LOB_Detroit 15, Minnesota 10. 2B_Inge (26), Avila (10). 3B_A.Jackson (9). HR_C.Wells (1), Jh.Peralta (14), Kelly (5), Raburn (11), Laird (5). SB_Damon (9). S_Laird, Hardy. SF_Valencia, Hardy. WP_Verlander. PB_Avila. Umpires_Home, Dan Bellino; First, Rob Drake; Second, Joe West; Third, Angel Hernandez. T_4:47. A_39,551 (39,504).

• 0:00

  Gangbangers meet the press

   » ‎ chicagotribune.com - News
  Depressingly familiar bit of theater offers usual answers: None
  
  John Kass: If you're of a certain age — meaning if you've graduated from high school — and follow the progressions of the news, you've seen it before: the political theater that comes with violence in Chicago. It offers the usual answers: None

  
  

  

• September 02, 2010
• 23:58

  Rookie QB Hall has big game against ‘Skins scrubs

   » ‎ The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment
  GLENDALE, Ariz. (AP) — With the controversy swirling ahead of him on the Arizona quarterback depth chart, Max Hall wrapped up his preseason with a big night. The undrafted rookie from BYU completed 7 of 9 passes for 126 yards and scored on a 6-yard run in the Cardinals’ 20-10 victory Thursday night over a Washington [...]
• 23:58

  Rookie QB Hall has big game against ‘Skins scrubs

   » ‎ The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment
  GLENDALE, Ariz. (AP) — With the controversy swirling ahead of him on the Arizona quarterback depth chart, Max Hall wrapped up his preseason with a big night. The undrafted rookie from BYU completed 7 of 9 passes for 126 yards and scored on a 6-yard run in the Cardinals’ 20-10 victory Thursday night over a Washington [...]
• 23:57

  Choo drives in 5 to power Indians

   » ‎ The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment
  SEATTLE (AP) — Shin-Soo Choo drove in five runs with a bases-loaded double and a two-run home run to give the Cleveland Indians a 6-3 victory over the Seattle Mariners on Thursday night. Choo, traded to the Indians by Seattle in 2006, hit a 3-1 fastball from Doug Fister (4-11) against the right-center-field wall in the [...]
• 23:57

  Choo drives in 5 to power Indians

   » ‎ The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment
  SEATTLE (AP) — Shin-Soo Choo drove in five runs with a bases-loaded double and a two-run home run to give the Cleveland Indians a 6-3 victory over the Seattle Mariners on Thursday night. Choo, traded to the Indians by Seattle in 2006, hit a 3-1 fastball from Doug Fister (4-11) against the right-center-field wall in the [...]
• 23:52

  Indians 6, Mariners 3, BBA

   » ‎ The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment
  E_J.Nix (12). DP_Cleveland 1. LOB_Cleveland 7, Seattle 4. 2B_Choo (27), I.Suzuki (25). HR_Choo (16), Branyan (21). SB_Crowe (15). CS_I.Suzuki (8). SF_F.Gutierrez. HBP_by Tomlin (A.Moore). PB_A.Moore. Umpires_Home, Mike Winters; First, Hunter Wendelstedt; Second, Brian Runge; Third, Jerry Layne. T_2:37. A_17,269 (47,878).
• 23:52

  Indians 6, Mariners 3, BBA

   » ‎ The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment
  E_J.Nix (12). DP_Cleveland 1. LOB_Cleveland 7, Seattle 4. 2B_Choo (27), I.Suzuki (25). HR_Choo (16), Branyan (21). SB_Crowe (15). CS_I.Suzuki (8). SF_F.Gutierrez. HBP_by Tomlin (A.Moore). PB_A.Moore. Umpires_Home, Mike Winters; First, Hunter Wendelstedt; Second, Brian Runge; Third, Jerry Layne. T_2:37. A_17,269 (47,878).

• 23:50

  Man guilty of posting footage of him sexually assaulting his unconscious girlfriend online

   » ‎ Home | Mail Online
  
  Jonathan Hock was arrested in June 2009 after he set up a webcam and sexually assaulted his girlfriend in her bedroom as she was unconscious from drinking alcohol.

• 23:45

  Forecasters say little late-night Earl worries

   » ‎ RSS feed - channel BNews
  Forecasters say Hurricane Earl has produced little storm surge and only minor flooding in some coastal counties in North Carolina. National Weather Service meteorologist Chris Collins...

• 23:45

  Earl weakens but still powerful as it passes NC

   » ‎ The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment
  BUXTON, N.C. (AP) — The last ferry left for the mainland and coastal residents hunkered down at home as Hurricane Earl closed in with 105 mph winds Friday on North Carolina’s dangerously exposed Outer Banks, the first and perhaps most destructive stop on the storm’s projected journey up the Eastern Seaboard. The hurricane’s squalls began to [...]
• 23:45

  Earl weakens but still powerful as it passes NC

   » ‎ The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment
  BUXTON, N.C. (AP) — The last ferry left for the mainland and coastal residents hunkered down at home as Hurricane Earl closed in with 105 mph winds Friday on North Carolina’s dangerously exposed Outer Banks, the first and perhaps most destructive stop on the storm’s projected journey up the Eastern Seaboard. The hurricane’s squalls began to [...]

• 23:45

  4 shot dead in Southwest Side garage

   » ‎ chicagotribune.com - News

  
  

  

• 23:43

  Coming To America Soon

   » ‎ iOwnTheWorld.com

  This is not freedom of religion. This is infiltration and an act of provocation.

  ht.tammy

• 23:41

  Hurricane Earl now Category 2; N.C. and Va. bracing

   » ‎ Los Angeles Times - Top News
  Hurricane Earl weakened slightly Thursday afternoon, downgrading from a Category 3 to Category 2 storm as of 8 p.m., as it moved toward the Virginia and North Carolina coasts overnight Thursday and into Friday.

  
  

  

• 23:39

  Thousands of trucks stuck in China traffic jam

   » ‎ The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment
  BEIJING (AP) — Thousands of coal trucks were backed up for miles on a northern China highway Friday, the latest in a series of monster jams that have plagued the overloaded road since construction began on a parallel route earlier this summer. Trucks loaded high with coal from Inner Mongolia inched along bumper-to-bumper on the Beijing-Tibet [...]
• 23:39

  Thousands of trucks stuck in China traffic jam

   » ‎ The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment
  BEIJING (AP) — Thousands of coal trucks were backed up for miles on a northern China highway Friday, the latest in a series of monster jams that have plagued the overloaded road since construction began on a parallel route earlier this summer. Trucks loaded high with coal from Inner Mongolia inched along bumper-to-bumper on the Beijing-Tibet [...]

• 23:36

  Oil lingers near $75 in Asia as stock markets gain

   » ‎ RSS feed - channel BNews
  Oil prices lingered near $75 a barrel Friday in Asia, largely holding onto a big gain the day before as investors put a positive spin on U.S. economic reports and Asian stock markets rose.
• 23:36

  Villagers flee as Indonesia volcano erupts again

   » ‎ RSS feed - channel BNews
  SURBAKTI (Reuters) - An Indonesian volcano that lay dormant for 400 years erupted yet on Friday, shooting a mushroomed-shape plume of smoke 3 km (2 miles) into the air and prompting the...

• 23:35

  Oil lingers near $75 in Asia as stock markets gain

   » ‎ The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment
  BANGKOK (AP) — Oil prices lingered near $75 a barrel Friday in Asia, largely holding onto a big gain the day before as investors put a positive spin on U.S. economic reports and Asian stock markets rose. Benchmark oil for October delivery was down 30 cents at $74.72 a barrel at midday Bangkok time in electronic [...]
• 23:34

  Langford doesn’t find missing earring

   » ‎ The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment
  ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) — The search for the 2.5-carat diamond earring lost by Miami’s Kendall Langford came up empty. “I never found it,” Langford said following the Dolphins’ 27-25 loss to the Cowboys on Thursday night. Langford, a defensive end, said he forgot to take his earrings off before practice and lost one during drills Tuesday. Several teammates [...]
• 23:34

  Langford doesn’t find missing earring

   » ‎ The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment
  ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) — The search for the 2.5-carat diamond earring lost by Miami’s Kendall Langford came up empty. “I never found it,” Langford said following the Dolphins’ 27-25 loss to the Cowboys on Thursday night. Langford, a defensive end, said he forgot to take his earrings off before practice and lost one during drills Tuesday. Several teammates [...]

• 23:33

  43 Minute Walk

   » ‎ iOwnTheWorld.com

  From Youtube-

  Human Events reporter Connie Hair did a walk-thru at the Beck rally filming one continuous shot. Starting at the Washington Monument at the back of the crowd through the WWII Memorial down the side of the reflecting pool to the packed overflow field to the Korean War Memorial and over to behind the Lincoln Memorial rally site looking down the Mall and around to the other side.

  The video includes footage of the massive crowds in the shade under the trees that you can’t see from the aerial shots.

  The walk took over 43 minutes, so we’ve speeded it up and done a narrative you can find at http://www.humanevents.com so you’ll know the route of this crowd walk thru, presented at six times the speed it was originally filmed to fit it on YouTube!

  There is absolutely no doubt there were hundreds of thousands of people in attendance.

  ht. tammy

• 23:32

  Japan OKs new financial sanctions against Iran

   » ‎ ynet - Updates for RSS
  Japan OKs new financial sanctions against Iran
• 23:32

  Japan OKs new financial sanctions against Iran

   » ‎ ynet - Updates for RSS
  Japan OKs new financial sanctions against Iran

• 23:31

  Early season woes at Carroll show a glittering tradition can weigh heavily on the present

   » ‎ dallasnews.com Latest News
  Early season woes at Carroll show a glittering tradition can weigh heavily on the present

• 23:30

  Two tutoring companies fired in Oklahoma City amid fraud investigation

   » ‎ NewsOK.com RSS - home

  BY MEGAN ROLLAND

  A+ Academics and Foundations Tutoring will no longer provide tutoring services to Oklahoma City Public Schools children as an investigation into allegations of fraud continues.

• 23:29

  Proviso school board denies return for 3 teens expelled

   » ‎ chicagotribune.com - News
  Court system appears to be only option left for students
  
  The only option left for three expelled Proviso East High School students seeking to return to school this year appears to be the court system.

  
  

  

• 23:28

  French 'Spider-Man' in Sydney court over climb

   » ‎ RSS feed - channel BNews
  A French skyscraper climber nicknamed "Spider-Man" pleaded not guilty Friday to charges related to his bare-handed climb up a 57-story building in downtown Sydney. Alain Robert, known...

• 23:27

  Value of California's properties falls 1.8% to $4.4 trillion

   » ‎ Los Angeles Times - Top News
  Forty-eight of California's 58 counties saw totals fall this year — nine by more than 5%, the state Board of Equalization reported. The total value fell 2.4% in 2009.
  
  More of the shine of the Golden State's real estate market lost a bit more of its luster as the total value of California's properties fell for the second year in a row — and for the second time since records were first kept in 1933 at the depths of the Great Depression.

  
  

  

• 23:25

  Bluegrass Poll: Lally, Yarmuth neck and neck in 3rd District race

   » ‎ courier-journal.com.com -
  Congressional Republican challenger and tea party favorite Todd Lally is posing a far tougher challenge to Democratic U.S. Rep. John Yarmuth than many political experts predicted, according to the latest Courier-Journal/WHAS 11 Bluegrass poll.

• 23:24

  Seattle teachers OK 3-year contract

   » ‎ RSS feed - channel BNews
  Seattle's teachers have approved a new three-year contract, which means classes will begin as scheduled Sept. 8. Shortly after the contract vote Thursday, members of the Seattle...

• 23:24

  Seattle teachers OK 3-year contract

   » ‎ The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment
  SEATTLE (AP) — Seattle’s teachers have approved a new three-year contract, which means classes will begin as scheduled Sept. 8. Shortly after the contract vote Thursday, members of the Seattle Education Association voted “no confidence” in Seattle Public Schools Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson. The superintendent has said the agreement includes a new evaluation system that takes into account [...]

• 23:24

  Opponents claim victory after Uniontown adult store closes

   » ‎ courier-journal.com.com -
  After waging a five-year round-the-clock vigil, opponents of a Jackson County store that sold sexually explicit books and other merchandise are claiming victory following a court ruling that shut down the business.

• 23:23

  95 snakes found in burst bag at Malaysia airport

   » ‎ RSS feed - channel BNews
  A Malaysian man pleaded guilty to wildlife smuggling after his bag bursting with 95 live boa constrictors broke open on a luggage conveyer belt at Kuala Lumpur International Airport, an...

• 23:20

  95 snakes found in burst bag at Malaysia airport

   » ‎ The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment
  KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — A Malaysian man pleaded guilty to wildlife smuggling after his bag bursting with 95 live boa constrictors broke open on a luggage conveyer belt at Kuala Lumpur International Airport, an official said Friday. Keng Liang “Anson” Wong, 52, who was previously convicted of wildlife trafficking in the United States, was charged [...]
• 23:20

  95 snakes found in burst bag at Malaysia airport

   » ‎ The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment
  KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — A Malaysian man pleaded guilty to wildlife smuggling after his bag bursting with 95 live boa constrictors broke open on a luggage conveyer belt at Kuala Lumpur International Airport, an official said Friday. Keng Liang “Anson” Wong, 52, who was previously convicted of wildlife trafficking in the United States, was charged [...]

• 23:20

  Art Review: Antics Aside, a Dalí of Constant Ambition

   » ‎ NYT > Home Page
  An exhibition counters the notion that late work by Dalí is bad, and that most Dalí is late work.
  
  

• 23:18

  Top Ground Zero Mosque Investor Made Contributions to Hamas (Video)

   » ‎ Gateway Pundit

  Now we know… One of the financial backers behind the Ground Zero Victory Mosque also donated money to the Hamas terrorist group.
  Will Mayor Bloomberg defend this, too?
  

  MyFOX NY: Fox 5 News reported Thursday that one of the financial backers of the Islamic mosque and cultural center project in Lower Manhattan once contributed to a terror group, although the investor says the contribution was made because he thought he was giving money to a harmless charity.
  
  FOX 5 New York reported:

  Fox 5 News reported Thursday that one of the financial backers of the Islamic mosque and cultural center project in Lower Manhattan once contributed to a terror group, although the investor says the contribution was made because he thought he was giving money to a harmless charity.

  One of the key players in Sharif El-Gamal’s Mosque near Ground Zero is Egyptian born businessman, Hisham Elzanaty. Fox 5 News has learned exclusively and confirmed with Mr. Elzanaty’s attorney that Elzanaty made a “significant investment” in the development of the mosque near Ground Zero.

  Fox 5 has also uncovered Elzanaty has teamed up with El-Gamal on at least two real estate deals: the controversial mosque site and another deal involving a commercial property in the Chelsea section of Manhattan…

  Fox 5 News has also learned that in 1999 Hisham Elzanaty sent money to an organization that would later be deemed by the U.S. government to be a terrorist group.

  The organization was the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, also known as HLF. The now defunct group’s 1999 tax records show Elzanaty contributed more than $6,000 to HLF.

  Two years later, in 2001, HLF was shut down by the federal government and designated as a global terrorist. After a mistrial in 2007, in 2008 five HLF leaders were convicted of providing material support to Hamas.

• 23:16

  Jobs report may show rise in unemployment rate

   » ‎ RSS feed - channel BNews
  The unemployment rate may be about to rise again. Economists are bracing for a weak showing in the August employment report, which is scheduled to be released Friday. The private...

• 23:15

  North Carolina Central beats Johnson C. Smith 59-0

   » ‎ The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment
  DURHAM, N.C. (AP) — Keon Williams threw four touchdown passes to lead North Carolina Central to a 59-0 win over Johnson C. Smith on Thursday night. Williams finished with 110 yards on 14 of 22 passing and rushed for 62 more in the Eagles’ season opener. It was the their most lopsided victory since an 85-0 [...]
• 23:15

  North Carolina Central beats Johnson C. Smith 59-0

   » ‎ The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment
  DURHAM, N.C. (AP) — Keon Williams threw four touchdown passes to lead North Carolina Central to a 59-0 win over Johnson C. Smith on Thursday night. Williams finished with 110 yards on 14 of 22 passing and rushed for 62 more in the Eagles’ season opener. It was the their most lopsided victory since an 85-0 [...]
• 23:15

  MVP Jackson leads Storm past Mercury in Game 1

   » ‎ The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment
  SEATTLE (AP) — Lauren Jackson had 23 points and 17 rebounds to lead the Seattle Storm to an 82-74 victory over the Phoenix Mercury on Thursday night in Game 1 of the Western Conference finals. Jackson, who won her third WNBA MVP award before the game, set a team playoff record for rebounds. Svetlana Abrosimova added 16 [...]
• 23:12

  Bears in Colo. Springs killed after entering home

   » ‎ The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment
  COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) — For the second time in a week, state wildlife officers have killed a mother bear and cubs in Colorado Springs, Colo., that broke into a home. The Gazette in Colorado Springs reports that the mother bear and two cubs were euthanized Thursday after entering the home. A woman cleaning the kitchen [...]
• 23:12

  Texas youths could face new charge after man dies

   » ‎ The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment
  DALLAS (AP) — Officials say a suburban Dallas man critically wounded in a shooting last month in which two children are charged has died. The man’s wife, 46-year-old Darlene Nevil, was killed in the shooting two weeks ago. The Dallas County Medical Examiner’s Office says 48-year-old Alan Nevil died Thursday night at Baylor University Medical Center. A 13-year-old [...]

• 23:11

  Mexico: Soldiers kill 25 in gunbattle near border

   » ‎ ynet - Updates for RSS
  Mexico: Soldiers kill 25 in gunbattle near border
• 23:11

  Mexico: Soldiers kill 25 in gunbattle near border

   » ‎ ynet - Updates for RSS
  Mexico: Soldiers kill 25 in gunbattle near border
• 23:09

  IDF nabs wanted Palestinian in West Bank

   » ‎ ynet - Updates for RSS
  IDF nabs wanted Palestinian in West Bank
• 23:09

  IDF nabs wanted Palestinian in West Bank

   » ‎ ynet - Updates for RSS
  IDF nabs wanted Palestinian in West Bank

• 23:06

  US sheriff lashes Washington over immigration row

   » ‎ RSS feed - channel BNews
  An Arizona sheriff accused the US administration of treating him as a "whipping boy" after Washington launched legal action over alleged discrimination against illegal immigrants. ...

• 23:05

  Utah beats No. 15 Pittsburgh in OT

   » ‎ The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment
  SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — After being unable to hold an 11-point lead in the fourth quarter, Utah’s defense redeemed itself in overtime. Utah freshman Brian Blechen intercepted a pass for on the first play of overtime, setting up Joe Phillips for a 21-yard field goal that gave the Utes a 27-24 victory against No. 15 [...]
• 23:05

  Utah beats No. 15 Pittsburgh in OT

   » ‎ The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment
  SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — After being unable to hold an 11-point lead in the fourth quarter, Utah’s defense redeemed itself in overtime. Utah freshman Brian Blechen intercepted a pass for on the first play of overtime, setting up Joe Phillips for a 21-yard field goal that gave the Utes a 27-24 victory against No. 15 [...]

• 23:04

  Jobs report may show rise in unemployment rate

   » ‎ RSS feed - channel BNews
  The unemployment rate may be about to rise again. Economists are bracing for a weak showing in the August employment report, which is scheduled to be released Friday. The private sector...

• 23:04

  Coast Guard: No sign of leak after rig explosion

   » ‎ chicagotribune.com - News
  NEW ORLEANS, La. (AP) — The Coast Guard is saying that a mile-long oil sheen is spreading from the site off an offshore petroleum platform that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico off Louisiana.

  
  

  

• 23:03

  Oil platform catches fire in Gulf; workers OK

   » ‎ RSS feed - channel BNews
  An oil platform that burned off the Louisiana coast Thursday was the second such disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in less than five months. This time, the Coast Guard said there was no leak,...

• 23:02

  Wounded Rowlett man alleges Garland gun range responsible

   » ‎ dallasnews.com Latest News
  Wounded Rowlett man alleges Garland gun range responsible

• 23:02

  French ‘Spider-Man’ in Sydney court over climb

   » ‎ The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment
  SYDNEY (AP) — A French skyscraper climber nicknamed “Spider-Man” pleaded not guilty Friday to charges related to his bare-handed climb up a 57-story building in downtown Sydney. Alain Robert, known for climbing some of the world’s tallest and best-known buildings without ropes or other equipment, was arrested Monday at the top of the Lumiere building. He was [...]
• 23:02

  French ‘Spider-Man’ in Sydney court over climb

   » ‎ The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment
  SYDNEY (AP) — A French skyscraper climber nicknamed “Spider-Man” pleaded not guilty Friday to charges related to his bare-handed climb up a 57-story building in downtown Sydney. Alain Robert, known for climbing some of the world’s tallest and best-known buildings without ropes or other equipment, was arrested Monday at the top of the Lumiere building. He was [...]

• 23:01

  2011 Ford F-150 SVT Raptor Adds SuperCrew Option, More Technology, Towing, Standard 6.2-Liter Engine

   » ‎ RSS feed - channel BNews
  2011 Ford F-150 SVT Raptor Adds SuperCrew Option, More Technology, Towing, Standard 6.2-Liter Engine
• 23:01

  SodaStream Launches New 'Fizz' Home Soda Maker at IFA Exhibition

   » ‎ RSS feed - channel BNews
  SodaStream Launches New 'Fizz' Home Soda Maker at IFA Exhibition

• 23:00

  Today in History

   » ‎ The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment
  Today is Friday, Sept. 3, the 246th day of 2010. There are 119 days left in the year. Today’s Highlight in History: On Sept. 3, 1939, Britain, France, Australia and New Zealand declared war on Germany, two days after the Nazi invasion of Poland. A German U-boat torpedoed and sank the British liner SS Athenia some 250 [...]
• 23:00

  Today in History

   » ‎ The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment
  Today is Friday, Sept. 3, the 246th day of 2010. There are 119 days left in the year. Today’s Highlight in History: On Sept. 3, 1939, Britain, France, Australia and New Zealand declared war on Germany, two days after the Nazi invasion of Poland. A German U-boat torpedoed and sank the British liner SS Athenia some 250 [...]

• 22:58

  Incredible

   » ‎ iOwnTheWorld.com

  FreemanInPa works with this Dynamo’s dad.

• 22:57

  Darkwa rushes Tulane past SE Louisiana 27-21

   » ‎ The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment
  NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Freshman Orleans Darkwa rushed for three touchdowns, the last after a fourth-quarter turnover, to lead Tulane to a 27-21 win Thursday night over Southeastern Louisiana. Darkwa’s last score came on a 6-yard run with 11:15 left to play after Justin Adams’ fumble recovery at the Southeastern Louisiana 7. Darkwa also scored on a [...]
• 22:57

  Darkwa rushes Tulane past SE Louisiana 27-21

   » ‎ The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment
  NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Freshman Orleans Darkwa rushed for three touchdowns, the last after a fourth-quarter turnover, to lead Tulane to a 27-21 win Thursday night over Southeastern Louisiana. Darkwa’s last score came on a 6-yard run with 11:15 left to play after Justin Adams’ fumble recovery at the Southeastern Louisiana 7. Darkwa also scored on a [...]

• 22:55

  SCAN Issues Petition

   » ‎ WLTZ Local News
  SCAN Issues Petition
• 22:53

  SCAN celebrates milestone

   » ‎ WLTZ Local News
  SCAN celebrates milestone

• 22:52

  Martin Short revives Cat in the Hat for PBS series

   » ‎ RSS feed - channel BNews
  LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - More than a half-century ago, the Cat in the Hat was on a mission.

• 22:52

  FBI nixed agent's firing after involvement in '92 standoff

   » ‎ dallasnews.com Latest News
  FBI nixed agent's firing after involvement in '92 standoff

• 22:52

  Mideast Experts Fear Peace Talks Are Too Ambitious

   » ‎ NYT > Home Page
  Some veteran peace process practitioners say Israel and the Palestinians should first aim for a partial solution because the gaps between the positions are too wide.
  
  

• 22:52

  Hannah Kurtz leads SBA over Briarcrest in volleyball match

   » ‎ Memphis Commercial Appeal Stories
  When a volleyball comes off Hannah Kurtz’s hand it sounds different. It certainly feels different. And Thursday night, it was the clear difference as the senior led defending State Division 2-AA champion St. Benedict to a 25-21, 25-14, 24-26, 25-16 win over regional foe Briarcrest Christian in the Saints’ gym.

• 22:52

  East Coast on alert for Hurricane Earl

   » ‎ chicagotribune.com - News
  BUXTON, N.C. (AP) — Hurricane Earl packed winds near 140 mph as it blew toward North Carolina on Thursday, putting the Eastern Seaboard up to Maine on alert for a Labor Day weekend pounding by waves, gales and rain.

  
  

  

• 22:48

  Video: Chris Christie Endorses Mike Castle

   » ‎ The Weekly Standard

  Another RINO for Castle:

• 22:48

  Video: Chris Christie Endorses Mike Castle

   » ‎ The Weekly Standard

  Another RINO for Castle:

• 22:48

  UPDATED: Asia Pacific Wire & Cable Corporation Announces First Half Year 2010 Financial Results and AGM

   » ‎ RSS feed - channel BNews
  UPDATED: Asia Pacific Wire & Cable Corporation Announces First Half Year 2010 Financial Results and AGM
• 22:47

  Mexico: Soldiers kill 25 in gunbattle near border

   » ‎ RSS feed - channel BNews
  Soldiers killed 25 suspected cartel members Thursday in a raid and gunbattle in a Mexican state near the U.S. border that has seen a surge in drug gang violence, the military said. A...

• 22:44

  Oklahoma City mourners remember girl whose body allegedly moved with family

   » ‎ NewsOK.com RSS - home
  

  BY SONYA COLBERG

  At First Unitarian Church, 600 NW 13 St., concerned strangers memorialized Cheyenne Wolf, a Bokchito girl who died in 2008 and whose body was allegedly carried through six states.

• 22:43

  El Pasoans Speak Out About Corruption

   » ‎ KFOXTV.com - Local El Paso News
  El Pasoans and a UTEP professor say it may take awhile to regain trust in some officials.

• 22:41

  McGee, Buehler lead Cowboys over Dolphins 27-25

   » ‎ New & Updated

  Enclosure: [download]

  ARLINGTON, Texas—The Dallas Cowboys are going into the season feeling a lot better about kicker David Buehler.

• 22:41

  Crash On Shiloh Ties Up Traffic

   » ‎ WLTZ Local News
  Crash On Shiloh Ties Up Traffic

• 22:40

  Mexico: Soldiers kill 25 in gunbattle near border

   » ‎ New & Updated
  MONTERREY, Mexico (AP) - A shootout between soldiers and suspected drug cartel members in northeastern Mexico left 25 purported gunmen dead Thursday, the military said.

• 22:35

  Attorney general asked to investigate issues involving Oklahoma County judge

   » ‎ NewsOK.com RSS - home

  BY NOLAN CLAY

  Oklahoma City criminal defense attorney said he wants to clear his name in case where judge was asked to step down after allegedly mentioning the lawyer's name to a drug court participant.
• 22:35

  Attorney general asked to investigate issues involving Oklahoma County judge

   » ‎ NewsOK.com RSS - home

  BY NOLAN CLAY

  Oklahoma City criminal defense attorney said he wants to clear his name in case where judge was asked to step down after allegedly mentioning the lawyer's name to a drug court participant.

• 22:35

  Customs Busts Cocaine Smuggler

   » ‎ WLTZ Local News
  Customs Busts Cocaine Smuggler

• 22:34

  Shanghai SynTheAll Pharmaceuticals Co., Ltd. (STA) Receives ISO 14001 Certification

   » ‎ RSS feed - channel BNews
  Shanghai SynTheAll Pharmaceuticals Co., Ltd. (STA) Receives ISO 14001 Certification

• 22:34

  AK casings found in local neighborhood

   » ‎ WLTZ Local News
  AK casings found in local neighborhood

• 22:32

  Irish crowd pelt Gun N' Roses after lengthy wait

   » ‎ RSS feed - channel BNews
  LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - American rock band Guns N' Roses incurred the wrath of a crowd in Ireland after showing up almost an hour late -- and then left the stage after being pelted with...

• 22:32

  Snake charmers – dark side of the mystery craft

   » ‎ RT
  Once an icon of Indian culture, snake charmers today are struggling for survival.
• 22:32

  Snake charmers – dark side of the mystery craft

   » ‎ RT
  Once an icon of Indian culture, snake charmers today are struggling for survival.

• 22:31

  US policy in spotlight as unemployment set to rise

   » ‎ RSS feed - channel BNews
  A fresh batch of US unemployment figures will on Friday provide Americans with a crucial litmus test for the sputtering economic recovery and President Barack Obama's policies. The Labor

• 22:31

  The Cakewalk War

   » ‎ Patrick J. Buchanan

  By Patrick J. Buchanan

  Six months before the invasion of Iraq, Taki Theodoracopulos, Scott McConnell and this writer launched a new magazine, The American Conservative. Goal: Convince our countrymen that invading Iraq would be imperial folly.

  In the first column, in mid-September 2002, I wrote: “If Providence does not intrude, we will soon launch an imperial war on [...]

• 22:30

  El Paso Public Corruption Time Line

   » ‎ KFOXTV.com - Local El Paso News
  El Paso Public Corruption Time Line

• 22:29

  Massacre survivor: Victims refused narco work

   » ‎ RSS feed - channel BNews
  One of two known survivors of a drug gang's massacre in northern Mexico of 72 undocumented Central and South American migrants said in an interview broadcast Thursday that they were killed...

• 22:29

  Socorro Mayor Asked To Step Down

   » ‎ KFOXTV.com - Local El Paso News
  Socoro City Representative at-large Guillermo Madrid asked Mayor Willie Gandara Sr. to step down.

• 22:29

  LULAC president speaks of anti-Hispanic trend in the U.S.

   » ‎ New & Updated
  An anti-Hispanic movement is sweeping across the United States, the national president of LULAC said Thursday.

• 22:29

  Construction Begins On Los Dos Laredos Park

   » ‎ WLTZ Local News
  Construction Begins On Los Dos Laredos Park
• 22:28

  Laredo HWY Ranked 68th Most Congested TX Roadway

   » ‎ WLTZ Local News
  Laredo HWY Ranked 68th Most Congested TX Roadway
• 22:27

  Del Mar Mother Arrested

   » ‎ WLTZ Local News
  Del Mar Mother Arrested

• 22:26

  TIME Mag Editor: It’s Too Bad That Israeli Wall Worked

   » ‎ Gateway Pundit

  Come again?
  TIME Magazine editor Richard Stengel told the Morning Joe folks today that it’s just too bad that Israeli wall worked so well keeping the terrorists out of Israel.

  Yes. He really said that.

  Click on Photo for Video–
  
  Time magazine editor Richard Stengel:
  “They [Israel] haven’t had a car bombing in two and a half years and the sad truth, really, is that the wall with the West Bank has actually worked. I mean, most Israelis in the course of their lives don’t come into contact with any Palestinians at all, the wall is functioning.”

• 22:26

  Thief robs local Goodwill store

   » ‎ WLTZ Local News
  Thief robs local Goodwill store

• 22:25

  Police: Man Accused Of Indecency With Two Children

   » ‎ KFOXTV.com - Local El Paso News
  

• 22:25

  Map: See Dallas-area foreclosures by ZIP code

   » ‎ dallasnews.com Latest News

• 22:25

  CRIME REPORT: Shelby County worker arrested after pot plants found at home

   » ‎ Memphis Commercial Appeal Stories
  A Shelby County employee was arrested Thursday after county deputies found numerous marijuana plants at his home.

• 22:19

  Bears lose to Browns 13-10

   » ‎ chicagotribune.com - News
  The exhibition season came to a close Thursday night as the Bears lost to the Browns 13-10, finishing 0-4 in preseason for the first time since 1998, the final year of the Dave Wannstedt era.

  
  

  

• 22:16

  Chat replay: Cowboys 27, Dolphins 25

   » ‎ dallasnews.com Latest News
  Chat replay: Cowboys 27, Dolphins 25

• 22:16

  First ‘Hillary for President in 2012′ Ad Hits the Airwaves

   » ‎ Michelle Malkin

  **Written by Doug Powers

  You know it’s been a long year and a half when you can sit back, watch a pitch for Hillary Clinton for president, and fool yourself into thinking that she (and her husband) looks like Reagan compared to Barack Obama.

  From CNN:

  We’ve still got two months left until the 2010 midterm elections, but we now have our first television commercial of the 2012 presidential campaign. And the ad advocates for a person who says she has no intention of running for the White House.
  [...]
  The commercial was paid for by a Chicago dentist named William DeJean.

  When asked why he put the ad up, DeJean told CNN Thursday that “I’m a dentist and I don’t think this country is headed in the right direction.”
  [...]
  DeJean adds that he thinks people are having buyer’s remorse about President Barack Obama and says the current administration is ruining the Democratic Party. He says he spent $5,000 to create the commercial and tells CNN that besides New Orleans, the ad will run in Washington, New York and Los Angeles, and possible Houston. DeJean says he chose to first run the ad in New Orleans because he’s a native of the city and because the city’s in the news due to the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

  DeJean sunk some money into Hillary’s efforts in the past, so what’s a little more root-canal cash spent trying to ensure that the 3 a.m. phone call isn’t answered with “we’re buying shrimp here guys, call back later”?

  This has more overstatements than an ad for x-ray glasses in a comic book, but hey, it’s a start:

  **Written by Doug Powers

  Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

  

• 22:15

  TeaPartyTracker.Org

   » ‎ iOwnTheWorld.com

  This site is hilarious in its concept. It’s sponsored by the NAACP, Think Progress, Media Matters and The New Left Media. They are asking people to send them pictures, audio or video of racism among the ranks of Tea Parties.

  TeaPartyTracker.Org monitors racism and other forms of extremism within the Tea Party movement. We call on the Tea Party to repudiate extremists among their ranks and join in civil dialogue with all Americans.

  So after calling the Tea Parties, Conservatives, White People and their dogs racists for the last year or two, NOW they are going to look for the proof.

  What JACKASSES!

  And I’m sure lefties won’t be sending in videos of their butt buddies dressed as Nazis parading around TEA Parties. (Rolling eyes.)

  The site is as useless as the people who created it. Who is this appealing to? Do they think there is someone out there that is going to see their stupid site and say, “wow, that guy IS a racist in that picture at that rally. I guess I DO WANT THE GOVERNMENT TO TAKE OVER MY ENTIRE LIFE AFTER ALL.”

  ht. althing

• 22:12

  IMF to provide Pakistan $450 million for floods

   » ‎ Pakistan News latest RSS headlines - Pakistan News.Net
  The International Monetary Fund says it will provide Pakistan with about $450 million in emergency aid this month to help it cope with devastating floods.IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn s...
• 21:56

  Pinpointing the causes of Pakistan's devastating floods

   » ‎ Pakistan News latest RSS headlines - Pakistan News.Net
  Sciblogs.co.nz . So why has this monsoon season caused the worst flooding in Pakistan's history? The overall impression given by the media is that this year's flood is unprecedented. But is it? On J...

• 21:52

  Silly billies: Two young goats get stuck on six-inch ledge of railway bridge for two days

   » ‎ Home | Mail Online
  
  Two young goats that wandered onto the thin ledge of a 60ft railway bridge had to be rescued by a crane after two days high above a remote highway.

• 21:51

  Never Gonna Stand For This

   » ‎ iOwnTheWorld.com

  ht/ Lucianne

• 21:49

  Socorro Adopts Large-Animal Ordinance

   » ‎ KFOXTV.com - Local El Paso News
  Socorro Adopts Large-Animal Ordinance

• 21:47

  Book Sets Off Immigration Debate in Germany

   » ‎ NYT > Home Page
  Thilo Sarrazin, a former official who has been criticized as espousing racist views, has set off a discussion about Germany’s immigration policy.
  
  

• 21:44

  Pakistan gets IMF relief, tightens security

   » ‎ Pakistan News latest RSS headlines - Pakistan News.Net
  LAHORE, Pakistan - The International Monetary Fund will give Pakistan $450 million in emergency flood aid, providing some relief for a government overwhelmed by the disaster and facing renewed militan...

• 21:44

  Ex-gymnastics coach guilty of having child porn

   » ‎ chicagotribune.com - News
  St. Charles man taught at Hanover Park club
  
  A former coach at a Hanover Park gymnastics club for youths was found guilty Thursday of possession of child pornography.

  
  

  

• 21:40

  Mother, two sons charged in Oklahoma City police officer's shooting

   » ‎ NewsOK.com RSS - home

  BY NOLAN CLAY

  A teenager is accused of shooting an Oklahoma City police officer after a traffic stop in which his relative was arrested, prosecutors said.
• 21:40

  Mother, two sons charged in Oklahoma City police officer's shooting

   » ‎ NewsOK.com RSS - home

  BY NOLAN CLAY

  A teenager is accused of shooting an Oklahoma City police officer after a traffic stop in which his relative was arrested, prosecutors said.

• 21:39

  Vote Paladino: Cuomo Won't Investigate Jihadist Funding Behind Ground Zero Mega Mosque Extremist Imam Rauf

   » ‎ Atlas Shrugs

  

  Despite the overwhelming evidence that radical Imam and rat and roach slumlor Feisal Rauf has ties to extremists (Qaradawi, Tantawi) and terror organizations (Perdana Organization) and is funded by Al Qaeda/Bin Laden corporations, socialist dynasty heir and silver spooned Andrew Cuomo proclaimed that he will defy the will of the people and the rule of law to protect and defend the public, and will not investigate the shady funding behind the $150 million needed to build the Ground Zero mega mosque.

  Reason enough to cast your vote for Carl Paladino. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. More on Cuomo to come.

  NY1 reporting here

  State Attorney General and gubernatorial hopeful Andrew Cuomo said Thursday he has no plans to investigate the Islamic community center and mosque.

  According to a recent poll, seven out of 10 New York State voters say they want him to look into the project's financing.

  Cuomo said he could not investigate the fundraising for the project because so little money has been raised so far.

  He said his office would also need cause to probe the group.

  
  
  

• 21:38

  Low Bama

   » ‎ iOwnTheWorld.com

  

• 21:38

  Tell 'Hot Button' what you think: Iraq and history

   » ‎ Memphis Commercial Appeal Stories
  E-mail your response to our question: How do you think history will judge America's involvement in the Iraqi war?

• 21:33

  FBI: 6 accused in forced labor of 400 Thai workers

   » ‎ AP Top Headlines At 7:31 a.m. EDT
  By MARK NIESSE 2010-09-03T02:40:53Z HONOLULU (AP) -- Six recruiters were accused Thursday of luring 400 laborers from Thailand to the United States and forcing them to work, according to a federal indictment that the FBI called the largest human-trafficking case ever charged in U.S. history....

• 21:30

  Quotes of the day

   » ‎ Hot Air » Top Picks

  

  The beginning and the end.

  The Grand Design, an extract of which appears in the Times today, sets out to contest Sir Isaac Newton’s belief that the universe must have been designed by God as it could not have been created out of chaos. “Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from [...]

  Read this post »

• 21:30

  Quotes of the day

   » ‎ Hot Air » Top Picks

  

  The beginning and the end.

  The Grand Design, an extract of which appears in the Times today, sets out to contest Sir Isaac Newton’s belief that the universe must have been designed by God as it could not have been created out of chaos. “Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from [...]

  Read this post »

• 21:29

  A Kashmir Hospital Is Witness to Conflict

   » ‎ Pakistan News latest RSS headlines - Pakistan News.Net
  SRINAGAR, Kashmir — Bloodied and battered, the wounded arrive daily at the emergency room here, the casualties of weeks of protests against gun-toting Indian police and security forces that spil...

• 21:27

  County HR Advisor Accused of Growing Pot

   » ‎ WREG - Memphis News: daily news, local news and tv news
  Detectives say he had marijuana plants in his garage and greenhouse.

  
  

  
• 21:22

  Dying For A Dream: Wrestler Killed While Training

   » ‎ WREG - Memphis News: daily news, local news and tv news
  20-Year-old killed while training to be pro wrestler

  
  

  

• 21:06

  Bonnie Blue actress from 'GWTW' dies

   » ‎ CNN.com
  Cammie King Conlon, who played the ill-fated Bonnie Blue Butler in "Gone With the Wind," used to joke "that I peaked at age 5."

• 21:02

  For The First Time In My Adult Life I Agree With The Concept Of Redistribution

   » ‎ iOwnTheWorld.com

  

  BUMPED BECAUSE OF AN UPDATE

  I was taken by Jayne’s comment where she says the smaller busted woman had a more intelligent looking face. So I decided to switch faces and see if the tatas have anything to do with perception of one’s intelligence. Whaddya think?

  

  How about now?

  

• 21:00

  blondie at the garden

   » ‎ Memphis Flyer
  Blondie joins Cheap Trick for the final show of Live at the Garden Friday.

  [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

• 21:00

  Police search for suspect in Norman man's shooting

   » ‎ NewsOK.com RSS - home
  

  FROM STAFF REPORTS

  Norman detectives are seeking the public's help in finding David Clayton Duncan, who they say shot a man Wednesday in rural east Norman.
• 21:00

  Police search for suspect in Norman man's shooting

   » ‎ NewsOK.com RSS - home
  

  FROM STAFF REPORTS

  Norman detectives are seeking the public's help in finding David Clayton Duncan, who they say shot a man Wednesday in rural east Norman.

• 20:56

  Mexico: Soldiers kill 25 in gunbattle near border

   » ‎ AP Top Headlines At 7:31 a.m. EDT
  By MARK WALSH 2010-09-03T03:47:32Z MONTERREY, Mexico (AP) -- Soldiers killed 25 suspected cartel members Thursday in a raid and gunbattle in a Mexican state near the U.S. border that has seen a surge in drug gang violence, the military said....

• 20:38

  $100,000 bail for suspect in Aurora hospital stabbing

   » ‎ chicagotribune.com - News
  Victim, 78, stabbed with dinner knife
  
  Bail was set at $100,000 Thursday for an Aurora man charged with stabbing a 78-year-old female patient at an Aurora hospital, authorities said.

  
  

  

• 20:34

  Oklahoma Briefs

   » ‎ NewsOK.com RSS - home

  IN BRIEF

  OKLAHOMA CITY

  Cubs at zoo

  obtain names

  Oklahoma City Zoo officials have named the two male snow leopard cubs born May 12 Snowball and Rilü, pronounced rye-loo.

• 20:34

  Oklahoma Briefs

   » ‎ NewsOK.com RSS - home

  IN BRIEF

  OKLAHOMA CITY

  Cubs at zoo

  obtain names

  Oklahoma City Zoo officials have named the two male snow leopard cubs born May 12 Snowball and Rilü, pronounced rye-loo.

• 20:22

  LA police ID owner of trunk containing baby bodies

   » ‎ AP Top Headlines At 7:31 a.m. EDT
  By THOMAS WATKINS 2010-09-03T02:43:37Z LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Investigators have identified the owner of a trunk in which the mummified remains of two babies were found, bringing them a step closer to solving the intriguing international mystery....

• 20:21

  Roadwork may impact holiday weekend travel

   » ‎ NewsOK.com RSS - home

  The state Transportation Department lists these areas where roadwork can have an impact on holiday travelers:

  OUTSIDE METROS

  1.

• 20:21

  Roadwork may impact holiday weekend travel

   » ‎ NewsOK.com RSS - home

  The state Transportation Department lists these areas where roadwork can have an impact on holiday travelers:

  OUTSIDE METROS

  1.

• 20:19

  Oklahoma Aquarium Association hosts weekend convention

   » ‎ NewsOK.com RSS - home

  FROM STAFF REPORTS

  The Oklahoma Aquarium Association is hosting the Federation of Texas Aquarium Societies annual convention this weekend at the Best Western Saddleback Inn and Convention Center in Oklahoma City.
• 20:19

  Oklahoma Aquarium Association hosts weekend convention

   » ‎ NewsOK.com RSS - home

  FROM STAFF REPORTS

  The Oklahoma Aquarium Association is hosting the Federation of Texas Aquarium Societies annual convention this weekend at the Best Western Saddleback Inn and Convention Center in Oklahoma City.

• 20:07

  TV Stations to Air Hamas-linked, Islamic Supremacists Commercials for Free?

   » ‎ Atlas Shrugs

  Unindicted co-conspirator, Muslim Brotherhood proxy, Hamas-funder CAIR is, once again, resorting to bullying and intimidating to impose their Islamic supremacist agenda on America. Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas-linked CAIR is demanding that television stations broadcast their propaganda commercial for free.

  Atlas readers -- heads up. Any television station that runs the Muslim Brotherhood ads for free will have to give equal time to SIOA and FDI. We will create PSAs defending individual rights and free speech (advocating for the repeal of nefarious hate speech/hate crime laws being used to impose the sharia). Atlas readers in the business, please write me off line and help us to create free ads for television. I have some mad hot ideas. If Islamic supremacists get free ads, freedom lovers do too.

  Keep your eye out for CAIR propaganda. If you see these ads run, alert us and we will demand FREE EQUAL TIME. Thank you once again, CAIR, for another brilliant idea.

  Here's the CAIR press release.

  Action: Ask Local TV Stations to Air Muslim 9/11 First Responder PSAs 
  
  Public service announcements challenge growing Islamophobia in American society

  (WASHINGTON, D.C., 9/2/10) -- CAIR is asking American Muslims and others interested in promoting understanding and unity to help distribute a new series of public service announcements (PSA) designed to challenge the growing Islamophobia in American society.

  CAIR is distributing these PSAs nationwide at press conferences, by sending them directly to major TV networks and news programs, via satellite feed, and through a free, broadcast-quality download at www.thenewsmarket.com/CAIR.

  Please help us reach every TV market by arranging to have your local stations air them. Stations will run PSAs for free as a public service. Communities could also buy air time to run the PSAs as paid advertisements.

  [...]

  "We've gotten a tremendous amount of positive feedback on these PSAs," said CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad. "Help our fellow Americans see the true face of Islam."

  ACTION REQUESTED:

  1). Contact the public service directors of your local TV stations to ask that they downlink CAIR's new PSAs when they are fed by satellite today. Send them the following information for the downlink:

  Satellite feed for public service directors: Feed Date - Thursday, September 2nd, 2010. Feed Time: 1:00-1:30 p.m. ET (Fed in Rotation) Coordinates: Galaxy 19/C07 Slot B, FEC: 3/4/ Symbol Rate: 6.1113 / Data Rate: 8.448 / Downlink Freq: 3835.500V, Synaptic Digital Satellite Operations Trouble Line: 212-812-7134

  2). Call your local TV stations to ask about their advertising rates for a 30-second spot. Local stations may have surprisingly moderate rates for a 30-second spot.

  The PSAs are also available at: www.thenewsmarket.com/CAIR (Registration is required, but the broadcast-quality download is free.)

  3). Contribute generously to CAIR to help defray the cost of producing and distributing these PSAs: https://www.cair.com/support/

  CAIR's PSA campaign is also designed to offer an implicit challenge to the Florida church that plans to burn copies of the Quran, Islam's revealed text, on September 11.

• 19:56

  ICC charges Pakistan trio at centre of betting scam

   » ‎ The Guardian World News
  

  Captain and two bowlers protest their innocence as players are to be interviewed by police under caution

  The three Pakistan cricketers at the centre of an alleged betting scam that has thrown world cricket into crisis were last night charged under the anti-corruption code of the game's governing body and provisionally suspended.

  After a day that began with the Pakistan Cricket Board agreeing to omit the players from the team for the rest of the tour, and the Pakistan high commissioner claiming they were "set-up" by the News of the World, the ICC suspended the three pending a tribunal.

  Outside the west London hotel in which Test captain Salman Butt, fast bowler Mohammad Asif and brilliant teenage prospect Mohammad Amir are also staying, ICC chief executive Haroon Lorgat provided the swift action many in the game had demanded.

  "We will not tolerate corruption in cricket – simple as that. We must be decisive with such matters and, if proven, these offences carry serious penalties up to a life ban," he said.

  "The ICC will do everything possible to keep such conduct out of the game and we will stop at nothing to protect the sport's integrity. While we believe the problem is not widespread, we must always be vigilant. It is important, however, that we do not pre-judge the guilt of these three players. That is for the independent tribunal alone to decide."

  Under tougher new rules brought in last year by the ICC, the players can be suspended provisionally ahead of any hearing if it is in the interests of the game.

  The row was triggered by allegations in the News of the World that the three had agreed to bowl no-balls in specific overs of last week's fourth Test at Lord's in return for money.

  The charges were announced after officials from the ICC's anti-corruption and security unit (ACSU) spent the afternoon at Scotland Yard viewing evidence and seeking police go-ahead. The police are conducting a parallel criminal inquiry.

  The three players will today be interviewed under police caution for the first time. Earlier they had agreed to withdraw from the rest of the tour citing the "mental torture" they had been placed under by the allegations. They protested their innocence and the Pakistani high commissioner suggested they might have been "set up" by the News of the World.

  While their team-mates were turning out against Somerset 160 miles away in Taunton, the accused three were being whisked into their country's high commission in London amid a flurry of claims and top level political negotiations.

  ICC investigators, who had been examining spot-fixing allegations against Pakistan for some time, have been in London since Monday. Sir Ronnie Flanagan, the former Northern Ireland police chief who was appointed chairman of the ACSU three months ago, arrived from Abu Dhabi to join them, while its chief investigator, Ravi Sawani, met police.

  But despite withdrawing the players from the tour, following pressure behind the scenes from the England and Wales Cricket Board and the sport's global governing body, the Pakistan camp remained bullish.

  The high commissioner, Wajid Shamsul Hasan, claimed the players had been "set up" by the News of the World. Asked if they had been framed, he answered "yes" and suggested the newspaper's video evidence could have been filmed after the contentious no-balls had been bowled.

  The News of the World said it "refuses to respond to such ludicrous allegations". The newspaper is understood to be preparing further revelations for Sunday.

  Hasan said of the three players: "They are extremely disturbed about what has happened in the past week, particularly in regards to their alleged involvement in the crime. They mentioned they are entirely innocent and shall defend their innocence as such.

  "They further maintain that on account of the mental torture that has affected them they are not in right frame of mind to play the remaining matches."

  Pakistani journalists repeatedly asked whether the team was a victim of a conspiracy and Pakistan's sports minister, Ijaz Jakhrani, also suggested there could be another explanation for the apparently damning News of the World evidence.

  "Let's wait until the report comes. After that we will be in a position to see if it is spot fixing, if it is match fixing or if it is a conspiracy against these players or against the country," he told the Indian news channel CNN-IBN.

  After the three wary-looking players arrived to a media posse and a small knot of 20 or so protesters, officials from the Pakistan high commission handed out copies of an article by the journalist and academic Roy Greenslade.

  The piece was highly critical of the methods used in previous stings by Mazher Mahmood – the so-called "Fake Sheikh" behind the sensational News of the World claim that a middleman accepted £150,000 to correctly predict the exact time when no-balls would be bowled.

  Although Hasan insisted the three players were "not running away" – they will remain in England and their passports are being held by the team manager – they were whisked out of a side door and departed in a people carrier while the car in which they arrived acted as a decoy.

  Mazhar Majeed, the 35-year-old middleman the News of the World alleges was at the heart of the betting sting, was arrested on Sunday and released on bail. Separately, he was also arrested as part of an investigation by HM Revenue and Customs into money laundering through Croydon Athletic, the non-league football club he owns.

  Both the ECB and the ICC felt the intense focus on and public clamour for action had made it impossible for the three players to play any further part in the tour. The ICC was under pressure to act before Sunday's Twenty20 match between England and Pakistan in Cardiff.

  Sources had indicated all week that a negotiated withdrawal was the most likely solution, but a last minute intervention from PCB chairman, Ijaz Butt, threw a spanner in the works. His insistence that the players might still play was seen as an attempt to reassure the Pakistani public that it was not capitulating.

  • Pakistan cricket betting scandal
  • Pakistan cricket team
  • Cricket
  • Pakistan

  Owen GibsonDavid Hopps
  guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

  
  

• 19:47

  Arizona governor stumbles during debate

   » ‎ AP Top Headlines At 7:31 a.m. EDT
  By PAUL DAVENPORT 2010-09-03T02:42:17Z PHOENIX (AP) -- It will go down as one of the most painful openings to a political debate in recent memory....
• 19:17

  Man in Letterman blackmail plot freed from NY jail

   » ‎ AP Top Headlines At 7:31 a.m. EDT
  By JENNIFER PELTZ 2010-09-03T03:31:15Z NEW YORK (AP) -- The former television producer who tried to blackmail David Letterman was freed Thursday after four months in jail for a plot that put a spotlight on the comic icon's office affairs, city Correction Department records show....

• 19:16

  No charge against Oklahoma City police officer

   » ‎ NewsOK.com RSS - home

  BY NOLAN CLAY

  District attorney clears officer in fatal crash
• 19:16

  No charge against Oklahoma City police officer

   » ‎ NewsOK.com RSS - home

  BY NOLAN CLAY

  District attorney clears officer in fatal crash

• 19:00

  The last (probably) pre-Labor Day Cook rankings.

   » ‎ RedState

  House.
  Senate.
  Governorships.

  If you don’t feel like clicking through the links, allow me to summarize: ten more House seats shifted in the GOP’s favor, and so did three Senate seats, and so did four Governor’s races.  Only one of them (WY-GOV) is now off the actual board, but Cook is now projecting  a net +6 to +8 GOP in the Governors’ races, a net +7 to +9 GOP in the Senate, and at least a net +35 GOP in the House.  The House is particularly of interest, as there are currently forty-five Toss-Up races listed by Cook right now, and only three of them are Republican seats.

  Couple this with the latest set of regional race polls from Republican-leaning American Action Forum, and the truly atrocious (for the other side) enthusiasm gap that Democrat-leaning Public Policy Polling is finding, and Larry Sabato’s needed-to-slam-a-shot of whiskey-first prediction of a lost House and Senate on the edge, and you get… a lot of people blankly staring at their scratch papers or computer screens and thinking This can’t be right.  I must have subtracted where I should have added, or something.  Or maybe I made an assumption that I shouldn’t have.  Things can’t be this bad for the Democratic party.

  Seriously.  This is turning out to be one of the most unnerving election cycles in recent memory: sort of like a combination of 2006 and 2008.  On steroids.  Laced with crystal meth.  Either that, or everybody’s model is completely wrong.  Which is why people keep writing some variant of “Well, it’s still X days before the election; a lot can change” whenever this topic comes up.  It’s not so much a desire to cover one’s rear as it is a tacit admission that what may be coming in November is an extremely low-probability scenario.  Even possibly the often-promised, never-seen, fabled realig…

  :pause:

  Well, it’s still sixty one days before the election.  A lot can change.

  Moe Lane

  Crossposted to Moe Lane.

  

• 19:00

  East Coast States Brace for Earl's Landfall

   » ‎ CBN.com - CBN News
  The storm is barreling towards the Eastern Seaboard and residents living there are hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst.
• 19:00

  Oil Sheen Spotted After Rig Explosion in Gulf

   » ‎ CBN.com - CBN News

  A mile-long oil sheen spread Thursday from an offshore petroleum platform burning in the Gulf of Mexico off Lousiana, west of the site of BP's massive spill.

• 19:00

  Oil Sheen Spotted After Rig Explosion in Gulf

   » ‎ CBN.com - CBN News

  A mile-long oil sheen spread Thursday from an offshore petroleum platform burning in the Gulf of Mexico off Lousiana, west of the site of BP's massive spill.

• 19:00

  Is Your Family Prepared for a Disaster?

   » ‎ CBN.com - CBN News

  By planning ahead, the stress that is associated with emergencies will be reduced, and a financial disaster could also be avoided.

• 19:00

  Is Your Family Prepared for a Disaster?

   » ‎ CBN.com - CBN News

  By planning ahead, the stress that is associated with emergencies will be reduced, and a financial disaster could also be avoided.

• 19:00

  Earl Threatens Labor Day Holiday Travel

   » ‎ CBN.com - CBN News

  Hurricane Earl could change travel plans for those who will be taking to the East Coast highways and airports this holiday.
  

• 19:00

  NY School Changes Policy on Religious Necklace

   » ‎ CBN.com - CBN News

  A New York school district has voted to amend a discriminatory policy that led to the repeated suspension of a Christian student over his Rosary beads.

• 19:00

  U.S. Adds Pakistani Taliban to Blacklist

   » ‎ CBN.com - CBN News

  The Pakistani Taliban is now on the international terrorism blacklist as the U.S. launches a broad legal offensive against the group.

• 19:00

  NY School Changes Policy on Religious Necklace

   » ‎ CBN.com - CBN News

  A New York school district has voted to amend a discriminatory policy that led to the repeated suspension of a Christian student over his Rosary beads.

• 19:00

  Obama 'Cautiously Hopeful' on Mideast Talks

   » ‎ CBN.com - CBN News
  The White House is hosting Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Palestinian President Abbas Thursday in an effort to broker a peace deal between the Mideast nations.
• 19:00

  Hamas Ratchets Up Attacks Amid Peace Talks

   » ‎ CBN.com - CBN News
  Hamas claimed responsibility for a second drive-by shooting at an Israeli couple Wednesday night.
• 19:00

  Obama 'Cautiously Hopeful' on Mideast Talks

   » ‎ CBN.com - CBN News
  The White House is hosting Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Palestinian President Abbas Thursday in an effort to broker a peace deal between the Mideast nations.
• 19:00

  Faces of Desperation: Girl with the God-Given Smile

   » ‎ CBN.com - CBN News

  The director for International Operations and Programs at Operation Blessing International gives a firsthand account of the situation in the Taliban-oppressed region.

• 19:00

  Perfect Storm: Has Barbara Boxer Met Her Match?

   » ‎ CBN.com - CBN News
  In November, Sen. Boxer faces GOP candidate Carly Fiorina, one of the top female executives in the U.S. She could put an end to Boxer's long political career.
• 19:00

  Economy Tops Boxer, Fiorina Calif. Sen. Debate

   » ‎ CBN.com - CBN News
  In their first debate, Sen. Boxer, D-Calif., and her challenger, GOP rival Carly Fiorina, sparred over who would best represent the economic interest of the country.
• 19:00

  Voter Backlash Against Washington Continues

   » ‎ CBN.com - CBN News

  The latest evidence of voter backlash against Washington came this week.

• 19:00

  Voter Backlash Against Washington Continues

   » ‎ CBN.com - CBN News

  The latest evidence of voter backlash against Washington came this week.

• 19:00

  Gold May Reach $1,500 Record High

   » ‎ CBN.com - CBN News
  Gold is once again heading to a record high and analysts say the long-term outlook continues to predict higher prices.
• 19:00

  Discovery Channel Gunman Hated Programming

   » ‎ CBN.com - CBN News

  The gunman who stormed the Discovery Channel's headquarters in Maryland said he hated the network's shows because they promoted population growth.

• 19:00

  The Brody File Show

   » ‎ CBN.com - CBN News
  On this week's edition of The Brody File, CBN News goes on the road to San Francisco for an interview with U.S. Senate candidate Carly Fiorina.
• 19:00

  The Brody File Show

   » ‎ CBN.com - CBN News
  On this week's edition of The Brody File, CBN News goes on the road to San Francisco for an interview with U.S. Senate candidate Carly Fiorina.
• 19:00

  Bernanke Testifying to Crisis Inquiry Panel

   » ‎ CBN.com - CBN News
  Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is set to appear before a panel investigating the financial crisis.
• 19:00

  Pakistan Terrorists Kill 35, despite Floods

   » ‎ CBN.com - CBN News
  Despite Pakistan's devastating floods, Islamic terrorists are back in business, murdering civilians.
• 19:00

  Pakistan Terrorists Kill 35, despite Floods

   » ‎ CBN.com - CBN News
  Despite Pakistan's devastating floods, Islamic terrorists are back in business, murdering civilians.
• 19:00

  Israelis Find Peace Talk Optimism Difficult

   » ‎ CBN.com - CBN News

  Many are calling this month's start of Middle East peace talks a major breakthrough, but in Israel it's hard to find much optimism.

• 19:00

  Israelis Find Peace Talk Optimism Difficult

   » ‎ CBN.com - CBN News

  Many are calling this month's start of Middle East peace talks a major breakthrough, but in Israel it's hard to find much optimism.

• 19:00

  No Evidence Links Yemeni Men to Terror Plot

   » ‎ CBN.com - CBN News

  The two Yemeni men suspected of rehearsing a terror attack are now free without charges.

• 19:00

  No Evidence Links Yemeni Men to Terror Plot

   » ‎ CBN.com - CBN News

  The two Yemeni men suspected of rehearsing a terror attack are now free without charges.

• 19:00

  Category 4 Earl Forces Coastal Evacuations in NC

   » ‎ CBN.com - CBN News

  Hurricane Earl gained strength late Wednesday to a Category 4 storm with 135 mph winds, after being downgraded to a Category 3 earlier in the day.

• 18:56

  A special message for all 9/11 Family members - from fellow 9/11 Families Regarding the September 11 Rally against the Ground Zero

   » ‎ Atlas Shrugs

  

  Latest Press Release from : 9/11 Parents & Families of Firefighters & WTC Victims

  The Rally is not the problem, the mosque is.....

  "9/11 Parents & Families of Firefighters and WTC Victims"

  Recently a 9/11 family group called for suppression of the September 11th rally near Ground Zero which opposes the construction of a mosque and cultural center near the sacred ground. Many 9/11 families do not agree with attempting to stop this demonstration - and the majority of our group supports the purpose and principles of this rally.

  We have been informed that this demonstration will in no way interfere with the Anniversary Commemoration - instead it will be held at the site of the proposed mosque building at Park Place - after the conclusion of the 9/11 ceremony. Numerous family members, including many from out of state, have made arrangements to attend this important gathering.

  While we respect the rights and opinions of others, we feel that no one should attempt to inhibit the expression of free speech for the large number of 9/11 family members who wish to participate in opposing the construction of this mosque and cultural center. This project represents a gross lack of sensitivity to the 9/11 families and disrespects the memory of all those who were murdered at the WTC both in 1993 and 2001.

  We affirm that the 9/11 Anniversary is a very special and precious commemoration for all of us. However, we feel that by attending and participating in this rally, families can endeavor to ensure that the sacred ground will continue to be respected for posterity.

  Many of our family members feel that they have a moral obligation to their loved ones to raise their voices as the world looks upon us and sees our plight.

  For many family members, the looming, unresolved mosque controversy has made the upcoming September 11th Anniversary even more upsetting and troubling. There can be no peace and reflection for the 9/11 families who strongly feel that this proposed mosque is disrespectful and insensitive. On 9/11, as the world is focusing on Ground Zero, families want to be able to raise their voices and say to the world that this is wrong.

  While it is possible for some to seek peace and reflection on 9/11 - for others it is better to actively seek justice and honor the legacy of their loved ones by publicly challenging this building whose location so affronts the sensitivity of large numbers of victims' families. While we may all wish for peace and tranquility - if there is no justice for the victims and their families- there will be no peace for any of us.

  No one is being forced to attend this rally, but all family members should have the right to choose whatever they wish to do. On this most poignant day, relatives and friends of the victims have the right to join together with other 9/11 family members who want their voices to be heard in honor of their lost loved ones.

  Chief Jim Riches, Chairperson 9/11 Parents & Families of Firefighters & WTC Victims

  Sally Regenhard, Vice Chair

  Supporters:

  Bill Doyle
  
  Jim McCaffrey
  
  Chief Al Santora
  
  Maureen Santora
  
  Rosemary Cain
  
  Russell Mercer
  
  Joyce Mercer
  
  Rosaleen Tallon
  
  Eileen Tallon
  
  Albert Regenhard
  
  Nelly Braginsky
  
  Robert Da Ros
  
  Timothy Dennehy
  
  Joan O'Callaghan
  
  Marcia Morris
  
  Noreen O'Riordan
  
  Christina Regenhard
  
  Wen Shi
  
  Margaret Wade
  
  Dave Wade
  
  Kathleen Bergin
  
  Donal Flynn
  
  Emma DiPierro
  
  Rosa P. Leonetti
  
  Dominick LaFalce
  
  

  ============================================================================

  A message from Pamela and Robert:

  
  
  We are grateful that a wide spectrum of 9/11 families have declared their unequivocal support for our September 11 Rally of Remembrance honoring the victims of 9/11 and ensuring that their memories will not be desecrated by the construction of an Islamic supremacist mega-mosque at Ground Zero.

  We are aware that some 9/11 families, while declaring their opposition to the mega-mosque, have asked us to move the date from September 11 because they feel that our rally will be “disrespectful.” As they must know, we did not choose the date of the rally to be “disrespectful” for those who were murdered on September 11, 2001. In fact, we did not choose it at all. The date was chosen for us when Daisy Khan announced that the Islamic supremacists plan to break ground for their mosque on September 11, 2011. (She denies this now, contradicting her own words.)

  They are trying to co-opt the date of September 11 for their own nefarious purposes. We are not willing to let them succeed in that attempt. In a certain sense, we are all 9/11 family members: as a nation, we all suffered grievous harm on September 11, 2001. As Americans, we want to reclaim September 11 as a day of mourning -- and as a day of national resolve and remembrance to stand up to the inhuman ideology that slaughtered 3,000 precious souls on September 11, 2001.

  As such, we are beginning the rally after the conclusion of the memorial services, and we are starting with a solemn memorial of our own, featuring a minister and rabbi offering prayers for the 9/11 families and for the nation. Only in that context are we going to speak about the Ground Zero mega-mosque at all.

  By so doing we are going to do our part to reclaim 9/11 for patriots. Those who don’t have special press credentials or status as a 9/11 family member have been subjected every September 11 to the 9/11 truthers, the America-haters, the conspiracy mongers, trinket hawkers, and those openly crowing about America’s defeat on that day. Ground Zero turns into a desecration of the memories of the fallen. The 9/11 families, inside their secure area, may have experienced the day as a time of mourning in an atmosphere of sanctity. But outside that area, 9/11 has been claimed every year by enemies of our nation. Consequently, the idea of gathering tens of thousands of patriots at Ground Zero, to stand reverently and respectfully for American values, honors the memory of those who died on September 11, 2001 simply because they were Americans.

  The patriots at Ground Zero, praying for the victims’ families and for America, have been asked out of respect not to bring signs, but only American flags. The rally is a one of remembrance, dedicated to honoring the memory of those who were murdered, and making sure their memory is not desecrated by this mosque. How does such a spectacle in any way dishonor the victims of the 9/11 attacks?

  We have received scores of emails from 9/11 family members, urging us not to change the date, but to keep it where it was.

  Despite this faction’s stated opposition to the mega-mosque at Ground Zero, no one will be more pleased by their statement against our rally than Ibrahim Hooper of the Hamas-linked Council on American Islamic Relations, Muslim Brotherhood groups such as MSA, ISNA, and ICNA, the Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, Daisy Khan, and Sharif El-Gamal.

  Thousands of patriots praying with flags, weeping, at Ground Zero on September 11, instead of a gang of 9/11 Truthers and thugs. They’re not coming to agitate. They’re coming to pay their respects. Given the declarations of Daisy Khan about September 11, 2011 and the carnival atmosphere of every September 11 in the past few years, we cannot and will not move the date. It is necessary for Americans to reclaim that date.

• 17:55

  Lack of Sleep Can Cause Depression, Weight Gain

   » ‎ TIME.com: Top Stories
  A collection of studies published Wednesday in the journal Sleep tackled some important questions this month

• 17:49

  Hey Vets, if You're Tired of Getting Screwed, Vote Democrat and Vote Obama!

   » ‎ Newsvine - Top News
  For generations our Government has promised those who have served their country certain benefits in return for that same service. These are the young men and women who put on the uniform, in the past because they had no choice and since the draft was done away with as volunteers.

• 17:00

  'It's OK to embarrass yourself'

   » ‎ The Guardian World News
  

  With one band Nick Cave has a carefully built musical legacy. With his other, he can visit his 'lower self' and make chaotic noise. Alexis Petridis meets Grinderman

  You would be hard-pushed to call the video for Grinderman's new single Heathen Child anything other than striking. On one level, that's far from surprising. The director is John Hillcoat, best known for his harrowing adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road. His most recent collaboration with Nick Cave was the multiple award-winning 2005 film The Proposition, and that was pretty striking, too: the kind of film you watch through your fingers, a feast of blood and brutality set in 19th-century Australia. Then there's the racket Cave makes with Grinderman, which seems to have more in common with the nihilistic violence of his early 80s band the Birthday Party than the stately, beautifully wrought ballads that populate his most recent albums with the Bad Seeds. Like Grinderman's previous singles, Get It On and No Pussy Blues, Heathen Child is a scouring, ferocious din built around Cave's rudimentary explorations of the guitar, an instrument he only took up a couple of months before the band recorded their 2007 debut album ("What do you mean, have I become more adept?" he deadpans. "What, you're saying I wasn't adept before? Would you ask Jimi Hendrix that question on his second album?"). Under the circumstances, it seems fairly easy to predict the kind of visual accompaniment Cave and Hillcoat might have dreamed up.

  But, as swiftly becomes apparent when Cave calls up the video on his laptop, striking comes in many forms. It opens with a beautiful girl submerged in a bath of milk, before Cave and his fellow Grindermen – Jim Sclavunos, Martyn Casey and Warren Ellis, Bad Seeds all – appear. They seem to be dressed as Roman centurions, their plumed galeae and thigh-length tunics accessorised, in Cave's case at least, with a pair of leopardskin underpants.

  "We're actually sort of Olympian deities, loosely modelled on the God of War," corrects Sclavunos. "He was an aggressively, arbitrarily violent god."

  "There was a miscommunication with the costume department," nods Cave, a little ruefully. "And we ended up looking like gay Roman footsoldiers." He brightens a bit. "Still, we've got the legs for it."

  "I think if you keep watching the video, and you witness the supernatural powers we exhibit, then it will become clear how godlike we truly are," suggest Sclavunos, as the kind of very low-rent death-ray special effect you used to get on Tom Baker-era Doctor Who episodes shoots from the eyes of his onscreen counterpart. Later he does a slow-motion hip-swinging dance that reveals Cave drew the long straw when it came to underwear in the video: beneath his tunic, Sclavunos appears to be wearing some kind of posing pouch. As his buttocks fill the screen, the pair dissolve into laughter.

  The video is, they claim, all part of the concept surrounding the second Grinderman album, the prosaically titled Grinderman 2, which arrives complete with an accompanying book of illustrations by a German artist who contacted Cave after making a video for the Bad Seeds song Moonland as part of her finals: "I got her to illustrate the whole record, so that we could work out a kind of overarching narrative that ran from one song to the next." What exactly that overarching narrative might be remains a moot point, at least today: "You have to buy the fuckin' record and work it out," snaps Cave, when the subject is broached.

  Grinderman's debut served up the sound of what Cave described as "a mammoth midlife crisis" in a sleeve that featured a photograph of a monkey apparently masturbating ("Just for the record," Cave clarifies, "it's not wanking, it's holding on to its genital area, terrified"). The songs were fixated on sex and ageing and masculinity in crisis: Cave depicted himself sucking his gut in and offering to do DIY in doomed attempts to attract female attention: this from a man who in his youth was wont to write songs in which he dealt with recalcitrant females by stabbing them in the head. There's some more of the same on Grinderman 2: "My baby calls me the Loch Ness monster," growls Cave, "two humps and then I'm gone." He says Grinderman's method of songwriting – improvising everything, including lyrics – tends to bring out his lower self: "You can't write that stuff down on a piece of paper. I can't sit in my office and write it down, because when you're writing, you're working from the mind and your mind is telling you: 'Don't write that down, don't go there, it's not a good idea, it's not worth the grief.'" But like the sound of the album, the lyrics also seem more dense and strange, less prosaic than its predecessor. "From the get-go, there were images cropping up in the ad-lib lyrics that Nick was coming up with," says Sclavunos. "There were various hairy beasts. Wolfmen. There were threads. There is a consistent atmosphere of oppressive, hallucinatory evil, an anxious undercurrent. It's got its peaks and valleys, but it permeates everything."

  Cave chuckles. "This is Jim's third day of interviews," he shrugs.

  In person, Cave and Sclavunos make a great double act. Cave speaks with that rising Australian inflection that makes every statement sound like a question, which shouldn't be surprising, but somehow is. Sclavunos's voice is a low, dolorous rumble that emerges from within a beard you would describe as vast if it wasn't next to that of Warren Ellis, a man whose tonsorial arrangements beggar belief. Similarly, Sclavunos's sharp brown suit pales a little when placed next to Cave, who today sports a scarlet shirt open to mid-chest and a spectacular variety of medallions. They are both infectiously enthusiastic about Grinderman, whose existence Cave credits with revitalising the Bad Seeds. "It just had a kind of cataclysmic effect, you know? It just turned things upside down. For me, sonically, there was just too much going on in the Bad Seeds. There's a sound that's really unique to them, this kind of monstrous sound, and there's nothing I like more than going onstage with them and having this monstrous kind of thing about me, but something had happened where it felt really difficult to make a record like The Boatman's Call again, where you could go in and say, all right, this is basically piano and drums and bass, everybody sit back. It felt like every time I took a song into the Bad Seeds, everyone piled in on it. In the Bad Seeds," he smiles, "you play a song, and everyone's grabbing a fuckin' maraca, y'know?"

  Both are extremely funny, which comes as a relief. Cave, in particular, trails a reputation for prickly relations with the press that's perhaps a little out of date – yes, he did once write a song called Scum in which he colourfully decried Mat Snow, then of the NME, as "a miserable shitwringing turd who reminded me of some evil gnome" and yes, he did once punch a journalist in the middle of an interview, but that stuff all happened decades ago, at the height of his heroin-sozzled dissolution. Judging by his more recent cuttings, Cave takes umbrage at journalists depicting him as a former hellraiser now living a life of domestic contentment with his family in Hove, but there's no doubt his life is more settled than it once was. You could argue that it's virtually impossible to imagine how Cave's life could be any less settled than it once was, but, nevertheless, his current arrangement seems to suit him. At 52, his productivity is torrential: by contrast, even Sclavunos – who balances the Bad Seeds and Grinderman with his own band, the Vanity Set, and a burgeoning career as a producer for, among others, the Horrors and the Jim Jones Revue – is taking it easy.

  When, in the wake of The Proposition's success, Variety magazine named Cave one of 10 screenwriters to watch, he claimed: "The last thing I ever wanted to get involved with is Hollywood … It's a waste of fucking time and I have a lot to do." Indeed, last year alone, as well as working on another film with Hillcoat, the Brighton-set Death of a Ladies' Man, he produced two film scores, a second novel, The Death of Bunny Munro – which garnered both good reviews and a nomination for the Literary Review's Bad Sex in Fiction awards – and narrated an animated film called The Cat Piano. And 26 years after they formed, the Bad Seeds are in the midst of a startling artistic purple patch: their last two albums, the double Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus and 2008's astonishing Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! are probably the best Cave has ever put his name to. He says he produces records so quickly his label doesn't know what to do with them: "Daniel Miller from Mute had a quiet talk to me to say, 'Pull your fuckin' head in and stop doing so much stuff. You've become a marketing nightmare.' I took some time off." He laughs. "Well, a weekend. It becomes a problem, how to pace all the stuff."

  The critical acclaim that seems to come as standard with the latterday Bad Seeds' career is a long way from the polarising effect both Cave and Sclavunos's early bands had on listeners: while Cave seemed to spend as much time with the Birthday Party punching the front row as he did singing, Sclavunos was doggedly thumping a solitary snare drum in Lydia Lunch's screeching no wave band Teenage Jesus and the Jerks. You get the feeling that both of them miss at least some of the chaos they once provoked, hence Grinderman. "There's a comfortability with the Bad Seeds that Grinderman disrupts," says Cave. "That's what's chaotic about Grinderman. I get very different responses to it from my very close friends, from my colleagues, people I work with. Some love it, some are baffled by it. Some are like flat-out, 'What the fuck are you doing?' which is exciting to me. There's a pressure with the Bad Seeds that I don't feel in Grinderman. Within the Bad Seeds there is a sense of duty for me to the band's legacy. I don't want to put out a whole load of shitty records with the Bad Seeds. There's a kind of open rule within Grinderman that it's OK to embarrass yourself, to go to places that could be potentially disastrous."

  "We've tried flute solos," interjects Sclavunos. "Drum solos. All sorts of dubious territory."

  "No one's going to come down on you for it," Cave says. "It's out there in those regions that interesting things are found, but it's creatively dangerous to go there. We go into the studio with nothing at all. No lyrics, none of that, no chord charts. The only thing I had for the first record was an empty notebook with the words No Pussy Blues written on one page. This time I didn't even have that. We play for five days, then we listen to this morass of … bullshit that we've played, and suddenly these great bits of music emerge."

  "There's no disrespect to the Bad Seeds," Sclavunos says. "It's more like we want the disruption. I think sometimes the public starts thinking along the lines of, 'Oh, we've got their number,' and they start compartmentalising you. We do make an effort with every Bad Seeds record to do something new, to challenge ourselves. Grinderman helps that along. We want the public to be as on the edge of their seats as we put ourselves."

  "People seem to be more concerned about what the Bad Seeds is and what Grinderman is than we are," Cave sighs. "We understand it's confusing. We don't understand what's going on with it all. Life's too short to worry about it." There's a pause. "There was definitely a feeling on this record that we wanted to get back to something that had a really malign feel to it, and take great pleasure in it."

  Why?

  "It's just more natural," he says, and returns his attentions to his laptop screen, where Jim Sclavunos's buttocks have been replaced by the diverting sight of Nick Cave, middle-aged man of letters, recent recipient of an honorary doctorate from Dundee University for his "visionary songs, stories, books films and poetry", dressed as a Roman centurion, firing an unconvincing death-ray special effect out of his bum.

  Grinderman 2 is released on Mute on 13 September. They play the Garage, London, on 23 September, then touring.

  • Nick Cave
  • Grinderman

  Alexis Petridis
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• 16:59

  Sexual healing

   » ‎ The Guardian World News
  

  Try to excite him in other ways - erotic massage might do the trick

  I enjoy sex with my boyfriend of two years – he has a stunning body that really turns me on. But lately he seems bored and has started pressing me for anal sex, to use sex toys and to have a threesome. None of that appeals to me, but I'm worried that if I don't try these novelties, he'll break up with me. How can I keep him happy without doing things I don't fancy?

  Your reason for enjoying sex with him is his appearance, so your main arousal trigger may be visual. To help excite him in a more palatable manner, find out which of the five senses cue him erotically. For example, try erotic talk to see if it is auditory (describing scenarios involving threesomes might do the trick), or erotic massage for touch. For taste, try using food such as chocolate, or bring enticing scents into the bedroom (don't deny him your own natural one).

  In the process of investigating you'll demonstrate that you too can be experimental. He may be finding your focus on his body objectifying (men experience that as well as women), so he could be trying to deflect that by suggesting erotic play that puts the focus back on you. The "novelties" may seem more appealing once fully discussed. Safety considerations are often the biggest barrier, so negotiation is vital. Anal sex, threesomes and toys all involve trust; he may be unconsciously asking you to do just that.

  Pamela Stephenson Connolly is a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist who specialises in treating sexual disorders.

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  • Relationships

  Pamela Stephenson Connolly
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• 16:45

  How the Last Poets ended up on an FBI watch list

   » ‎ The Guardian World News
  

  Musicians don't often end up on FBI watch lists, but the Last Poets did, thanks to their links with the Black Panthers. Dorian Lynskey looks back at a time when pop and politics collided as never before

  One day last December, Umar Bin Hassan of the Last Poets attended a gathering in Chicago to commemorate local Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton, who was shot dead by the police 40 years earlier. There were about 30 people, including the widows of Hampton and fellow Panther Eldridge Cleaver, and former members of radical groups such as Weatherman. "We laughed and drank wine and talked about what we all had been through," Hassan says. "I'm glad I made it. It was good to see a lot of those people still living, you know?"

  They were survivors of a turbulent period. In 1968, just two years after Oakland residents Huey Newton and Bobby Seale formed the Black Panthers, FBI director J Edgar Hoover called the party "the greatest threat to the internal security of the country" and set about spending millions of dollars to infiltrate, sabotage and divide it. By the mid 70s, it was in terminal decline, and Hampton was far from the only fatality.

  The Panthers' legacy has been fiercely debated ever since. Some people claim the leadership, especially Newton, were their own worst enemies: paranoid hotheads prone to violence and cronyism. Others regard them as heroes who gave young African-Americans power and pride in the face of endemic racism, only to be brought down by Hoover's machinations. A new project, Tongues on Fire, aims to accentuate the positive, bringing together the party's official artist and minister of culture, Emory Douglas, with musicians such as the Last Poets, the Roots and jazz saxophonist David Murray.

  Valerie Malot, a Frenchwoman who is Murray's wife and producer, conceived Tongues on Fire after attending an activist convention in Oakland and seeing Bobby Seale selling a Panther-themed hot sauce named after the famous 60s war cry Burn Baby Burn. "I was really shocked when you've tried all your life to change people's conditions and you end up selling hot sauce at a convention," she says. Malot's focus on Douglas makes sense. He came to work on the Black Panther newspaper when the party had barely a dozen members, and the vivid, revolutionary designs he produced during the subsequent decade are part of the era's visual vocabulary. But the Panthers' relationship with music was much more complex.

  When Newton and Seale were preparing the first edition of the newspaper in 1966, they listened obsessively to "brother Bobby" Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited, especially Ballad of a Thin Man, which Newton read, rather fancifully, as a parable of racist oppression. At this point, black artists were still using code words such as "respect" and "pushing" when dealing with the subject of race. Even after blackness entered pop's lexicon via James Brown's Say It Loud – I'm Black and I'm Proud, Newton and Seale's rhetoric, and Douglas's artwork, only found their musical analogue with the arrival of the Last Poets.

  Formed in Harlem in 1968, the Last Poets lost most of their founding members before they even recorded their debut album. The classic lineup on the Poets' eponymous 1970 release consisted of Abiodun Oyewole, Jalal Mansur Nuriddin and Umar Bin Hassan. In his hometown of Akron, Ohio, Hassan had been an angry young man looking for direction when he saw the Panthers' first televised action: their armed entrance into the California legislature in May 1967.

  "Woah," he remembers. "I was so excited to see some young black men do that. The Panthers were my first introduction to black militancy. About two months later I saw Huey Newton on the news, standing on the fenders of two cars and throwing down his fists at these white cops. I thought the revolution was going to begin and end in California. I ain't never been in a gang, but if I was going to be in a gang I wanted to be in a gang that stood up and defended the black community from racist cops."

  Nobody had ever heard anything like the Last Poets. They combined the militant spirit of avant-garde jazz musicians such as Archie Shepp with the furious poetry of Amiri Baraka, who called for "poems that kill: assassin poems". Their rage was aimed at both white America ("the Statue of Liberty is a prostitute") and apathetic, unrevolutionary black people. Controversially, they called these people "niggers".

  "The Last Poets out-niggered everybody," Hassan says with a throaty chuckle. "We had Wake Up Niggers, Niggers Are Scared of Revolution … Our thing was not to use that word as casually as the kids today. You got young kids who think it's OK to be a nigger. Nah, it ain't OK. We were trying to get rid of the nigger in our community and in ourselves. The difference between us and hip-hop is we had direction, we had a movement, we had people who kept our eyes on the prize. We weren't just bullshitting and jiving."

  Despite zero airplay, the response to the album from those who heard it was "overwhelming" and the Panthers saw a fantastic recruitment opportunity in the Poets. "Everybody knew how much the people liked us and everybody wanted us to become a part of their thing," says Hassan. "But we kept ourselves independent." They did not need to be card-carrying members in order to be useful. "Music to [the Panthers] was something to get people's attention so they could speak," says David Murray, who was a teenager at the time. "Like a trumpet sounds and then there's a speech."

  Very soon the party had a soundtrack, with such radical poets as the Watts Prophets, Nikki Giovanni and Gil Scott-Heron emerging almost simultaneously (although Scott-Heron was sceptical about "would-be revolutionaries" with "afros, handshakes and dashikis" in his song Brother). Sympathetic rock stars such as Santana and the Grateful Dead played fundraisers. The party even attempted to launch its own musical stars. Elaine Brown, a new recruit who later became the party's minister of information and, eventually, chairman, recorded a vocal jazz album called Seize the Time and a follow-up for Motown, Until We're Free. At Emory Douglas's suggestion, four San Francisco Panthers formed a Temptations-style soul group with the Marx-inspired name of the Lumpen, though songs such as Revolution Is the Only Solution and Old Pig Nixon were a long way from the Temptations in terms of chart appeal.

  Unlike the Last Poets' output, this was pure propaganda music. As the Lumpen's Michael Torrance explains on the Black Panther history site It's About Time: "The music was simply another facet of service to the Party and the Revolution. Furthermore, since we were an educational cadre, rigorous study was necessary to be able to translate the ideology of the BPP into song." The musicians employed the same strategy as Douglas did with his artwork. "Huey and Bobby always said that the African-American community wasn't a reading community but they learned through observation and participation," Douglas says. "[African revolutionary] Samora Machel said you have to be able to speak in a way that a child could understand." Indeed, the Panthers' most famous song, written after Newton's arrest for murdering a police officer in 1967, was a two-line chant that even children could sing: "Black is beautiful/ Free Huey!"

  In 1970, the year the Last Poets began their album with the ominous phrase "time is running out", it seemed to many US radicals, black and white alike, that revolution was imminent. But within a couple of years, the Black Panther Party was in disarray, largely thanks to the dirty tricks of the FBI. "Those who have the power always have the time and resources to get together," Hassan says. "They took their blows for a minute but then they realised, 'We gotta come back at this.'"

  The agency fomented civil war between Newton and Cleaver, with bloody consequences. Douglas, who was regularly tailed by FBI agents, remembers seeing his artwork imitated on a forged pamphlet attacking another black organisation. "They tried to destroy and discredit the Black Panther Party by any means necessary," he says. "We knew what was going on but you couldn't put your finger on it." The Watts Writers Workshop, the base of the Watts Prophets, was burned to the ground by a trusted employee who, it transpired, was an FBI plant. The Last Poets were constantly monitored, as Hassan discovered years later when he saw his FBI files. "We were on President Nixon's list, the defence department list, the national security list. It kind of blew my mind."

  Not all the blame, however, can be laid at the government's door. The Huey Newton who emerged from jail to retake the party leadership in late 1970 was a troubled, paranoid character who acquired a taste for cocaine and groupies and soon fell out with Cleaver. "Bobby Seale was the brains," says David Murray. "Huey Newton was an action person. He would just go and do it. That might also be why he's not alive [Newton was shot by a crack dealer in 1989]."

  Despite positive achievements such as a free breakfast programme for poor children, the mood of mistrust caused Panther members to desert en masse. Elaine Brown resigned the chairmanship in 1977 after Newton approved the beating of a female party administrator. Eight years earlier she had recorded Seize the Time. Now the time was definitely past.

  "We all thought we were moving towards bringing about something new, something good, for America – not just for black people, but for all people," Hassan says. "But when you started seeing one brother go one way and another brother snitching, a lot of us went back on to the streets doing what we were doing before, selling drugs or hustling, because we were disappointed." Hassan himself left the Last Poets in 1974 and became a cocaine addict, giving poetry readings in crackhouses. "Yeah man, there was a lot of disappointment."

  Asked about the Panthers' balance sheet, Emory Douglas draws a long sigh. "I would say we did the best we could under the circumstances. You have to understand that never in the history of the country had any organisation stood up to the challenges in the way we did and at such a young age." David Murray thinks the party has to be seen in context. "This was a time when California was changing the world. I was a hippie, I was a Black Panther, I was in the Nation of Islam. That was how you grew up during that time – you had to dabble in each one."

  Tongues on Fire demonstrates that the era's revolutionary art, visual and musical, outlasted the party that inspired it. Chaka Khan and Chic's Nile Rodgers drew from their experience as members. Bands such as Public Enemy (whose Chuck D remembers singing "Free Huey!" as a child) pitched themselves as the Panthers' heirs: "This party started right in '66/ With a pro-black radical mix." Naturally, they were fans of the Last Poets.

  A few years ago, Hassan met former Panther chairman David Hilliard in Oakland. "He said, 'Do you know how important you guys were? People listened to y'all. Y'all made people want to be Panthers and join the Nation of Islam. Y'all were as important as anyone because you made people think.' It took me a long time to understand how much influence we had on that time."

  Tongues on Fire: A Tribute to the Black Panthers, featuring David Murray, the Last Poets and the Roots, is at the Barbican, London, on 11 September.

  • Pop and rock
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  Dorian Lynskey
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• 16:15

  News of the World faces fresh phone hacking charge

   » ‎ The Guardian World News
  

  • Calls for judicial inquiry after reporter is suspended
  • Latest phone hacking allegation dates from earlier this year
  • Four targets poised to sue police over failure to warn them

  The government tonight came under pressure to set up a judicial inquiry into the phone hacking scandal at the News of the World after the paper confirmed that it has suspended a journalist while it investigates new allegations of the unlawful interception of voicemail.

  The prime minister's media adviser, Andy Coulson, has denied a report in the New York Times which claimed he freely discussed the use of unlawful news-gathering techniques when he was editing the paper and "actively encouraged" a named reporter to engage in illegal interception of voicemail messages. Coulson has always denied knowing of any illegal activity by his journalists.

  Scotland Yard, too, found itself in the firing line after the New York Times quoted unnamed detectives alleging they had cut short their investigation because of their close relationship with the News of the World. A group of four public figures, including former deputy prime minister John Prescott, is poised to sue police over a failure to warn them they had been targeted by the private investigator at the centre of the scandal, Glenn Mulcaire.

  The Guardian has learned that the Metropolitan police commissioner at the time of the original investigation, Sir Ian Blair, was among those whose names were found in material seized from Mulcaire, raising questions about whether officers who were directly involved in the investigation had discovered that they, too, had been targets of the newspaper. It is understood Blair was assured at the time that his phone had not been hacked.

  The former Labour minister Tom Watson today called on the government to set up an inquiry into the relationship between Scotland Yard and Rupert Murdoch's News Group, which publishes the News of the World. In a letter which was addressed to the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, in the absence of the prime minister, who is on paternity leave, Watson wrote: "The testimony given to the New York Times is that the police did not share all the relevant information with the Crown Prosecution Service, and that, if they had done, the CPS would have reached a different conclusion. These are clear grounds for a judicial inquiry.

  "I think that information should be made available to the people concerned."

  Amid signs of unease among the Tories' coalition partners at the new allegations about Coulson, a Lib Dem member of the Commons culture select committee has also called for an inquiry.

  Adrian Sanders, MP for Torbay, said: "For the sake of justice a judicial inquiry would, along the lines of the Hutton inquiry, put this to bed once and for all."

  At the end of the original police inquiry, in January 2007, Mulcaire and the News of the World's royal reporter, Clive Goodman, were jailed for illegally intercepting the voicemail messages of eight people. The Guardian last year revealed that the scandal involved other journalists at the paper and numerous other victims.

  The News of the World today confirmed one of its reporters is currently suspended after his phone number was allegedly identified as the source of an unauthorised attempt earlier this year to access the voicemail of a public figure. The Guardian understands the suspended reporter has worked at the News of the World since January 2005, specialising in celebrity scoops. His name has not appeared in the paper since April. The reporter today did not return phone calls.

  The paper's managing editor, Bill Akass, said it was still investigating the allegation. The Press Complaints Commission said it had been aware of the allegation since June but had chosen not to investigate because it was the subject of legal action by the alleged victim. In May the PCC's chair, Lady Buscombe, told Radio 4's Today programme: "If there was a whiff of any continuing activity in this regard, we would be on it like a ton of bricks. I can absolutely assure you of that."

  Scotland Yard is facing legal action from four people whose names were found in material seized from Mulcaire in 2006 and who were not warned by police that they were potential victims. The former deputy prime minister, John Prescott, has written to them asking for an explanation for the failure. His solicitor, Dominic Crossley, said: "Absent a sufficient response, he will be beginning proceedings."

  Prescott said tonight: "It's vital that the Met comes clean and reveals who and how many people were targeted by this rogue newspaper. We need to know the full truth."

  The former Europe minister Chris Bryant, whose name and phone number were found in Mulcaire's possession and who was targeted by tabloid journalists, separately is preparing for a similar judicial review of the police conduct of the case.

  Bryant is involved in a joint action with an investigative journalist, Brendan Montague, and one of Scotland Yard's former deputy assistant commissioners, Brian Paddick, whose name was found in Mulcaire's records but who was never warned by his own former colleagues.

  Their solicitor, Tamsin Allen of Bindman, plans to ask the court to order Scotland Yard to hand over a list of all those who have been identified as potential victims. She said: "According to the rules, the claim and the pre-action letter should be served on anyone with a legitimate interest in the outcome. We say that that includes all of the people who are effected in the same way as our clients."

  According to paperwork in the possession of the CPS and seen by the Guardian, Scotland Yard made repeated requests to prosecutors to "ring-fence" the evidence in order to conceal the names of "sensitive" victims. The paperwork also shows that, after studying phone records, the police found that "a vast number of unique voicemail numbers belonging to high profile individuals (politicians, celebrities) have been identified as being accessed without authority" but the officer in charge, Andy Hayman, subsequently claimed that they had found "only a handful" of victims, a claim which has been repeated by senior Yard officials in recent press briefings.

  The lead Labour member on the Metropolitan Police Authority, Joanne McCart ney, tonight wrote to the Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson, asking for details of senior officers whose voicemail may have been intercepted by Mulcaire. "It is vital that the public can be confident the Met is investigating crime without fear or favour," she wrote.

  Today it emerged another senior Scotland Yard officer at the time, Michael Fuller, was also on the list of names found in the private investigator's possession.

  Scotland Yard has previously admitted that police officers as well as government, military and royal figures were among those who were warned they were potential victims, but they have refused to identify the individuals or even to say how many they warned.

  Scotland Yard today dismissed the claims about them. "The Met does not consider the issues raised by the New York Times accurately reflect how the investigation was conducted," a spokesman said.

  Other legal actions are also being launched. Sky TV football commentator Andy Gray, the former MP George Galloway, and Max Clifford's former assistant, Nicola Phillips, have all separately issued proceedings for invasion of privacy. And Mark Lewis, a solicitor who handled an earlier legal action, is suing Scotland Yard and the Press Complaints Commission in relation to remarks made in a speech made by Lady Buscombe last year. The PCC has formally apologised, but the case continues.

  Others who are known to have had their voicemail accessed – but who were not identified in the original court case – include Prince William, Prince Harry, the then culturesecretary Tessa Jowell, Boris Johnson, the then-editor of the Sun Rebekah Brooks, Andy Coulson himself as editor of the News of the World, and the former England football manager Steve McClaren.

  • News of the World phone-hacking scandal
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  Nick DaviesNicholas WattVikram Dodd
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• 16:05

  Memphis man convicted of killing wife after one month of marriage

   » ‎ Memphis Commercial Appeal Stories
  A Memphis man who became a widower after just a month of marriage was convicted Thursday of first-degree murder for shooting his wife in the head.

• 15:33

  Study raises hope for older mothers

   » ‎ The Guardian World News
  

  UK research identifying loss of key protein in mice eggs is seen as a breakthrough that may help prevent birth defects

  Scientists have made a breakthrough in understanding why older women become less fertile, suffer a miscarriage or have a baby with Down's syndrome.

  The discovery could ultimately lead to treatments that would increase the chances of a successful pregnancy for growing numbers of would-be mothers in their late 30s and early 40s.

  Researchers led by Dr Mary Herbert, an expert in reproductive biology at Newcastle University's Institute for Ageing and Health, have identified why some older women produce abnormal eggs, according to findings published in the journal Current Biology.

  It has been known for a long time that would-be mothers who are nearing the end of their fertility are at higher risk than usual of having eggs that are affected by chromosomal abnormalities, but the underlying cause has been unclear.

  The new study has identified problems arising from a woman's declining stock of proteins called Cohesins, which act as binding agents to hold chromosomes together by keeping them inside a ring. They are vital to ensure that chromosomes split evenly when cells divide.

  Women's supplies of Cohesins fall as they age, Herbert and her colleagues discovered. Tests on eggs taken from both young and old mice indicated that the amount of Cohesins in women's bodies declines after their mid-30s.

  When that happens it means that chromosomes are less tightly held together and they are therefore more likely to result in defective eggs, which can cause problems such as miscarriage and Down's syndrome.

  Every cell in the human body, apart from eggs and sperm, contains two copies of each of the body's 23 chromosomes. Sperm and eggs must lose one copy each as they prepare for fertilisation. That process involves a complicated form of cell division.

  This problem is compounded with eggs, because the attachments that hold chromosomes together have to be maintained by Cohesins until the egg divides just before ovulation.

  When Herbert's team studied chromosomes during division in the egg, they found that the lower levels of Cohesin in eggs in older females led to some chromosomes becoming trapped and unable to divide properly.

  "Reproductive fitness in women declines dramatically from the mid-30s onwards. Our findings point to Cohesin being a major culprit in this", said Herbert. More work was needed to understand why Cohesin declines over women's reproductive years, and such knowledge could lead to ways being developed to stop that loss from occurring.

  Dr Peter Bowen-Simpkins, the medical director of the London Women's Clinic network of private fertility clinics and spokesman for the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, said the study was "very exciting" and could lead to real improvements in older women's chances of having children.

  "This breakthrough could mean the difference between success and failure – them having a baby or not – for the fast-growing number of women who are trying to conceive after their late 30s," he added.

  • Reproduction
  • Biology
  • Fertility problems
  • Genetics

  Denis Campbell
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• 15:30

  Martin Kettle

   » ‎ The Guardian World News
  

  That opening A of the composer's stunning first symphony, to be played at the Proms tomorrow night, still touches more than words

  The offer of an exclusive pre-publication interview with Tony Blair about his memoir wasn't something to turn down. Having snapped it up, preparation took me over last week, getting a detailed advance read of A Journey, then interviewing Blair himself for 80 minutes on Sunday and finally writing it all up for Wednesday's Guardian. Long days. Lots of work. Hugely interesting.

  Now for my confession. Throughout this time, a large part of my mind was somewhere else. Even when it was least expected, a musical chord – and then the piece of music that grows out of it – kept sounding in my head. If you want the technical details, though they aren't essential, it is a chord of the note A, stretching across seven octaves and played with quietly throbbing pregnancy by the strings of a symphony orchestra. It's the opening chord of Gustav Mahler's first symphony and, absorbing though the former prime minister's words are, I confess that Mahler ousts even Tony Blair every time.

  Mahler's chord is in my brain because tomorrow night at the Proms, Simon Rattle will stand on the conductor's rostrum in the Royal Albert Hall and give the downbeat to the Berlin Philharmonic strings to play it, along with the rest of Mahler's symphony, in one of the glamour nights of this year's season. Every ticket sold out on day one of public booking – almost as if it was Glastonbury.

  As Lynsey Hanley recounted in these pages last week, Britain's class-forged cultural manacles mean that this massively exciting classical music prospect will leave most of the population cold. This partly explains why, even in an article in this newspaper, I am worming my way towards my subject rather too gradually and even apologetically, laying false trails about Blair and pop festivals. But the plain truth about the Rattle concert is this: it's a great Mahler symphony played by what is often the best orchestra in the world – and I can't wait to get over to Kensington.

  The writer Norman Lebrecht has entitled his own recent book – like Blair's, it is by turns fascinating and vain – Why Mahler?. My question would be What Is It About Mahler? What is it about this composer, in his grave for 99 years, that means, as Lebrecht says, that his nine completed symphonies have displaced Beethoven's as classical music's biggest box office draw?

  What is it about Mahler's music that has such a particularly powerful effect on so many people in the modern world? There are, be clear, a lot of us around. Lebrecht may claim "Mahler is mine", but plenty of others say it too. Just before he was deposed, no less than the not-particularly-musical Mikhail Gorbachev pronounced – after a performance of Mahler's fifth – that it "somehow touched our situation, about the period of perestroika with all its passions and struggles". Listening to Mahler does not illuminate Soviet history much for me. But it certainly makes me think about mortality. Everybody Mahlers – Lebrecht thinks the composer's name should be turned into a verb – in their own way.

  Perhaps the answer is that Mahler was a public intellectual who addressed the world in music, not words. Mahler once told Sibelius that a symphony is "like the world" and should encompass everything. In Lebrecht's view, Mahler's first symphony tackled the issue of child mortality, his second the challenge of the afterlife, his third the destruction of the environment, while his fourth proclaimed racial equality.

  These are large and unmusical claims. But music is a language of communication. Mendelssohn said it was a more precise language than words – a potent thought. And, as Lebrecht says, Mahler is not authoritarian. He is a kind of symphonic blogger, a composer seeking unmoderated responses, anxious for feedback and interaction. So why not a symphony about ecology or race? Since Mahler's music also often feels as if it is written on the cusp of a transition from a settled past into an unsettled future, and since that sense of transition is also an ever-present sensibility in our own era, it is hardly surprising that Mahler sometimes seems to have found a hotline to the modern psyche.

  Lacking Lebrecht's self-confidence – not difficult – my views about Mahler are more tentative. It seems to me that Mahler was lucky and gifted enough to have begun his first symphony with a chord that somehow implies the birth of everything, a declaration by a stunningly original musical voice for which all things were possible. But Mahler was also lucky enough, if lucky is the right word for a man who died too soon, that he ended his last completed symphony, the ninth, with music that is a profound and, in many respects, highly affirmative meditation on mortality.

  Last month, at the Lucerne festival, I heard perhaps the finest of all current orchestras under the baton of the most eminent of all conductors playing Mahler's ninth. Claudio Abbado's Mahler is the yardstick by which to judge all the rest, partly because his Lucerne festival orchestra is simply so astonishingly good, but also because Abbado's encounters with mortality – he has survived major cancer surgery – bring exceptional power to his extremely rare performances. When the symphony finally subsided into silence, no one in the hall moved a muscle for around two minutes. This was as good as it gets.

  Later on I came across Mahler's letter of farewell to the Vienna opera orchestra in 1907 after a turbulent and unwilling resignation. "Instead of the whole, the complete creation that I dreamt of, I leave behind something fragmented and imperfect – as man is fated to do," Mahler wrote. "It is not for me to judge the value of my work, but at this moment I am entitled to say of myself: I was honest in my intentions and I set my sights high. In the press of battle, the heat of the moment, there have been wounds and errors on both sides, yours and mine. But when a work succeeded, when a task was accomplished, we forgot all troubles and sorrows and felt richly rewarded."

  That's what Mahler's music says too. And what a political memoir ought to say. I wonder if Blair knows his Mahler? Emotional intelligence? Few greater. Bring on that chord of A.

  • Gustav Mahler
  • Classical music
  • Proms
  • Festivals

  Martin Kettle
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• 14:55

  Memphis division directors to submit 25% cuts amid search for school funds

   » ‎ Memphis Commercial Appeal Stories
  All city division directors were required to send Mayor A C Wharton recommendations for cutting their budgets. The proposals were due by the end of business Thursday.

• 14:34

  Fires kill 2, destroy 170 buildings in Russia

   » ‎ RT
  Deadly fires have destroyed 170 buildings in two Russian regions, killing five and landing 14 people in the hospital.

• 14:27

  Questions over special adviser roles

   » ‎ The Guardian World News
  

  Senior Whitehall figures concerned that Tory party employees have been given civil service roles

  The coalition has quietly appointed a string of party employees to civil service roles – including one aide to the foreign secretary, William Hague – in a move that has raised concerns among senior Whitehall figures, the Guardian has learned.

  Hague today said he felt forced to give yesterday's unprecedented personal statement about his marriage to "put the record straight" after intense speculation about his relationship with a special adviser in a row that has cast light on the propriety of political appointments.

  Separately, several Conservative party and MP employees have been given civil service roles in the Cabinet Office, Department for Education, Foreign Office and Downing Street, stretching the rules regarding appointments. While special advisers are political appointees who can be hired at the will of ministers, civil servants are supposed to be politically impartial and in the majority of cases go through competitive processes to get a job.

  Chloe Dalton, an adviser to Hague in opposition, has been drafted into the Foreign Office as a civil servant. Two speechwriters to David Cameron before the election, Ameetpal Gill and Clare Foges, have paid civil service jobs in Downing Street.

  Sam Freedman, who helped devise the Tories' free schools policy in opposition, has been made an adviser on the civil service pay roll in the DfE.

  Rishi Saha, an internet expert who is close to Cameron's inner circle and was head of digital strategy for the Conservatives, has been appointed the deputy director of digital communications at the Cabinet Office. The Guardian understands that in at least two, unnamed cases the Cabinet Office conduct and ethics department was asked to vet the appointments and passed them.

  A Cabinet Office spokesman said that all civil service appointees must abide by a code dictating that they perform all functions impartially. He added: "Departmental recruitment policies allow individuals to be appointed without open competition on a fixed-term contract where positions need to be filled at short notice. It would be misleading to suggest that there is one particular reason for such appointments. There are a range of specialist skills that may be needed urgently, particularly when a new government is bringing forward a whole new set of policies."

  Jonathan Baume, head of the FDA union of senior civil servants, said: "Where we start to have concerns is where you get people with political backgrounds being appointed to civil servant roles. That's when I start to get nervous."

  A Downing Street source insisted that Labour made similar appointments when it came to power and said the coalition government was more transparent than its predecessors.

  It emerged today that Downing Street failed to include the aide at the centre of the row over Hague's private life in an official list of special advisers published in June. It raises questions about whether Christopher Myers's appointment was official and whether the list, designed to demonstrate how the coalition was cutting back on political appointments, was complete.

  Hague's office confirmed the appointment of Myers, who quit yesterday citing the pressure of speculation surrounding his relationship with the foreign secretary, was approved on 24 May. The official list naming all so-called "Spads" and their wage brackets did not include Myers when it was revealed on 10 June. The Cabinet Office said Myers was not included because he had not taken up the post by 10 June 10 despite the appointment being confirmed. Liam Fox became the second secretary of state to appoint a third spad in August.

  Hague spoke out as Cameron's office confirmed the prime minister has "100% confidence" in his foreign secretary. Hague said he had made the "very personal statement", in which he denied allegations that he was gay, that his marriage was in trouble and that he had an improper relationship with Myers, to end speculation. The statement revealed that he and his wife Ffion had suffered a series of miscarriages. His admission that he and Myers had shared twin bedrooms during the election campaign drew criticisms from Tory colleagues who questioned his judgment.

  Hague told a Foreign Office press conference today: "Yesterday, I made a very personal statement, which was not an easy thing to do. I am not going to expand on that today. My wife and I really felt we had had enough of the circulation of untrue allegations, particularly on the internet, and at some point you have to speak out about that and put the record straight."

  Asked about his colleague John Redwood's suggestion that Hague himself now acknowledged he had exercised "poor judgment" in sharing a room with his assistant, Hague said his work "has not missed a beat, and will not miss a beat, at any stage. I have not spent many minutes away from all duties of the foreign secretary."

  The Tory peer Lord Tebbit said Hague had been "naive at best, foolish at worst". Redwood wrote on his blog: "Let us hope this is now an end to the matter. Mr Hague himself now seems to believe that it was poor judgment to share a hotel room with an assistant."

  Hague was forced to issue the extraordinarily personal and detailed statement under mounting pressure from reports in political blogs and investigations by newspapers over the past few weeks speculating about the appointment of the 25-year old Durham university graduate. Downing Street denied reports Hague was prepared to quit over the furore.

  • William Hague
  • Civil service
  • Conservatives

  Polly Curtis
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• 14:25

  Middle East peace 'in a year'

   » ‎ The Guardian World News
  

  Israeli and Palestinian leaders begin framework talks on a peace deal which could encompass borders, Jerusalem, Jewish settlements and security

  The Israeli and Palestinian leaders, Binyamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas, met for the first day of direct talks in Washington yesterday and agreed that a peace deal could be achieved within a year.

  George Mitchell, the White House envoy who joined the negotiations, said the two leaders decided to begin putting together a framework agreement on all major issues – such as borders, Jerusalem, Jewish settlements and security – that will "establish the fundamental compromises necessary" to flesh out a comprehensive peace deal.

  Mitchell said Netanyahu and Abbas agreed to meet again in a fortnight in the Middle East and every two weeks after that. The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, and Mitchell will attend the first of those meetings on 14 September.

  The negotiations are likely to face their first real test with the next round of talks coming just days before Israel's partial freeze on construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank comes to an end.

  Netanyahu has so far resisted US calls to renew the freeze, which the Palestinians see as a litmus test of the Israeli prime minister's intent.

  Mitchell declined to disclose the detail of the discussions, although he said some of the major issues were touched on. Netanyahu and Abbas met US officials and then met privately. Mitchell described the two men's relationship at the talks as "cordial".

  Before the talks opened, Netanyahu said two key demands – recognition of his country as a Jewish state and arrangements to ensure it does not come under attack from within a Palestinian state – were a prerequisite to a wider agreement.

  Netanyahu again called Abbas his "partner in peace" and said he was prepared to make "painful concessions" to reach a deal. But the Israeli prime minister said that what he called the "two pillars to peace" must be resolved.

  Clinton launched the negotiations by calling for the leaders to show themselves as bold and courageous statesmen and reach a comprehensive peace agreement within the one-year deadline set by Barack Obama. "We understand the suspicion and scepticism that so many feel born out of years of conflict and frustrated hopes," she said. "But by being here today you each have taken an important step toward freeing your peoples from the shackles of a history we cannot change."

  Netanyahu said Israel was prepared to make sacrifices to reach an agreement. "Together we can lead our people to a historic future that can put an end to claims and to conflict. This will not be easy. A true peace, a lasting peace, will be achieved only with mutual and painful concessions from both sides … from my side and from your side," he said.

  Hamas responded to the talks by announcing that it has joined forces with other armed groups such as Islamic Jihad to launch a wave of attacks against Israel. Earlier this week, Hamas claimed responsibility for the killing of four Jewish settlers in the West Bank, including a pregnant woman.

  The Israeli prime minister said there were two issues that he regarded as central to any agreement: legitimacy and security. "Just as you expect us to be ready to recognise a Palestinian state as the nation state of the Palestinian people, we expect you to be prepared to recognise Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people," he said. "I said too, a real peace must take into account the genuine security needs of Israel … new forces have risen in our region, Iran and its proxies and the rise of missile warfare [with Hamas attacks from Gaza]. A peace agreement must take into account security arrangements against these real threats."

  Abbas said he believed a deal was possible. "We're not starting from scratch, because we had many rounds of negotiations between the PLO and the Israeli government."

  • Middle East
  • United States
  • Israel
  • Palestinian territories
  • Barack Obama
  • Binyamin Netanyahu
  • Mahmoud Abbas

  Chris McGreal
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• 14:24

  Feds Sue Sheriff Arpaio, Investigate Chuck E. Cheese — Border Secure!

   » ‎ Michelle Malkin

  **Written by Doug Powers

  By now you can probably read all about this in a revised report to the UN’s Human Rights Council that the Obama administration couldn’t wait to file like a nine year old girl tattling to momma after catching her brother behind the barn reading Playboy, but if you haven’t yet heard, here it is:

  PHOENIX – The U.S. Justice Department sued Sheriff Joe Arpaio on Thursday, saying the Arizona lawman refused for more than a year to turn over records in an investigation into allegations his department discriminates against Hispanics.

  The lawsuit calls Arpaio and his office’s defiance “unprecedented,” and said the federal government has been trying since March 2009 to get officials to comply with its probe of alleged discrimination, unconstitutional searches and seizures, and having English-only policies in his jails that discriminate against people with limited English skills.

  If putting warning signs up in parts of Arizona to deter legal US citizens from travelling through certain areas where they might encounter dangerous illegal activity is an acceptable response to crime, can’t the government just put up signs warning illegals not to travel through Sheriff Arpaio’s jurisdiction and leave it at that?

  In an additional border security measure, the Feds are also investigating the national security threat that is Chuck E. Cheese. Apparently the manager of the Bensonhurst franchise was overheard calling a pizza “Italian food” and has been accused of profiling.

  At a Robert Gibbs’ press conference, reporter Bill Plante asked Gibbs why President Obama has been AWOL while Democrats poll numbers have been nosediving. The fact is, Obama hasn’t been AWOL during the nosedive at all — he’s been the one pushing forward hardest on the stick.

  Update: Arpaio’s office responds — “Not backing down” is an understatement:

  The Obama administration has filed three lawsuits against Arizona in the last few weeks … one against a college district, one against the state of Arizona and now one against my office. Each lawsuit centers on something to do with alleged racial discrimination.

  These actions make it abundantly clear that Arizona, including this Sheriff, IS Washington’s new whipping boy. Now it’s time to take the gloves off. As for today’s lawsuit against my office: These people in Washington met with my attorneys only a few days ago. And in that meeting, Washington got our cooperation; they admitted they already have thousands of pages of the requested documents; and they were given access to interview my staff and get into my jails. They smiled in our faces and then stabbed us in the back with this lawsuit. The Obama administration intended to sue us all along, no matter what we did to try to avert it.

  Washington isn’t playing fair and it’s time Americans everywhere wake up and see this administration for what it really is. Calculating, underhanded at times and certainly not looking out for the best interests of the legal citizens residing in this country.

  **Written by Doug Powers

  Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

  

• 14:03

  Hurricane warning for US east coast

   » ‎ The Guardian World News
  

  Warning extended to include Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts

  Hurricane Earl blew towards North Carolina today with winds of up to 125mph (200kph), putting the east coast on alert. Federal emergency management agency (Fema) administrator Craig Fugate said there was no longer time to wait on the next forecast to see how close the eye of the storm might get to shore.

  A hurricane warning for the tip of Massachusetts, including Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard, joined earlier warnings and watches for hurricanes or tropical storms that stretch from North Carolina up to near the Canadian border.

  "They really need to focus today on what they're going to do before the storm gets there," Fugate said. "Implement your plans and be ready to heed evacuation orders."

  Earl was a dangerous category 3 storm and the hurricane force winds were beginning to spread farther from the eye as the centre of the storm underwent a change, the National Hurricane Centre in Miami said.

  The centre's director, Bill Read, said hurricane winds were spread 90 miles from the eye and widening. The eye of the storm was predicted to remain about 30 to 75 miles east of the Outer Banks, meaning that, at the closest point of approach, the western edge of the eyewall could impact Cape Hatteras, with huge waves, beach erosion and maybe some property damage from the waves.

  "They're going to have a full impact of a major hurricane," Read said.

  There will be a similar close approach for the eastern tip of Long Island, Rhode Island, Martha's Vineyard, and Nantucket. "They'll be facing a similar scenario that North Carolina is facing today," Read said. "And it will be bigger. The storm won't be as strong but they spread out as they go north and the rain will be spreading from New England."

  That will mean strong, gusty winds much like a nor'easter, and because leaves are still on the trees, there could be fallen trees or limbs and downed power lines. "This is the strongest hurricane to threaten the northeast and New England since Hurricane Bob in 1991," said Dennis Feltgen, a meteorologist and spokesman for the National Hurricane Centre. "They don't get storms this powerful very often."

  The North Carolina National Guard is deploying 80 troops to help, and president Barack Obama declared an emergency in the state. The declaration authorises the Department of Homeland Security and Fema to coordinate all disaster relief efforts.

  • Natural disasters and extreme weather
  • United States

  
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• 13:54

  Iranian website puts spin on Obama

   » ‎ The Guardian World News
  

  Website barackobama.ir promises 'an Iranian viewpoint on Barack Obama's opinions'

  A group of Iranian journalists sympathetic to the world view of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has launched barackobama.ir, a website set up to address "an Iranian viewpoint on Barack Obama's opinions".

  The news of its creation first appeared this week in a series of government-sponsored websites and news agencies, which endorsed it as an independent source of information about the life of Obama, his administration and issues such as 9/11, Israel and Iran's nuclear programme.

  The website has attracted nearly 100,000 visitors in its first week. It introduces itself as a group "that believes that Barack Obama isn't only a name but a political phenomenon".

  It depicts the American president as someone "who insists on the Arabic-Islamic part of his name: Hussein" and adds: "He is educated, lawyer, friendly, who observes the niceties of etiquette showing real oriental feeling in his innocent eyes that are the heritage of the occidental government's cruelty to the Negroes." But it adds that, by electing him as president, "the United States confessed to the increasing power of Islam".

  Among articles published on his life is one headlined: "Is he the first Jewish president?"

  Ahmadinejad sees the internet as a platform used for "psychological war against Iran" and has repeatedly asked its supporters to attack the "enemies" in the virtual society.

  Since the disputed presidential election last summer, when Iranian protesters exploited Twitter and Facebook to spread their voice, the number of government-supported websites and blogs has increased significantly, while access to almost all opposition websites has been blocked.

  An Iranian journalist who asked not to be identified said: "In Iran, all blogs and websites need to register with the government, especially those holding .ir domains, and the fact that barackobama.ir is set up without problem and is welcomed by governmental news agencies shows that it is backed by officials within the Iranian regime."

  • Iran
  • Barack Obama
  • United States
  • Internet

  Saeed Kamali Dehghan
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• 13:48

  Chief rabbi challenges Hawking claim

   » ‎ The Guardian World News
  

  Lord Sacks accuses astrophysicist of logical fallacy in book excluding possibility of supernatural creation

  The chief rabbi, Lord Sacks, hit back at Stephen Hawking after the astrophysicist said God did not create the universe.

  In his new book, The Grand Design, published next week, Hawking concludes that science excludes the possibility of a deity and that it is unnecessary to "invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going".

  But his finding were described by Sacks as an "elementary fallacy" of logic.

  Writing in the Times, the chief rabbi said: "There is a difference between science and religion. Science is about explanation. Religion is about interpretation. The Bible simply isn't interested in how the universe came into being."

  Sacks also said the mutual hostility between religion and science was one of "the curses of our age" and warned it would be equally damaging to both.

  "But there is more to wisdom than science. It cannot tell us why we are here or how we should live. Science masquerading as religion is as unseemly as religion masquerading as science."

  In an earlier book, A Brief History of Time, Hawking was apparently more open to the idea of God, suggesting that a scientific understanding of the universe was not incompatible with a creator. "If we discover a complete theory … it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we should know the mind of God," he wrote.

  • Stephen Hawking
  • Physics
  • Religion

  Riazat Butt
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• 13:35

  Hurricane Earl swirls toward N.C.

   » ‎ washingtonpost.com - Today's Highlights
  People all along the Eastern Seaboard brace for major disruptions and significant damage as the massive storm sweeps up the coastline.
  
  
  Outer Banks - Hurricane Earl - North Carolina - United States - Coastal

• 13:29

  New USB Speakers Store Unused Power to Augment Audio from Portable Amps

   » ‎ Popular Science - New Technology, Science News, The Future Now

  Most of us keep our music on our computers and our computers are increasingly mobile, but there's a disconnect between the ability to store large amounts of music on a laptop and the portability of said laptop: laptop speakers aren't worth playing music on. But a clever engineering fix by British company NXT has changed all that, conjuring big sound out of small, portable speakers powered by nothing more than a USB outlet.

  Most audio amplifiers - the kind you plug into the wall - maintain a voltage of about 32 volts. That means when the music gets loud, the amp can deliver the required punch. Laptops, which must use power sparingly to preserve their portability, don't pack nearly the wallop; a USB 2.0 port produces a maximum 5.25 volts to external devices, making it impossible to power larger, high quality speakers from a laptop.

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  TagsGadgets, Clay Dillow, audio, nxt, portable audio, speakers, USB, usb speakersSome engineering trickery from NXT circumvents these problems by relying on the simple premise that the USB can deliver 5.25 volts all the time, even though music is not all crescendos. During quiet passages, a pair of capacitors stores unused voltage coming from the USB. The speakers monitor the music signal a few milliseconds ahead of amplification so they can release that stored up power when the interlude is over and the heavy guitar/drum combo us unleashed.

  Of course, this technology is a replacement for weaker bus-powered, desktop-style speakers; pretty much any high-quality stereo speaker has an AC adapter. And the power storage is limited; the extended version of Freebird could run the capacitors out of juice, causing the volume to fall. But NXT says they've tested the speakers on a variety of musical styles with consistent success. If they can get some consumer electronics firms to hear them, the technology could be on the market by next year.

  [New Scientist]

• 13:24

  Scotland plans to raise alcohol price

   » ‎ The Guardian World News
  

  Formal plans unveiled to fix minimum price for all alcoholic drinks at 45p per unit, trebling cost of cheapest ciders

  The dispute over the need for controls on the cost of alcohol intensified today after the Scottish government unveiled formal plans to fix a minimum price for all alcoholic drinks at 45p per unit.

  That would double or treble the cost of the cheapest super-strength ciders sold by major supermarkets, and raise the cost of cheap supermarket vodka by nearly £4 a bottle. Some own-brand whiskies would cost £3.40 more.

  Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish health secretary, said a minimum price was essential to help tackle the high death toll and health burden from alcohol abuse in Scotland, which drinks 25% more per head of population than the rest of the UK.

  Raising the cost to 45p a unit would immediately save about 50 lives a year, cut hospital admissions by 1,200 a year and mean nearly 23,000 fewer days lost from work in the first year. Within a decade, nearly 225 lives a year would be saved.

  "For too long, too many Scots have been drinking themselves into an early grave," she said. "It is no coincidence that as the affordability of alcohol has plummeted in recent decades, alcohol-related deaths, disease, crime and disorder have spiralled. It cannot be right that a man can exceed his weekly recommended alcohol limit for less than £3.50."

  The proposal will be added to an alcohol bill going through Holyrood this month and was immediately supported by Dr Harry Burns, Scotland's chief medical officer, and the British Medical Association in Scotland and at UK level. It was lambasted by the drinks industry and opposition politicians at Holyrood.

  The Scotch Whisky Association, which represents the producers of Scotland's most valuable single export, said the measure was probably illegal, because it breached competition law, would penalise responsible drinkers and cut whisky sales by nearly 13%.

  It would only cut total alcohol consumption by 4.3%, and simply banning supermarkets from selling below cost price would have a similar effect. "The Scottish government's scheme fails to meet the basic tests of EU law and will do little to address alcohol misuse," said Gavin Hewitt, the SWA's chief executive.

  Sturgeon has not won cross-party support for minimum pricing in Scotland, but has been heartened by supportive comments from health ministers in successive UK governments, including Andy Burnham and the current UK health secretary, Andrew Lansley.

  Last month, David Cameron said the government would look "very sympathetically" at proposals from 12 councils in the Manchester area for minimum pricing, to combat the binge drinking that led many town centres to look like the "wild west" at weekends.

  Liam Donaldson, England's chief medical officer, has repeatedly endorsed the proposal and has been pressing for a 50p minimum price. But the Department of Health in London quashed hopes that it would be adopted across England too.

  A spokeswoman said ministers were committed to "tough action" on problem drinking. The Home Office was consulting on proposals to ban shops from selling alcohol below cost price, and ministers were reviewing taxation. But more work was needed to understand binge drinkers. "No legislation or initiative will work unless we have a better understanding of what drives people's decisions. It is not clear that national minimum unit pricing is the best way to reduce harm, so we need to look at other options in England."

  Jackie Baillie, Labour's shadow health secretary at Holyrood, said the proposal was a "tax on the poor" which would increase revenue for supermarkets by £140m. "The SNP have got this one badly wrong. A minimum price of 45p per unit will make no difference to problem drinks, like Buckfast, but it will punish pensioners and people on low incomes," she said.

  Burns, a long-term advocate of price controls on alcohol, said since Scotland had "lead the way" on banning smoking public places, it could now show leadership on pricing.

  "Scotland has an unenviable reputation when it comes to alcohol. We are, sadly, world-class when it comes to damaging our health through heavy drinking," he said.

  The BMA in London said it too supported the measure across the UK.

  "There is strong scientific evidence that increasing price reduces rates of alcohol-related problems, particularly among young people," a BMA spokesman said.

  "We have consistently called for a minimum price per unit as part of a raft of measures to tackle alcohol abuse and would urge the other UK governments to follow the example set by Scotland."

  • Alcohol
  • Scotland
  • Scottish politics

  Severin Carrell
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• 13:15

  Memphis man who killed mother seeks release from mental facility

   » ‎ Memphis Commercial Appeal Stories
  The public defender’s office was appointed Thursday to represent a Memphis man seeking to be released from a mental health facility some 26 years after he killed his mother.

• 13:03

  Murray State football will be without 5 players for Thursday opener

   » ‎ courier-journal.com.com -
  Spencer Keith threw for 275 yards and three touchdowns to lead Kent State's football team to a 41-10 season-opening victory over visiting Murray State on Thursday night.

• 12:57

  Disappearing grasslands threaten nomads' survival

   » ‎ The Guardian World News
  

  Scientists say desertification of the mountain grasslands of the Tibetan plateau is accelerating climate change

  Like generations of Tibetan nomads before him, Phuntsok Dorje makes a living raising yaks and other livestock on the vast alpine grasslands that provide a thatch on the roof of the world.

  But in recent years the vegetation around his home, the Tibetan plateau, has been destroyed by rising temperatures, excess livestock and plagues of insects and rodents.

  The high-altitude meadows are rarely mentioned in discussions of global warming, but the changes to this ground have a profound impact on Tibetan politics and the world's ecological security.

  For Phuntsok Dorje, the issue is more down to earth. He is used to dramatically shifting cloudscapes above his head, but it is the changes below his feet that make him uneasy.

  "The grass used to be up to here," Phuntsok says, indicating a point on his leg a little below the knee. "Twenty years ago, we had to scythe it down. But now, well, you can see for yourself. It's so short it looks like moss."

  The green prairie that used to surround his tent has become a brown desert. All that is left of the grasslands here are yellowing blotches on a stony surface riddled with rodent holes.

  It is the same across much of this plateau, which encompasses an area a third of the size of the US.

  Desertification

  Scientists say the desertification of the mountain grasslands is accelerating climate change. Without its thatch the roof of the world is less able to absorb moisture and more likely to radiate heat.

  Partly because of this the Tibetan mountains have warmed two to three times faster than the global average; the permafrost and glaciers of the "Third Pole" are melting.

  To make matters worse, the towering Kunlun, Himalayan and Karakorum ranges that surround the plateau act as a chimney for water vapour – which has a stronger greenhouse gas effect than carbon dioxide – to be convected high into the stratosphere. Mixed with pollution, dust and black carbon (soot) from India and elsewhere, this spreads a brown cloud across swaths of the Eurasian landmass. When permafrost melts it can also release methane, another powerful greenhouse gas. Xiao Ziniu, the director general of the Beijing climate centre, says Tibet's climate is the most sensitive in Asia and influences the globe.

  Grassland degradation is evident along the twisting mountain road from Yushu to Xining, which passes through the Three Rivers national park, the source of the Yangtze, Yellow and Lancang rivers. Along some stretches the landscape is so barren it looks more like the Gobi desert than an alpine meadow.

  Phuntsok Dorje is among the last of the nomads scratching a living in one of the worst affected areas. "There used to be five families on this plain. Now we are the only one left and there is not enough grass even for us," he says. "It's getting drier and drier and there are more and more rats every year."

  Until about 10 years ago the nearest town, Maduo, used to be the richest in Qinghai province thanks to herding, fishing and mining, but residents say their economy has dried up along with the nearby wetlands.

  "This all used to be a lake. There wasn't a road here then. Even a Jeep couldn't have made it through," said a Tibetan guide, Dalang Jiri, as we drove through the area. By one estimate, 70% of the former rangeland is now desert.

  "Maduo is now very poor. There is no way to make a living," said a Tibetan teacher who gave only one name, Angang. "The mines have closed and grasslands are destroyed. People just depend on the money they get from the government. They just sit on the kang [a raised, heated, floor] and wait for the next payment."

  Many of the local people are former herders moved off the land under a controversial "ecological migration" scheme launched in 2003. The government in Beijing is in the advanced stages of relocating between 50% and 80% of the 2.25 million nomads on the Tibetan plateau. According to state media, this programme aims to restore the grasslands, prevent overgrazing and improve living standards.

  The Tibetan government-in-exile says the scheme does little for the environment and is aimed at clearing the land for mineral extraction and moving potential supporters of the Dalai Lama into urban areas where they can be more easily controlled.

  Qinghai is dotted with resettlement centres, many on the way to becoming ghettos. Nomads are paid an annual allowance – of 3,000 yuan (about £300) to 8,000 yuan per household – to give up herding for 10 years and be provided with housing. As in some native American reservations in the US and Canada, they have trouble finding jobs. Many end up either unemployed or recycling rubbish or collecting dung.

  Some feel cheated. "If I could go back to herding, I would. But the land has been taken by the state and the livestock has been sold off so we are stuck here. It's hopeless," said Shang Lashi, a resident at a resettlement centre in Yushu. "We were promised jobs. But there is no work. We live on the 3,000 yuan a year allowance, but the officials deduct money from that for the housing, which was supposed to be free."

  Their situation was made worse by the earthquake that struck Yushu earlier this year, killing hundreds. People were crushed when their new concrete homes collapsed, a risk they would not have faced in their itinerant life on the grasslands. Many are once again living under canvas – in disaster relief tents and without land or cattle.

  In a sign of the sensitivity of the subject, the authorities declined to officially answer the Guardian's questions. Privately, officials said resettlement and other efforts to restore the grassland, including fencing off the worst areas, were worthwhile.

  "The situation has improved slightly in the past five years. We are working on seven areas, planting trees and trying to restore the ecosystem around closed gold mines," said one environmental officer. The problem would not be solved in the short term. "This area is particularly fragile. Once the grasslands are destroyed, they rarely come back. It is very difficult to grow grass at high altitude."

  The programme's effectiveness is questioned by others, including Wang Yongchen, founder of the Green Earth Volunteers NGO and a regular visitor to the plateau for 10 years. "Overgrazing was considered a possible cause of the grassland degradation, but things haven't improved since the herds were enclosed and the nomads moved. I think climate change and mining have had a bigger impact."

  Assessing the programme is complicated by political tensions. In the past year, three prominent Tibetan environmental campaigners have been arrested after exposing corruption and flaws in wildlife conservation on the plateau.

  Infestation

  Another activist, who declined to give his name, said it was difficult to comment. "The situation is complicated. Some areas of grassland are getting better. Others are worse. There are so many factors involved."

  A growing population of pika, gerbils, mice and other rodents is also blamed for degradation of the land because they burrow into the soil and eat grass roots.

  Zoologists say this highlights how ecosystems can quickly move out of balance. Rodent numbers have increased dramatically in 10 years because their natural predators – hawks, eagles and leopards – have been hunted close to extinction. Belatedly, the authorities are trying to protect wildlife and attract birds of prey by erecting steel vantage points to replace felled trees.

  There is widespread agreement that this climatically important region needs more study.

  "People have not paid enough attention to the Tibetan plateau. They call it the Third Pole but actually it is more important than the Arctic or Antarctic because it is closer to human communities. This area needs a great deal more research," said Yang Yong, a Chinese explorer and environmental activist. "The changes to glaciers and grasslands are very fast. The desertification of the grassland is a very evident phenomenon on the plateau. It's a reaction by a sensitive ecosystem that will precede similar reactions elsewhere."

  Phuntsok Dorje is unlikely to take part in any study. But he's seen enough to be pessimistic about the future. "The weather is changing. It used to rain a lot in the summer and snow in the winter. There was a strong contrast between the seasons, but not now. It's getting drier year after year. If it carries on like this I have no idea what I will do."

  Additional reporting by Cui Zheng

  • Climate change
  • Conservation
  • Tibet
  • China

  Jonathan Watts
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• 12:55

  Schnabel brings Palestine to Venice

   » ‎ The Guardian World News
  

  Director talks of 'responsibility' to tell story of Middle East conflict in film Miral, told through eyes of two Palestinian women

  The American artist and film-maker Julian Schnabel said he felt a "responsibility" as a Jew to tell the story of Palestine when he opened his new movie at the Venice film festival.

  Schnabel's film Miral, competing with 22 others for the Golden Lion award, brought a note of seriousness to an event that sometimes veers towards the frothier side of culture.

  Miral is told mainly through the eyes of two Palestinian women, covering 40 years of history from the birth of the state of Israel in 1948 to the failed Oslo peace accord of 1993. Its message is that education is the only hope to bringing any kind of resolution to the conflict.

  Yesterday Schnabel said he felt a responsibility to bring the story to the big screen. "Coming from my background, as an American Jewish person whose mother was president of Hadassah [the Women's Zionist Organisation of America] in 1948, I figured I was a pretty good person to try to tell the story of the other side."

  Schnabel has admitted not knowing much about the Palestinian people until he read the semi-autobiographical book by Rula Jebreal on which the film is based. "I felt it was my responsibility to confront this issue because, maybe, I've spent most of my life receding from my responsibility as a Jewish person."

  He said there was an urgency to his film. "This conflict has to end. Every time a child dies on each side — there's no reason for it."

  Miral tells the story of the Dar al-Tifl orphanage in Jerusalem, which was set up by a rich socialite called Hind Husseini in 1948 after she came across 55 orphans in the street. Within six months she had a school for 2,000 children.

  The film shows how one of the orphans, Miral, is forced to grow up fast when she falls in love with a Palestinian activist. Miral is played by Slumdog Millionaire's Freida Pinto, and while there have been eyebrows raised at the Indian actor's casting as a Palestinian, Pinto bears an uncanny resemblance to Jebreal, on whom the character of Miral is based. Vanessa Redgrave and Willem Dafoe have small cameo roles.

  Schnabel said the values that were instilled in him by his mother were the same as the ones instilled in Jebreal by Hind Husseini. "One of the reasons why I made this film is that it was so obvious to me that there are more similarities between these people than differences."

  The debut of Miral was well-timed, coming on the day the US president, Barack Obama, opened a new round of Middle East peace talks.

  Meanwhile, Iranian film-maker Jafar Panahi has been forbidden by the authorities from attending the premiere of his new short film Accordion. He was arrested last year and imprisoned for making a film looking at the Iranian elections, but had planned to attend.

  • Israel
  • Middle East
  • Venice film festival
  • Festivals
  • Palestinian territories

  Mark Brown
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• 12:01

  Gulf oil platform explodes, burning off La. coast

   » ‎ New & Updated

  Enclosure: [download]

  NEW ORLEANS—An oil platform that burned off the Louisiana coast Thursday was the second such disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in less than five months.

• 12:01

  The best of the latest US TV imports

   » ‎ The Guardian World News
  

  Conspiracies, zombies, assassins, cops – there's plenty to get your teeth into in the latest shows coming across from America
  
  Autumn treats: comedy highlights

  Is US TV out to get you this year? We've got not one, but two conspiracy thrillers on the horizon, plus a zombie invasion, conmen, assassins – and a lot of undercover cops. Here's a quick look at some of the best of the new US dramas coming to UK screens this autumn.

  Rubicon - BBC4

  AMC's conspiracy thriller is all hidden clues in crosswords, clandestine meetings in libraries and (very) slow-moving plots – the perfect show to settle down with in the long winter months. James Badge Dale (The Pacific, 24) is the junior intelligence analyst who starts to wonder whether he's working for one of those ultra-secret societies who are out to control the whole world. Miranda Richardson, Arliss Howard and Roger Robinson are all involved, somehow.

  The Event – Channel 4

  "The assassination plot … is not the event." "The disappearance is not the event." "The CIA cover-up is not THE EVENT." Another giant conspiracy to keep you guessing this autumn. But where Rubicon seems to be drawing on The Conversation, Three Days Of The Condor and The Parallax View, the reference points here are more 24, FlashForward, Lost … and possibly even the X Files. What's so secret that the secret service haven't even got President Blair Underwood on their "need to know" list? Hmm.

  The Pillars Of The Earth – Channel 4

  Big, bloodthirsty epic about the fight to build a cathedral in 12th century England, based on the novel by Ken Follett. Ian McShane (no stranger to muddy battles after his days in Deadwood) is wrangling with a cast that includes Matthew Macfadyen, Rufus Sewell, Donald Sutherland, Sarah Parish and Hayley Atwell.

  Dark Blue - Five USA

  Dylan McDermott (The Practice) teams up with Tricia Helfer (Battlestar Galactica) for this undercover cop squad drama where they plot against drug dealers from one of those dimly lit HQs that look a bit like pool halls.

  Nikita - Living

  Hong Kong action star Maggie Q follows in the high-kicking high heels of Anne Parillaud, Bridget Fonda and Peta Wilson to play the rogue assassin who's looking to take down Division, the mysterious agency who trained her. (Didn't they used to pop up and give Jack Bauer a hard time at CTU?)

  The Walking Dead - FX

  The True Blood vampires will be back soon but, until then, maybe it's time to let some other monsters into your life? Based on a cult comic and produced by Frank "The Shawshank Redemption" Darabont, The Walking Dead offers at least the possibility of seeing Andrew Lincoln being eaten by zombies, which should make it worth a look. It's also produced by AMC – the American home of Mad Men and Breaking Bad – which suggests there should be a lot to it than hordes of lurching undead stalking malls.

  Hawaii Five-0 – Bravo

  You know the names, you know the number and you'll be familiar with the theme tune: this re-imagining of the classic cop show brings Alex O'Loughlin (Moonlight), Scott Caan (Ocean's Thirteen), Daniel Dae Kim (Lost) and Grace Park (Battlestar Galactica) together as an all-new elite squad dishing out island justice. Masi Oka (Hiro in Heroes) is also on board as the team's coroner.

  Also back …

  The mighty Mad Men return with a new office next week on BBC4; terrestrial viewers get a chance to wallow in the Southern gothic of True Blood's second series on Channel 4 – the third (with added werewolves prowling the Bon Temps woods) is on FX later in the year. Medics Nurse Jackie (BBC2) and House (Sky1) are also both set to return - but who'll be the first to get an iPhone stethoscope app storyline?

  Looking ahead to early 2011

  Sky's deal with HBO will kick in next year, with Martin Scorsese's Boardwalk Empire, David Simon's Treme and the "fantasy Sopranos" Game Of Thrones all on the cards. Sky1 has also bought Ride-Along – a new cop show from The Shield's creator Shawn Ryan starring Jennifer Beals, and Lone Star - think The Riches with a dash of Dallas. Over on More4, meanwhile, there's Shameless USA, with William H Macy putting a Chicago spin on Frank Gallagher's messy family guy.

  Still waiting for…

  Breaking Bad. Are Five ever going to show the second series of this brilliant show again? That quick run last Christmas went by way too fast. And what about the third? Surely Bryan Cranston's Emmy win this year should ensure that it gets a proper slot?

  • US television

  Richard Vine
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• 12:00

  Gulf oil platform explodes, burning off La. coast

   » ‎ AP Top Headlines At 7:31 a.m. EDT
  By ALAN SAYRE 2010-09-03T04:04:31Z NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- An oil platform that burned off the Louisiana coast Thursday was the second such disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in less than five months. This time, the Coast Guard said there was no leak, and no one was killed....

• 11:29

  Oil rig explodes in Gulf of Mexico

   » ‎ The Guardian World News
  

  Thirteen workers flee drilling platform but oil company denies spill

  Fresh fears about drilling in the Gulf of Mexico were raised today when fire forced workers to abandon an oil and gas platform, just six months after the BP explosion that created an environmental disaster in the region.

  The company, Mariner Energy, said none of the 13 workers, who fled the platform and took to the sea in immersion suits, were injured. The coastguard said they were taken by ship to a nearby platform and from there to hospital in Houma, Louisiana, to be checked. Ships, helicopters and a plane were sent by the coastguard from Houston, New Orleans and Mobile.

  Photographs of smoke billowing from the rig alarmed politicians, environmentalists, fishermen and others on the Gulf coast, still coping with pollution from the BP oil spill.

  Peter Troedsson, a spokesman for the coastguard, said the fire had been put out and, in spite of initial reports of an oil slick, ships and helicopters at the scene could see no pollution round the platform.

  He said the initial report had come from a Mariner ship at the scene, but the coastguards could see no oil sheen at the site.

  The fire is a setback for the oil industry, which has been arguing that drilling in the Gulf is safe and that the BP explosion was a rare event. It came only 24 hours after companies including Mariner had staged a rally in Houston against a moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf. About 5,000 employees had been bussed in for the rally.

  Barbara Dianne Hagood, a spokesman for Mariner Energy, told the Financial Times on Wednesday: "I have been in the oil and gas industry for 40 years, and this [the Obama] administration is trying to break us. The moratorium they imposed is going to be a financial disaster for the Gulf coast, Gulf coast employees and Gulf coast residents."

  Another spokesman for Mariner, Patrick Cassidy, said he did not anticipate any pollution, as the platform had not been drilling and there had been no blowout. "There is no hydrocarbon spill," he said.

  The fire had broken out on a facility above the water, at some distance from the wells, he added.

  Dave Reed, an oil worker on a platform about 14 miles away, told CNN he could see the smoke and that a call had gone out for ships, helicopters and planes in the region to divert to the area. "It took an hour for the helicopters to get here and all 13 were taken from the water," Reed said.

  The alarm was raised by a commercial helicopter flying over the platform. A coastguard spokesman, chief petty officer John Edwards, said: "We were able to confirm that all people were accounted for."

  The fire broke out on the platform Vermilion Oil Rig 380, about 90 miles south of the Louisiana Coast and west of the earlier BP explosion that had killed 11 workers.

  Both the White House and the coastguard said they did not anticipate any pollution, but that ships equipped with facilities to help clean up spills had been sent to the area as a precaution.

  The White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said: "We obviously have response assets ready for deployment should we receive reports of pollution in the water." The White House stressed that, unlike the BP rig, the platform was not a deepwater facility and was only working to a depth of 340ft.

  BP's attempts to cap its well, which saw hundreds of millions of gallons of oil spill into the Gulf, were bedevilled by the depth at which they had been drilling. They finally capped the well in July.

  Mariner is a small company in the process of being taken over by the Apache oil company in a deal worth an estimated $3.9bn (£2.5bn). The deal has not yet been completed. Shares in both companies fell after news of the fire.

  • United States
  • Oil
  • Oil
  • Oil and gas companies
  • BP oil spill

  Ewen MacAskill
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• 11:15

  Kosovo offers fresh start with Serbia

   » ‎ The Guardian World News
  

  Prime minister Hashim Thaçi, writing for Comment is free, responds to EU calls for talks with Belgrade neighbour

  The prime minister of Kosovo, which seceded from Serbia and declared independence two years ago, has offered to make a fresh start in relations with Belgrade, which is coming under increasing European pressure to respond in kind.

  In an article for the Guardian's Comment is free, Hashim Thaçi said it was "inevitable" that Kosovo and Serbia would resolve their deep enmity, bury their differences, and look to a future integrated in the European Union (EU).

  The call for new negotiations between Pristina and Belgrade followed a blunt warning to the Serbian government this week from the foreign secretary, William Hague, who said the Serbs were jeopardising their chances of joining the EU by refusing to deal with an independent Kosovo.

  The Serbs have tabled a draft resolution, to be discussed next week at the United Nations in New York, calling for Kosovo's secession to be condemned.

  Hague told the Serbian president, Boris Tadic, to ditch the resolution. If he refused, Serbia's application to join the EU would be in trouble, Hague warned. If Tadic agreed, Britain would be Serbia's biggest backer in seeking to join the EU. Guido Westerwelle, the German foreign minister, delivered a similar message in Belgrade last week.

  Thaçi appeared to be responding to the growing calls from Brussels and west European capitals for the opening of new talks between Belgrade and Pristina.

  "My country looks forward to working with Serbia and discussing practical issues that would improve the lives of all of our citizens," Thaçi said. "We are neighbours and we face common challenges. Our Serbian neighbours may not recognise Kosovo's independence just yet, but cooperation between the two independent states is inevitable."

  The International Court of Justice dealt Serbie a blow in July, rejecting a demand from Belgrade to declare Kosovo's independence against international law.

  Hague told the Serbs it was time to end recriminations from the outcome of the Balkan wars of the 1990s, to accept the new reality, and to focus on the future, with eventual EU membership.

  Serbia has applied to join, but Brussels has yet to rule on opening negotiations. Membership is years away and improbable unless Serbia recognises an independent Kosovo, something it has vowed never to do.

  Nato went to war against Serbia over Kosovo in 1999. The territory, populated mainly by ethnic Albanians, was then put under UN stewardship, leading to the declaration of independence in 2008. Serbia refuses to accept that. But Thaçi complimented Tadic. "Today's Serbian government," he said, "has a different complexion from the one that terrorised my people 11 years ago."

  Hague said the map of the Balkans, redrawn in the 1990s as a result of the wars and the collapse of Yugoslavia, was now complete and would not be re-opened, meaning Kosovo's fate was settled and there could be no Serbian secession in Bosnia.

  • Kosovo
  • Serbia
  • European Union

  Ian Traynor
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• 10:46

  Miliband tells Labour to end feuding

   » ‎ The Guardian World News
  

  Labour leadership contender says he wants to lead 'a government not a gang'

  Labour leadership hopeful David Miliband today sought to distance himself from the party feuding reignited by Tony Blair's new book, declaring that he wanted to lead "a government not a gang".

  As ballot papers went out to eligible voters, Miliband sent an email to all party members in which he said he was "sick and tired" of seeing the leadership race characterised in terms of a choice between rejecting or retaining New Labour.

  Instead, the shadow foreign secretary pledged to "change the way we do politics" and said he was "ready to lead".

  Miliband dispatched the email to members after the publication yesterday of Blair's autobiography, which charted the former PM's deteriorating relationship with Brown.

  Urging members to give him their vote, Miliband said: "I respect both Tony and Gordon deeply. But their time has passed. Their names do not appear on the leadership ballots. And now we need to stop their achievements being sidelined and their failings holding us back."

  He said those who presented the Labour leadership contest as a choice between rejecting or retaining New Labour were doing a disservice to all of the candidates and to the thousands of members who have participated over the last few months.

  The leadership election was about "pulling together all the talents of our party" rather than "tired old Westminster games", he said.

  In a nod to the warring Blair and Brown camps during Labour's first 10 years, Miliband said: "I want to change the way we do politics. Because I want to lead a government not a gang, a movement not a machine, where honest debate can be a source of strength, not a sign of weakness."

  In the book, Blair describes David Miliband as having "clear leadership qualities".

  Last night, Miliband sought to distance himself from his old political patron by insisting that if he became leader, he would stick to the "Labour way" of tackling the deficit, which was to halve it over four years.

  In his book, A Journey, the former prime minister issued a stark warning to the party not to drift to the left and said he believed Labour lost the general election in May because it "stopped being New Labour" under Brown's leadership.

  Blair also came close to endorsing the economic strategy of the Conservative-led coalition government.

  Miliband rejected the accusation that he was the "heir to Blair" when it was put to him during last night's leadership debate on Channel 4 News.

  "I am my own person. I look forward to the day when Tony says he is a Milibandite rather than people asking me whether I'm a Blairite," he said.

  But he added: "Whoever becomes the party leader will become the heir to Gordon Brown's leadership of the Labour party. Few people would say I was the continuity candidate with Gordon."

  In what will be seen as a thinly-veiled attack on his older brother, Ed Miliband said during the debate that Blair "along with others" was stuck in a "New Labour comfort zone".

  He said: "The truth is that unless we change our attitude on a whole range of things that New Labour took for granted, like flexible labour markets that mean low pay and bad working conditions for people, tuition fees and ID cards, unless we change we are not going to win again. So Tony was a great servant to us in the past, I don't think he's right about the future."

  The shadow health secretary, Andy Burnham, claimed New Labour was seen as "hollow and disconnected" and said: "When Tony Blair says we don't need to move a millimetre away from New Labour I think he has not been on doorsteps recently and he has not recognised how we came to be seen."

  Leftwinger Diane Abbott issued a broadside on the Blair-Brown era by saying New Labour had "frayed" some of the community ties because of its obsession with markets.

  In a speech on how Labour should respond to the government's "big society" agenda, delivered today, she said: "I believe that it is time issues around family and community took centre stage in the debate about what the Labour party is for," she said.

  "New Labour regarded mutual organisation and co-ops as dusty and old fashioned compared to the bright shiny world of the free markets and international financial services. But now unfettered free markets have nearly crashed the world economy, maybe it is time for the Labour party to rediscover some of those old models. They might provide appropriate structures going forward for banks like Northern Rock currently in government ownership."

  As contenders bid to succeed Brown, the former premier revealed he going to work on projects including promoting global access to education and boosting internet use in Africa.

  • Labour party leadership
  • Labour
  • David Miliband
  • Tony Blair
  • Gordon Brown

  Hélène Mulholland
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• 9:57

  Fundamental Physics Laws Change Depending on When and Where You Are, New Study Says

   » ‎ Popular Science - New Technology, Science News, The Future Now

  A particularly mind-bending (and controversial) physics paper surfaced in the past week that should make you feel pretty special. It seems the laws of physics can change after all, and it just so happens they're uniquely suited for us right here, right now.

  The paper, recently submitted to Physical Review Letters and posted to the physics arXiv, suggests the fine structure constant is not actually constant at all. This could mean that if we were in a different place or time period, atoms would not stay together and nothing - neither planets nor people - could exist.

  A team led by John Webb at the University of New South Wales, Australia, has been studying whether the fine structure constant, otherwise known as alpha, changes over time. Alpha is a special number that essentially describes the strength of the electromagnetic force. The famous physicist Richard Feynman called its value "one of the greatest damn mysteries of physics." If it is not 1/137.036, things fall apart.

  If alpha was different in the past, the universe might have looked different, too, which could be determined by looking at distant interstellar gases and how they absorb light. Observations by Webb and others at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii suggest that this is exactly the case - over time, alpha has changed ever so slightly.

  Related Articles

  	Researchers Devise the First Experimental Test of Controversial, Confusing String Theory
  	At Physics Conference, Scientists Say They Are Closing In on 'God Particle'
  	Are We Living Inside a Black Hole?

  TagsScience, Rebecca Boyle, cosmology, physics, richard feynman, Telescopes, universeCompeting studies did not find the same result, however, so this is still a controversial idea. But it's a fair bet Webb's follow-up is even more tendentious: He says alpha also changes over space. According to his theory, we're smack in the Goldilocks zone, where alpha is exactly the right value to make matter possible.

  This paper happened because Webb and his team wanted to reexamine their Keck findings, which suggested alpha was a tiny bit smaller about 9 billion years in the past. They went to the Very Large Observatory in Chile to check it out, and were shocked by what they saw: the further they looked, the bigger alpha got. The discrepancy is even stranger given the two telescopes' positions: they are in two different hemispheres, so they look in two different directions.

  So, to recap: in one direction, alpha was once smaller; in exactly the opposite direction, it was once bigger. This implies that alpha continuously varies throughout space. As Technology Review's physics blog puts it, that's a mind-blowing result. If it's true and can be verified, it could mean the universe is much larger than what we can see, and that the laws of physics vary within it.

  It would not be possible for our type of life to exist in a place where alpha were any different. So here's to here and now.

  [The Economist]

• 9:26

  New New York Times Editorial Policy: When You Have Nothing to Say, Hate Sarah Palin

   » ‎ Big Journalism

  If you’ve never seen the movie The Women, don’t feel bad. You can get a much better lesson in girl-on-girl bitchiness by reading Gail Collins’ much nastier New York Times op-ed “Sarah’s Amazing Race.”

  

  With all the outrage over frivolous stimulus spending projects, the government should fund a study of the nexus between hatred of Palin and the absence of the Y chromosome in liberals like Collins. Finally we’d see stimulus money well-spent. Here’s the first of Collins’ ad feminam mud-balls:

  … Palin is on a roll. She’s got her own TV show, not counting Fox News. And she twitters! Or somebody does it for her. Hard to tell which. Her twit on the president’s Iraq speech was: “may make u want to dig out ur old Orwell books so rewritten history can be deciphered.” On the one hand, the sentence construction does have that Sarah ring to it. On the other, how many of you think that Palin has old Orwell books hanging around the house? May I see a show of hands?

  In this embarrassingly mean-spirited column, Collins drips elitist superciliousness like a human IV-bag. The above excerpt alone shows Collins staking out both Twitter and the entire George Orwell oeuvre as the sole property of the left.

  Her implication? Conservative women—especially non Ivy-league-educated women such as Palin—have no business reading big books like 1984 or using high-tech innovations like Twitter.  Those are reserved for women on the left. Only they possess the intelligence to understand Orwellian admonitions or to articulate intelligent thoughts in 140 characters or fewer.  Hence—as Collins so charitably implies—Sarah undoubtedly has somebody “do it for her.”

  

  By the way, that same “somebody” should inform Collins that when attempting to discredit your opponent for using Twitter, you might want to get your lingo straight. Sarah doesn’t “twitter,” she “tweets.” She doesn’t send “twits”—she sends “tweets.” No doubt a correction is forthcoming.

  Now that Collins has (in her own mind) dispensed with Sarah’s intellectual shortcomings, she turns to Palin’s television success. Itching to dismiss Palin as a vapid celebrity-seeker, Collins does a verbal lap-dance that would earn her her own pole at PoleKatz, The Pink Monkey, Heavenly Bodies, or any of the other fine gentlemen’s clubs in those savory outlying areas of my hometown, Chicago.

  “Sarah Palin’s Alaska,” is set to premiere in November on TLC… One of the episodes will reportedly involve an educational visit to Alaska by Kate Gosselin and her twins and sextuplets, who also have a reality show on TLC that used to be known as “Jon & Kate Plus Eight” until her husband ran off with a large number of different women… The Palins are now reality TV royalty, like the Blagojeviches and the Ozzy Osbournes.

  The implication? Palin’s corrupt like the Blagojeviches, weird like the Osbournes, and irresponsible (Collins’s insinuation) like Gosselin. To label Collins’ so-called logical linkage a stretch would be like calling World War II a dust-up.

  

  Collins hopes to minimize Palin’s TV success by painting her as small-screen, low-life Kardashian noveau riche. And why? Because The Learning Channel deigned to offer the former governor of Alaska a venue to educate the all-too-ignorant denizens of the continental U.S. (not to mention, the world) in the beauties of Palin’s home state.

  Shockingly, Collins observes the liberal de rigueur silence about any possible merits of Sarah Palin’s Alaska. No doubt limited column space prevented her from mentioning that the program’s British producer, Mark Burnett, has a list of Emmy and other TV award nominations and wins longer than the Health Care Bill’s table of contents. Or that in 2004 Time Magazine named him “One of the 100 Most Influential People in the World Today.” Or that last year Burnett received the 2,387th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for “revolutionizing television.”

  No. The pusillanimous (for you conservative women readers , that means “small-minded”) Collins would rather focus on whether Palin really knows how to hunt or not.

  To review:  Collins despises Palin if she hunts—or if she doesn’t hunt. The twit despises Palin if she tweets—or if she doesn’t tweet. And Collins despises Palin if she’s a small-town hayseed with a University of Idaho diploma or if she’s got a flourishing national speaking career and a program on an educational cable TV channel.

  To me it all smacks a little of the Fool’s gripe to King Lear: “I marvel what kin thou and thy daughters are: they’ll have me whipped for speaking true, thou’lt have me whipped for lying; and sometimes I am whipped for holding my peace.”

  I think I’m going to send Gail Collins a copy of King Lear. She obviously has The Women down pat.

  
• 9:26

  New New York Times Editorial Policy: When You Have Nothing to Say, Hate Sarah Palin

   » ‎ Big Journalism

  If you’ve never seen the movie The Women, don’t feel bad. You can get a much better lesson in girl-on-girl bitchiness by reading Gail Collins’ much nastier New York Times op-ed “Sarah’s Amazing Race.”

  

  With all the outrage over frivolous stimulus spending projects, the government should fund a study of the nexus between hatred of Palin and the absence of the Y chromosome in liberals like Collins. Finally we’d see stimulus money well-spent. Here’s the first of Collins’ ad feminam mud-balls:

  … Palin is on a roll. She’s got her own TV show, not counting Fox News. And she twitters! Or somebody does it for her. Hard to tell which. Her twit on the president’s Iraq speech was: “may make u want to dig out ur old Orwell books so rewritten history can be deciphered.” On the one hand, the sentence construction does have that Sarah ring to it. On the other, how many of you think that Palin has old Orwell books hanging around the house? May I see a show of hands?

  In this embarrassingly mean-spirited column, Collins drips elitist superciliousness like a human IV-bag. The above excerpt alone shows Collins staking out both Twitter and the entire George Orwell oeuvre as the sole property of the left.

  Her implication? Conservative women—especially non Ivy-league-educated women such as Palin—have no business reading big books like 1984 or using high-tech innovations like Twitter.  Those are reserved for women on the left. Only they possess the intelligence to understand Orwellian admonitions or to articulate intelligent thoughts in 140 characters or fewer.  Hence—as Collins so charitably implies—Sarah undoubtedly has somebody “do it for her.”

  

  By the way, that same “somebody” should inform Collins that when attempting to discredit your opponent for using Twitter, you might want to get your lingo straight. Sarah doesn’t “twitter,” she “tweets.” She doesn’t send “twits”—she sends “tweets.” No doubt a correction is forthcoming.

  Now that Collins has (in her own mind) dispensed with Sarah’s intellectual shortcomings, she turns to Palin’s television success. Itching to dismiss Palin as a vapid celebrity-seeker, Collins does a verbal lap-dance that would earn her her own pole at PoleKatz, The Pink Monkey, Heavenly Bodies, or any of the other fine gentlemen’s clubs in those savory outlying areas of my hometown, Chicago.

  “Sarah Palin’s Alaska,” is set to premiere in November on TLC… One of the episodes will reportedly involve an educational visit to Alaska by Kate Gosselin and her twins and sextuplets, who also have a reality show on TLC that used to be known as “Jon & Kate Plus Eight” until her husband ran off with a large number of different women… The Palins are now reality TV royalty, like the Blagojeviches and the Ozzy Osbournes.

  The implication? Palin’s corrupt like the Blagojeviches, weird like the Osbournes, and irresponsible (Collins’s insinuation) like Gosselin. To label Collins’ so-called logical linkage a stretch would be like calling World War II a dust-up.

  

  Collins hopes to minimize Palin’s TV success by painting her as small-screen, low-life Kardashian noveau riche. And why? Because The Learning Channel deigned to offer the former governor of Alaska a venue to educate the all-too-ignorant denizens of the continental U.S. (not to mention, the world) in the beauties of Palin’s home state.

  Shockingly, Collins observes the liberal de rigueur silence about any possible merits of Sarah Palin’s Alaska. No doubt limited column space prevented her from mentioning that the program’s British producer, Mark Burnett, has a list of Emmy and other TV award nominations and wins longer than the Health Care Bill’s table of contents. Or that in 2004 Time Magazine named him “One of the 100 Most Influential People in the World Today.” Or that last year Burnett received the 2,387th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for “revolutionizing television.”

  No. The pusillanimous (for you conservative women readers , that means “small-minded”) Collins would rather focus on whether Palin really knows how to hunt or not.

  To review:  Collins despises Palin if she hunts—or if she doesn’t hunt. The twit despises Palin if she tweets—or if she doesn’t tweet. And Collins despises Palin if she’s a small-town hayseed with a University of Idaho diploma or if she’s got a flourishing national speaking career and a program on an educational cable TV channel.

  To me it all smacks a little of the Fool’s gripe to King Lear: “I marvel what kin thou and thy daughters are: they’ll have me whipped for speaking true, thou’lt have me whipped for lying; and sometimes I am whipped for holding my peace.”

  I think I’m going to send Gail Collins a copy of King Lear. She obviously has The Women down pat.

  

• 8:50

  RBS cuts 3,500 British jobs

   » ‎ The Guardian World News
  

  Total positions lost at bailed-out British banks RBS and Lloyds rises to almost 45,000

  The total number of British jobs axed by RBS and Lloyds TSB, both of which were bailed out by the taxpayer and are still part owned by the government, reached almost 45,000 today.

  RBS announced that it was axing 3,500 back-office jobs as a result of the sale of 318 of its branches to Santander, a move demanded by EU regulators in return for the bank's £54bn government bailout almost two years ago. That takes the total number of posts lost since Stephen Hester took over as chief executive two years ago to almost 27,000.

  The decision was met with dismay by union leaders, who described the latest in a string of job losses from the financial services sector as "a horror story", not least because it comes after the bank, in which the taxpayer has an 84% stake, announced profits of £1.1bn last month.

  Earlier this summer, Lloyds TSB axed another 1,850 posts, largely from the Halifax business it rescued amid controversy at the height of the banking crisis, taking the toll since it was bailed out to almost 18,000. The full impact could actually be even higher as a further 1,000 positions are on the line because of Lloyds's decision to close the 265 agencies used by Halifax to allow customers to pay money into their accounts. Often based in estate agents, the people affected by this decision are not employed by Lloyds.

  RBS, meanwhile, said today that the axe would fall across its back office, technology and property operations and no front-line – or "customer-facing" – staff would be lost. Over the next two years, RBS intends to close 12 of its business operations centres: the axe will fall in Leeds, Ashton House in Bolton, Enfield, Harrogate, Bristol, Borehamwood, Liverpool, Milton Keynes, Plymouth, Telford, Bradford and Norwich. It will retain its centres in Birmingham, Chatham, Edinburgh, Greenock, London, Manchester, Rotherham, Southend, Menai and at a second site in Bolton.

  RBS, however, actually expects staffing levels in Scotland to rise, especially in Edinburgh and Greenock, as it consolidates its mortgage, IT and support services on two key sites in the area; the 318 branches sold to Santander are all south of the border. RBS also shifting 150 technology posts from the Netherlands to Edinburgh.

  RBS employs 24,000 people in its back-office functions, out of a total workforce of just under 100,000.

  "It will be a specially bitter pill for staff to swallow as RBS has decided to move some of the jobs abroad to the far east, India and America," said Rob MacGregor, national officer at the union Unite. "Just three weeks ago, staff were boosted to hear of the £1.1bn half-year profit, yet today thousands of them are told that they have no future at the bank.

  "The scale of the cuts announced today beggars belief and staff across the country today will be left reeling from this news. We continue to see a financial services sector which thinks the skills and expertise of its staff are a disposable asset with scant regard for the high level of service these very same staff provide to their customers."

  But a spokesperson for RBS said: "Having to cut jobs is the most difficult part of our work to rebuild RBS and repay taxpayers for their support.

  "We continue to make efficiencies across our business and adjust our plans in line with the divestments we have been required to make by the EU. We will do all we can to support our staff, offer redeployment opportunities wherever possible and keep compulsory redundancies to an absolute minimum."

  • Royal Bank of Scotland
  • Banking
  • Job losses

  Richard Wray
  guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

  
  

• 8:31

  Hurricane Earl: Fears as forecasters say storm could move inland

   » ‎ Home | Mail Online
  
  Winds gusting up to 110mph were expected to lash the north-east of the U.S. as Hurricane Earl grew larger than California and was due to hit the mainland.

• 5:20

  3D TV dominates electronics show

   » ‎ The Guardian World News
  

  Panasonic and Sony show off new 3D products at the IFA 2010 consumer electronics show in Berlin

  3D television has dominated the early agenda at IFA, Europe's largest consumer electronics show, with Panasonic and Sony both announcing flurries of new products and initiatives.

  Panasonic showed off what it claimed was the first genuine 3D consumer video camera, the HDC-SDT750. This will allow users to shoot their own footage in 3D. Makoto Nagura, director of Panasonic's video camera business unit, said this would put 3D firmly into the hands of consumers.

  "There is still one thing missing [today]...That is to keep your precious moments in 3D," Nagura said.

  The SDT750 will go on sale in October. UK pricing was not available but it is expected to be priced at $1,399 (£908) in the US.

  Most of Panasonic's press conference in Berlin was devoted to 3D – one indication of how keen the electronics industry is to persuade consumers that they should embrace the new technology, and spend considerable sums of money upgrading their home electronics set-up.

  Alongside new 3D televisons and Blu-ray players, Panasonic also announced a new service to deliver 3D movies and films directly to users' living rooms. This could fix one of factors that is holding back 3D – a lack of content. Panasonic said that around 2,000 films would be available to be downloaded over a broadband connection to one of its TVs or Blu-ray players. News, sport and music channels would also be supported.

  Hirotoshi Uehara, who runs Panasonic's TV business, told IFA that this 3D IPTV service would help to propel 3D into the mass market.

  However, hefty price tags may continue to hold the technology back. One of the Panasonic TVs unveiled at IFA, the 42in TX-P42GT20, is available for pre-order at £1,499.

  Epson also cast a cloud over the 3D euphoria in Berlin when it failed to show off a 3D projector. It took a much more cautious line than Panasonic, saying that the technology was not yet ready for mass adoption.

  "When the market is ready, when the content is ready and when the technology is ready we'll be there," Jean-Marie Lacroix, commerical director of Epson Europe, told journalists.

  Sony, though, took a very different view as it beat the 3D drum with considerable gusto. It claims to be the only end-to-end 3D provider, as it produces movies shot in 3D, the cameras that are used to film them, and TVs that people can watch them on.

  Unlike Epson, Sony did announce a 3D video projector. The WV-90 will let consumers project a 3D film onto a wall, which could give a cinema-style experience.

  The Japanese giant also had a prototype model of its first 3D-capable laptop, which chief executive Sir Howard Stringer said would be commercially available next year.

  Like Panasonic, Sony is trying to increase the amount of 3D content on the market with a new television service. Stringer, who cited James Cameron's Avatar as a crucial factor in driving 3D forward, cautioned that film-makers should not rely on 3D at the expense of storyline.

  "A hit is still a hit, is still a hit, except that in 3D it's a bigger hit."

  Sony's entire press conference was filmed live in 3D and broadcast on a large screen. This, however, highlighted one of the other drawbacks to 3D broadcasting – that viewers need to wear special glasses.

  Stringer, who described Sony as the "biggest engine" in the 3D train, also argued that the technology could be about more than just films and sport, and demonstrated this with footage of a performance by Chinese pianist Lang Lang.

  Lang Lang himself then played live at IFA, telling the press conference that he was a fan of 3D as it let music lovers "get closer to us".

  • Television
  • 3D
  • Technology sector
  • Panasonic
  • Sony
  • Blu-ray
  • Digital media
  • Online TV
  • Video on demand
  • IFA 2010

  Graeme Wearden
  guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

  
  

• 2:42

  Some bunker down, some flee as Earl approaches US

   » ‎ AP Top Headlines At 7:31 a.m. EDT
  By MIKE BAKER 2010-09-03T04:58:48Z BUXTON, N.C. (AP) -- The last ferry left for the mainland and coastal residents hunkered down at home as Hurricane Earl closed in with 105 mph winds Friday on North Carolina's dangerously exposed Outer Banks, the first and perhaps most destructive stop on the storm's projected journey up the Eastern Seaboard....

• 2:03

  Earl strengthens, heads toward East Coast

   » ‎ CNN.com
  Hurricane Earl was downgraded to Category 2 today, but forecasters warned it was still "large and strong." Rain bands have moved onto the coast of North Carolina.

• 1:00

  Trapped Chilean miner in tight spot after wife, mistress meet (4 p.m.)

   » ‎ Las Cruces Sun-News Most Viewed
  One of the trapped Chilean miners is dreading his rescue - his wife has discovered his secret mistress.
• 1:00

  Chaparral woman, 3 kids flee state before taking drug tests

   » ‎ Las Cruces Sun-News Most Viewed
  LAS CRUCES - A second warrant has been issued for a Chaparral woman who apparently fled the state rather than let authorities test her and her children for methamphetamines.

• September 01, 2010
• 23:58

  Mark Turner Update August 2010: Mark Turner Suicide Attempt

   » ‎ Maggie's Notebook
  As many of you know, I have written volumes about Mark Turner, his conviction for Racketeering, Money Laundering and Grand Theft in Pensacola and the long wait for a decision from the Florida Court of Appeals. I have an update and it breaks my heart for him, his family and those friends who love him, to bring this news of attempted suicide and prison. (See two new videos below)
  
  
  
  Apparently Mark received a telephone call from his Appeals attorney (appointed by the court) sometime before Monday, August 23rd. The attorney broke the news that his Appeal was denied. She told him he would receive a court date three weeks to three months ahead, and on that date he should be ready to surrender himself to the court and begin a 12.5 year prison sentence.
  
  Mark did not tell his wife Nancy or anyone in his family about the phone call. Then sometime before Wednesday, August 25th, his bail bondsman called him with the news that the Judge had revoked his bond and a warrant was out for his arrest.
  
  On Wednesday Mark's wife Nancy, still knowing nothing about the Appeal denial,  received a voicemail from Mark. He instructed her to go to a certain place where she would find a note from him. The note was a suicide note. The note instructed her to call the police and give them a second note left by Mark, requesting that the police leave his wife and children alone - and it said they would find his body soon.
  
  Police responded 30 minutes later. They read the notes and gave them back to Nancy. Police contacted Escambia County and Santa Rosa Country sheriff's departments. They told Mrs. Turner to go back to her home.
  
  As she pulled into her driveway, U.S. Marshalls approached her home and demanded to know where to find Mark. She told them of her meeting with Police and showed them the two notes Mark left for her. The U.S. Marshalls took the notes and told her she would not get them back later.
  
  The Marshall told Nancy and her oldest son that the warrant for Mark's arrest was for a "multi-million dollar white collar crime with a $300,000 bond. This from Nancy:
  

  I told him he was mistaken, that the civil case was a 36 million dollar suit but that Mark had been out for 2 1/2 years on an appeal bond for an $84,000 charge.  I referred him to the Restitution Hearing's Last Document on Mark's website where a copy of the adding tape was provided, proving that the charges added up to $84,000.  He said he only knew what the warrant said.

  By Thursday morning at 10 a.m. police called Mrs. Turner saying they had found Mark in the woods in his car. He had taken 80 Valiums and 40 Lortabs. In the event that he vomited-up the drugs, he hooked up a vacuum cleaner hose to the auto tail pipe and began to breathe in carbon monoxide from 2: a.m. to when the police found him. He had fallen asleep after praying. The police hit their siren and he awakened, tried to drive away but was losing consciousness, and hit a pine tree that was directly in front of the car. When Mrs. Turner got the call, Mark was on his way to the E.R. for treatment. By the time she got to the E.R. his stomach had been pumped and he was on oxygen.
  
  Nancy had to explain to the children that Dad lost his Appeal, she told them about the suicide attempt and took them to the hospital with her. This is a portion of what Mark told Nancy:
  

  I'm sorry I failed you and my family. I'm sorry my children could not just grieve once over my death but how have to grieve everyday wondering when will daddy come home, when will he win the Appeal, when will he get a pardon, is he okay, is he being raped in jail?

  I'm not scared to go to prison and I don't care if I get killed in prison. I made my peace with my Lord and I am ready to go home. I am not suicidal or crazy. I will take the first opportunity to finish what I started so that you and my boys can leave this infested place and never look back.

  Today, five days after finding Mark, Nancy believes he lived after extraordinary measures to end his life, because God still has work for him to do, including continuing to fight against Special Prosecutor Russ Edgar and...coming back home to his family.
  
  You know by now that Mark's case was incredibly confusing. I'm asking for prayer for Nancy Turner and the three children - prayer for Nancy's ability to do what she needs to do for Mark to prepare for a "Post Conviction Appeal." Please pray for Mark, lying in a hospital, awaiting a sentencing date - a specific prayer that someone will address his well-documented refutation of the way his trial, his evidence, the Restitution Hearing and the Appeal were handled.
  
  His wife Nancy Turner, needs an attorney out of the District to handle the Post Conviction Appeal, and an advocacy group willing to help with pro bono work. If you can help, or know someone who might be willing to help, Nancy and I can guide you to volumes of court documentations. Mark kept pristine records and it is all available online.
  
  There were so many strange things that happened during the trial. Mark outlined them in a complaint he made to the Florida Bar. I have combined some information from that complaint and from other court documents to give you some of the more pertinent facts:
  
  1. There is a Turner check for $205,000 that would have impacted the charges of Racketeering and Grand Theft had it been credited to Mark. The Special Prosecutor knew about the check but it was ignored in trial. The Comptroller for Pete Moore Chevrolet stated in Trial that she never saw the check from Mark but Pete Moore's attorney Michael Guttman stated in Trial that he personally handed it to Pete Moore
  
  2. The trial's Verdict Sheet did not specify what Turner was guilty of...it was changed to the point that the instructions provided to the jury were confusing and suggested that if Mark was guilty of one charge then he was guilty of all three.
  
  3. The Restitution Hearing was held after the trial, and the Judge himself stated on court transcripts that the charges did not add up to what Prosecutor Russ Edgar claimed and that the Sentence would have to be addressed in the Appeal. This information was provided after the trial, therefore excluding it for consideration of the appeals process.
  
  4. The Restitution Hearing showed Mark owed between $83,000 and $84,000 - not in excess of $100,000 which is necessary for Grand Theft and Racketeering. (Mark contends that he has all the evidence needed showing that he doesn't owe a dime - nevertheless, under the circumstances, he was willing to settle at the figure the Judge, the Special Prosecutor and his own attorney arrived at, at the Restitution Hearing).
  
  Click here for Mark Turner's rebuttal to the Florida Bar. You'll also find links to all the posts on Mark's case.
  
  I will have updates soon, including Mark's Appeals Attorney rebuttal letter to the Appeals Court.
  
  Mark made these two videos sometime days before the suicide attempt on August 25th. As you listen, you'll see that it appears he planned additional videos, but something made him believe he could not go on. Keep in mind that when these videos were made Mrs. Turner did not know about the Appeal denial or the plans for suicide. Find links to all of Mark's court documents and the background of his case below the videos.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Mark Turner Part One (video) Mark Turner Part Two (video)
  
  
  
  Read every court document here.
  
  Read Mark Turner's blog here.
  
  
  
  
  Latest: Mark Turner's Appeal Court Rebuttal - Appeal Denied
  Mark Turner Needs Your Help: New Trial for Turner: Letter To Gov. Crist.
  Mark Turner's Bar Complaint Against Prosecutor Russ Edgar
  
  Mark Turner Leonark Patrick Gonzalez: Mark Turner New Gonzalez Charges
  
  Mark Turner Pensacola Injustice: Mark Turner Patrick Gonzalez?
  
  Mark Turner Framed? Pensacolan Russ Edgar, Pete Moore Motive for Framing Mark Turner?
  
  Mark Turner, Pete Moore, Russ Edgar: Framing Mark Turner in Pensacola? Update
  
  Sheriff Morgan, Patrick Gonzalez Contract Murders: Local Business Rivals Implicated? 
  
  Byrd "Bud" Billings Business: Mark Turner Bud Billings Connection
  
  Mark Turner Pete Moore Lawsuit: Bud Billings Pete Moore Connection
  
  Byrd Billings, Melanie Billings Murdered: Billings Parents of 16 Children
  
  Byrd "Bud" Billings Business: Mark Turner Bud Billings Connection
  
  Mark Turner Pete Moore Lawsuit: Bud Billings Pete Moore Connection
  
  Sheriff Morgan, Patrick Gonzalez Contract Murders: Local Business Rivals Implicated?
  
  Patrick Poff Gonzalez Whack Bud Billings? Gonzalez Implicates MS-13
  
  
  
  

  
  

  

• 21:50

  New Indictments To Be Announced In FBI Public Corruption Case

   » ‎ KFOXTV.com - Local El Paso News
  Update:Several El Pasoans indicted on public corruption charges turned themselves into the FBI Thursday morning. 11 Indicted in FBI El Paso Corruption Case El Pasoans Turn Themselves In To FBI Presser: Federal Grand Jury Indicts 11 In Corruption Investigation Slideshows: Marc Schwartz | Milton Duntley | Linda Chavez | Ray Rodriguez | Guillermo "Willie" Gandara Sr. | Gilbert Sanchez | Luther Jones | David Escobar | Larry Medina | Frank Apodaca Read: Public Corruption Indictment

• 21:10

  Black Tea Partiers at Restoring Honor Questioned by Liberals Video

   » ‎ Maggie's Notebook
  Listen as a White man asks this Black Tea Partier why he abandoned his "African religion." The Tea Partiers chant at the end: "Red, Black and White Must Unite" (readers, the more I watch this, the more outrageous these Liberals are - especially when they talk about Christianity).
  
  
  
  
  Black Tea Partiers at Restoring Honor Questioned by Liberals (video)

  
  

  

• 5:24

  Obama opens long-shot talks on Mideast peace

   » ‎ AP Top Headlines At 7:31 a.m. EDT
  By MATTHEW LEE and ROBERT BURNS 2010-09-03T02:41:59Z WASHINGTON (AP) -- In an early sign of promise, Israeli and Palestinian leaders pledged Thursday in a cordial first round of talks to keep meeting at regular intervals, aiming to nail down a framework for overcoming deep disputes and achieving lasting peace within a year....
• August 31, 2010
• 5:11

  Federer, V.Williams, Roddick win at US Open

   » ‎ AP Top Headlines At 7:31 a.m. EDT
  By HOWARD FENDRICH 2010-09-03T03:20:11Z NEW YORK (AP) -- Roger Federer is one cool customer....
• August 30, 2010
• 8:31

  Consumer spending rises 0.4 percent in July

   » ‎ AP Top Headlines At 7:31 a.m. EDT
  By CHRISTOPHER S. RUGABER 2010-09-03T04:16:12Z WASHINGTON (AP) -- The unemployment rate may be about to rise again....

Recent items

• September 03, 2010
• 0:13

  Technology › Sony to launch full online music distribution service by year-end

   » ‎ Japan Today: Japan News and Discussion
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• 0:05

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   » ‎ Japan Today: Japan News and Discussion
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• September 02, 2010
• 23:49

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   » ‎ Japan Today: Japan News and Discussion
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• 23:45

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   » ‎ Japan Today: Japan News and Discussion
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• 23:42

  Sports › Hiyama sparks rally as Tigers sweep BayStars

   » ‎ Japan Today: Japan News and Discussion
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• 23:37

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   » ‎ Japan Today: Japan News and Discussion
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• 23:25

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   » ‎ Japan Today: Japan News and Discussion
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• 23:24

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   » ‎ Japan Today: Japan News and Discussion
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• 22:53

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• 22:41

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• 22:37

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   » ‎ Japan Today: Japan News and Discussion
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• 22:30

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• 22:21

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   » ‎ Japan Today: Japan News and Discussion
  Japanese stationery maker Kokuyo Co has begun marketing in China a notebook developed for university students with the help of those attending Fudan University, one…
• 22:18

  Sports › Zaccheroni wants Japan to create new chapter after World Cup effort

   » ‎ Japan Today: Japan News and Discussion
  Newly-appointed national team coach Alberto Zaccheroni wants his new charges to turn the page and create a new chapter in Japanese soccer history after their…
• 22:16

  Entertainment › Pink Lady announce 6th reunion

   » ‎ Japan Today: Japan News and Discussion
  Pink Lady, the Japanese pop duo who dominated the charts in the 1970s, held a press conference this week to announce their sixth reunion. The…

• 22:11

  How Much Will Digital Records Cost You?- VIDEO

   » ‎ FOXNews.com
  How Much Will Digital Records Cost You?- VIDEO
• 22:11

  Hamas Looms as Spoiler in Peace Talks- Mideast Leaders Begin Talks

   » ‎ FOXNews.com
  Hamas Looms as Spoiler in Peace Talks- Mideast Leaders Begin Talks
• 22:11

  More Explosives Linked to Discovery Gunman- Anti-Abortion Group Confronted by Gunman

   » ‎ FOXNews.com
  More Explosives Linked to Discovery Gunman- Anti-Abortion Group Confronted by Gunman
• 22:11

  Family of Stoning Lawyer Flees Iran

   » ‎ FOXNews.com
  Family of Stoning Lawyer Flees Iran
• 22:11

  Teacher Suspended for Teaching Holocaust

   » ‎ FOXNews.com
  Teacher Suspended for Teaching Holocaust
• 22:11

  White House Forbids Sale of Korean War Rifles

   » ‎ FOXNews.com
  White House Forbids Sale of Korean War Rifles
• 22:11

  Hawking Picks Physics Over God in Big Bang

   » ‎ FOXNews.com
  Hawking Picks Physics Over God in Big Bang
• 22:11

  Blair and Bush 'Shoulder to Shoulder'

   » ‎ FOXNews.com
  Blair and Bush 'Shoulder to Shoulder'
• 22:11

  Muslim GI: Koran Says I Can't Fight for U.S.- Gates: Troops in Afghanistan for 'Years'

   » ‎ FOXNews.com
  Muslim GI: Koran Says I Can't Fight for U.S.- Gates: Troops in Afghanistan for 'Years'
• 22:11

  Left-Leaning Media Form Tea Party Tracking Site- OPINION: Liberals Are Losing It

   » ‎ FOXNews.com
  Left-Leaning Media Form Tea Party Tracking Site- OPINION: Liberals Are Losing It
• 22:11

  Candidate Indicted for 'Sex Conduct' With Minor

   » ‎ FOXNews.com
  Candidate Indicted for 'Sex Conduct' With Minor
• 22:11

  Flooding Won't Stop Pakistani Militants- Attacks Target Religious Procession

   » ‎ FOXNews.com
  Flooding Won't Stop Pakistani Militants- Attacks Target Religious Procession
• 22:11

  Treasury Urged to Reject Lawyer Tax Change

   » ‎ FOXNews.com
  Treasury Urged to Reject Lawyer Tax Change
• 22:11

  Chicago Police Chief Criticized for 'Gang Summit'

   » ‎ FOXNews.com
  Chicago Police Chief Criticized for 'Gang Summit'

• 22:11

  Technology › Maruzen, Chinese IT firm to tie up in e-book business

   » ‎ Japan Today: Japan News and Discussion
  Book retailer Maruzen Co and major Chinese information technology firm Peking University Founder Group Corp will launch in early October a business to sell electronic…

• 22:10

  Arpaio: Justice Dept. 'Sandbagged' Me

   » ‎ FOXNews.com
  Controversial Ariz. sheriff slams the department over lawsuit filed against him claiming he refused to turn over records in an investigation into allegations his office discriminates against Hispanics
• Wyo. Man Donates $1.5M to Defend Ariz. Law in Court
• Mexican Military Says 25 Suspects Killed in Shootout
• OPINION: Obama, You're Not Fooling Us on Immigration
• 22:10

  Hurricane Earl Weakens as Rain Begins to Hit Outer Banks

   » ‎ FOXNews.com
  URGENT: Earl is still packing 110 mph winds while moving closer to North Carolina as several bursts of downpours begin to hit the state's coast. | | VIDEO
• Coast Guard Preps for Hurricane Earl
• FULL COVERAGE: Hurricane Earl | VIDEO
• | WEATHER CENTER | TRACKER
• Wind Scale | Following Earl
• LOCAL COVERAGE | UREPORT
• 22:10

  Judge Blocks Neb. Ban on Flag Mutilation

   » ‎ FOXNews.com
  Federal judge overturns state's ban on flag mutilation, clearing the way for the Westboro Baptist Church from Kansas to continue trampling on Old Glory when it protests at military funerals
• 22:10

  With Cap Off BP Well, Will Mud Plug Hold?

   » ‎ FOXNews.com
  Engineers remove temporary cap that stopped oil from gushing into Gulf as a lot will be riding on the stability of a plug that was created when mud and cement were pumped down into the well from the top
• Oil Platform Explosion
• Another Gulf Oil Explosion
• Gulf Platform Explosion

• 22:00

  Water in Earth's mantle key to survival of oldest continents

   » ‎ ScienceDaily: Latest Science News
  Earth today is one of the most active planets in the Solar System, and was probably even more so during the early stages of its life. Thanks to the plate tectonics that continue to shape our planet's surface, remnants of crust from Earth's formative years are rare, but not impossible to find. A new paper examines how some ancient rocks have resisted being recycled into Earth's convecting interior.
• 22:00

  Strain-gating piezotronics: New class of piezoelectric logic devices created using zinc oxide nanowires

   » ‎ ScienceDaily: Latest Science News
  Researchers have developed a new class of electronic logic device in which current is switched by an electric field generated by the application of mechanical strain to zinc oxide nanowires.
• 22:00

  Microsoft Excel-based algorithm predicts cancer prognosis

   » ‎ ScienceDaily: Latest Science News
  Using readily available computer programs, researchers have developed a system to identify genes that will be useful in the classification of breast cancer. The algorithm will enable researchers to quickly generate valuable gene signatures without specialized software or extensive bioinformatics training.
• 22:00

  New app shows 2-D structure of thousands of RNA molecules

   » ‎ ScienceDaily: Latest Science News
  For the first time, it's possible to experimentally capture a global snapshot of the conformation of thousands of RNA molecules in a cell. The finding is important because this scrappy little sister of DNA has recently been shown to be much more complex than previously thought.

• 21:41

  Annual blood drive wraps up by topping goal

   » ‎ courier-journal.com.com -
  Hundreds of people came Thursday to donate a pint of blood in the American Red Cross' Holiday Hero UK & UofL Governor's Cup Blood Drive, an annual event preceding the football game between the two schools.

• 21:38

  Politics › Ministry sets up task force to study North Pole policies

   » ‎ Japan Today: Japan News and Discussion
  The Foreign Ministry said Thursday it has set up a task force to examine Japan's policies concerning the North Pole, as melting ice due to…

• 21:35

  Finance Minister of the Year

   » ‎ The Corner on National Review Online

  Via the Daily Telegraph:

   

  Russia’s finance minister has told people to smoke and drink more, explaining that higher consumption would help lift tax revenues for spending on social services. Speaking as the Russian government announces plan to raise duty on alcohol and cigarettes, Alexei Kudrin said that by smoking a pack, “you are giving more to help solve social problems such as boosting demographics, developing other social services and upholding birth rates”.

   

  “People should understand: Those who drink, those who smoke are doing more to help the state,” he told the Interfax news agency.

  Andrew Stuttaford

• 21:34

  No. 2 Buckeyes get off to fast start, 45-7

   » ‎ The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment
  COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Terrelle Pryor tossed three touchdown passes, Brandon Saine rushed for 103 yards and two scores and No. 2 Ohio State rolled over error-prone Marshall 42-7 on Thursday night in a tuneup for a big date with Miami. Pryor completed 17 of 25 passes for 247 yards and TDs covering 6 and 11 [...]
• 21:34

  Delaware dominates West Chester 31-0

   » ‎ The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment
  NEWARK, Del. (AP) — Pat Devlin threw three touchdowns and Delaware defeated West Chester 31-0 in the season opener on Thursday night. Devlin, the second-year transfer from Penn State, completed 14 of 23 passes for 163 yards. Freshman Andrew Pierce ran for 119 yards and a touchdown on 13 carries for the Blue Hens. The victory was [...]

• 21:31

  Wyo. man donates $1.5 million to defend Ariz. law

   » ‎ FOX 11 AZ - News
  PHOENIX (AP) — A Wyoming man has given more than $1.5 million to help defend Arizona's controversial immigration enforcement measure in court.
• 21:31

  Rape charges dropped against Avondale teacher

   » ‎ FOX 11 AZ - News
  PHOENIX (AP) — All charges have been dropped against a Phoenix-area high school teacher accused of raping a special-education student.

• 21:30

  Oil platform explodes off Louisiana

   » ‎ Los Angeles Times - Top News
  The crew is rescued and there are no signs of a leak, but the accident sparks new debate about wells in the gulf.
  
  The opening scene was all too familiar. Black smoke rising from a burning oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico and workers plucked from the sea. But Thursday's fire on an oil production facility 100 miles off the Louisiana coast appears to have ended without disaster.

  
  

  

• 21:29

  Politics › Opposition parties rap gov't for lack of economic measures

   » ‎ Japan Today: Japan News and Discussion
  Opposition leaders criticized on Thursday the government led by the Democratic Party of Japan for failing to contain the yen's steep appreciation and stock price…

• 21:26

  Jaguars beat Falcons 13-9 in preseason finale

   » ‎ The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment
  JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) — With most starters watching from the sideline, Atlanta and Jacksonville got a last look at players vying for open roster spots. No one really stood out. Fullback Brock Bolen scored on a 16-yard run, Josh Scobee kicked two field goals and the Jaguars beat the Falcons 13-9 Thursday night. The teams exposed just a [...]

• 21:26

  Most Asian stocks rise on improving US data

   » ‎ RSS feed - channel BNews
  Most Asian stock markets climbed Friday as investors took heart from improving U.S. housing and jobs data amid lingering worries over the pace of the global economic recovery. But gains...

• 21:25

  Deeds, Not Words

   » ‎ Western Rifle Shooters Association
  Dan at RTC explains.
  
  Elvis approves.

• 21:24

  Bengals edge Colts 30-28 in preseason finale

   » ‎ The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment
  INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Cedric Peerman had a 93-yard touchdown run in the third quarter and the Cincinnati Bengals beat the Indianapolis Colts 30-28 on Thursday night in the preseason finale for both teams. Peerman finished with 100 yards rushing, and Jordan Palmer completed 10 of 14 passes for 115 yards and two touchdowns for the Bengals [...]

• 21:21

  Maths prodigy Arran Fernandez, 14, becomes youngest Cambridge student since 1773

   » ‎ Home | Mail Online
  
  Home-educated Arran Fernandez sailed through GCSEs and A-levels before going through the university's notoriously challenging interview process.

• 21:21

  Business › Spanish PM, Keidanren call for talks on Japan-EU FTA

   » ‎ Japan Today: Japan News and Discussion
  Hiromasa Yonekura, chairman of the Japan Business Federation, and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero shared a view Thursday that Japan and the European…

• 21:18

  American Bethany Storro burned when acid-like liquid thrown at her face

   » ‎ Home | Mail Online
  
  Bethany Storro recalled the moment a woman approached her and said 'Hey pretty girl, do you want to drink this?' - before throwing acid into her face.

• 21:18

  Red Sox 6, Orioles 4, BBA

   » ‎ The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment
  E_Lowell (2), Wigginton (17). DP_Boston 1, Baltimore 2. LOB_Boston 9, Baltimore 5. 2B_Kalish (5), B.Roberts (11), Markakis (41), Wieters 2 (18). HR_A.Beltre (25). S_C.Patterson. HBP_by VandenHurk (A.Beltre). Umpires_Home, Ron Kulpa; First, Lance Barksdale; Second, Ed Rapuano; Third, Angel Campos. T_3:06. A_26,954 (48,290).
• 21:17

  Harris sharp as No. 13 Miami rolls in opener, 45-0

   » ‎ The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment
  MIAMI (AP) — Jacory Harris looked more than ready for Miami’s long-awaited trip to Ohio State. Harris completed 12 of 15 passes for 210 yards and three touchdowns before sitting out the second half, and the 13th-ranked Hurricanes got their first shutout since 2006 by beating overmatched Florida A&M 45-0 to open the season Thursday night. Leonard [...]
• 21:17

  Bedbug fears putting the bite on hotel industry

   » ‎ The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment
  A single negative posting on the internet making a charming inn sound like a bedbug-and-breakfast can bring an establishment to its knees

• 21:17

  BP Says Limits on Drilling Imperil Oil Spill Payouts

   » ‎ NYT > Home Page
  The company, which had committed to setting aside $20 billion for damage claims and penalties, says proposed legislation could disrupt those efforts.
  
  

• 21:17

  East Coast on alert for Hurricane Earl

   » ‎ chicagotribune.com - News
  BUXTON, N.C. (AP) — Hurricane Earl packed winds near 140 mph as it blew toward North Carolina on Thursday, putting the Eastern Seaboard up to Maine on alert for a Labor Day weekend pounding by waves, gales and rain.

  
  

  

• 21:16

  Governor Palin's Remarks at the Restoring Honor Breakfast

   » ‎ Conservatives4Palin.com
  

• 21:15

  Red Sox beat Orioles 6-4 to win 3-game series

   » ‎ The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment
  BALTIMORE (AP) — Adrian Beltre homered to spark a five-run second inning, and the Boston Red Sox beat the Baltimore Orioles 6-4 on Thursday night to salvage a .500 road trip. David Ortiz drove in two runs and J.D. Drew had three hits for the Red Sox, who moved within 6½ games of idle Tampa Bay [...]

• 21:15

  Courses Of Fire: Run & Gun

   » ‎ Western Rifle Shooters Association
  Read and do, from GardenSERF.

• 21:14

  4th quarter: Bears 10, Browns 10

   » ‎ chicagotribune.com - News
  Kevin Malast is making plays like a guy who does not intend on being cut this weekend. He got the start at middle linebacker because both Brian Urlacher and Hunter Hillenmeyer sat it out.

  
  

  

• 21:13

  Warrants detail stabbings at Calif. beach house

   » ‎ The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment
  VENTURA, Calif. (AP) — Recently released court documents provide details of the brutal stabbing deaths of a pregnant woman and her husband at their Southern California beach house last year. The documents, obtained by the Ventura County Star, reveal an armed intruder demanded cash and jewelry when he burst into the Faria Beach home of Brock [...]

• 21:13

  A Crisis in Amish Country

   » ‎ NYT > Home Page
  An Amish man has been charged with sexual assaults, dividing a congregation that prefers to handle disputes internally.
  
  

• 21:11

  California to use new type of nationwide school tests

   » ‎ Los Angeles Times - Top News
  Through a federal grant, California will join 43 other states in replacing oft-maligned standardized exams.
  
  With a federal award of $330 million, California and 43 other states joined Thursday to replace the much-maligned year-end English and math standardized tests with new nationwide tests that could better measure student learning and teacher performance.

  
  

  

• 21:10

  Soldiers Kill 25 in Mexico Gunbattle

   » ‎ NYT > Home Page
  Mexico’s military says 25 suspects have been shot dead by soldiers in a gunbattle near the U.S. border.
  
  
• 21:10

  Critics Root for Espada’s Exit

   » ‎ NYT > Home Page
  Pedro Espada Jr., the Senate majority leader, faces a tough battle in the Sept. 14 primary, but political observers say he remains a formidable candidate to defeat.
  
  
• 21:08

  Crossroads County: Fewer Young Voters See Themselves as Democrats

   » ‎ NYT > Home Page
  Though many students are liberals on social issues, the economic reality of a weak job market has taken a toll on their loyalties.
  
  

• 21:06

  Mets 4, Braves 2, BBN

   » ‎ The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment
  E_J.Arias (1), O.Infante 2 (14). DP_New York 2, Atlanta 1. LOB_New York 8, Atlanta 6. 2B_I.Davis (26). 3B_Beltran (2). HR_D.Wright (22), McCann (20). S_J.Arias, T.Hudson. WP_T.Hudson. PB_H.Blanco. Umpires_Home, Dan Iassogna; First, Bob Davidson; Second, Alfonso Marquez; Third, Tim Timmons. T_2:46. A_24,895 (49,743).
• 21:06

  Manning, Brady solid in finale tuneup

   » ‎ The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment
  EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. (AP) — Eli Manning and Tom Brady were solid in their final tuneups for the regular season. And Rhett Bomar may have nailed down the job as the New York Giants’ backup quarterback, throwing a 60-yard scoring pass to Duke Calhoun with 1:49 to play as the Giants rallied for a 20-17 victory [...]
• 21:02

  Wright, Santana lead Mets’ 4-2 win over Braves

   » ‎ The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment
  ATLANTA (AP) — David Wright homered, Johan Santana won for the first time in four starts and the New York Mets snapped the Atlanta Braves’ five-game winning streak with a 4-2 victory Thursday night. The Mets, who had dropped three straight, broke a 13-game stretch in which they scored three runs or less against the NL [...]

• 21:01

  Sports › Injured Tulio pulls out of Japan squad

   » ‎ Japan Today: Japan News and Discussion
  World Cup defender Marcus Tulio Tanaka has pulled out of the Japan squad for the upcoming friendlies against Paraguay and Guatemala because of injury, the…

• 21:00

  S.Korea's Kia to recall 35,000 cars in US

   » ‎ RSS feed - channel BNews
  South Korea's second largest carmaker Kia Motors said Friday it is recalling about 35,000 vehicles sold in the United States due to faulty wiring in interior lights that could cause fires.

• 20:57

  Storms unleash strong winds, rain on Oklahoma

   » ‎ NewsOK.com RSS - home
  

  BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

  Severe weather brought strong winds and heavy rain to parts of Oklahoma, causing some damage to homes and knocking down utility poles.

  There were no immediate reports of injuries with the storms that developed along an advancing cold front Thursday afternoon.

  The National Weather Service says the highest wind gusts occurred in the Oklahoma City metropolitan area.

• 20:55

  Can home cooking be hazardous to your health?

   » ‎ RSS feed - channel BNews
  Could your kitchen at home pass a restaurant inspection? New research suggests that at least one in seven home kitchens would flunk the kind of health inspection commonly administered...

• 20:54

  Lions beat Bills 28-23 in preseason finale

   » ‎ The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment
  DETROIT (AP) — Matthew Stafford had an interception returned for a touchdown, but third-stringer Drew Stanton threw a pair of second-half touchdown passes to lift the Detroit Lions to a 28-23 win over the Buffalo Bills in their preseason finale Thursday night. Stafford’s second pass was picked off by Drayton Florence and Detroit (3-1) punted on [...]

• 20:53

  New Titanic Pictures

   » ‎ iOwnTheWorld.com

  ST. JOHN’S, Newfoundland– An expedition surveying the wreck of the Titanic is showing off some crisp images of the world’s most famous shipwreck, but officials said Sunday they are headed back to shore.

  Officials from Expedition Titanic said in a statement they are now headed back to Newfoundland because high seas and winds brought on by Hurricane Danielle are preventing researchers from carrying out their work.

  The team of scientists have been using a pair of robots to take thousands of photographs and hours of video of the wreck, which lies roughly 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) below the surface.

  Here’s one new pic -

  

• 20:52

  Employers Push Costs for Health on Workers

   » ‎ NYT > Home Page
  Employers passed all of the increases in insurance premiums this year to their employees, a survey found.
  
  

• 20:52

  Poll: Giannoulias, Kirk neck and neck

   » ‎ chicagotribune.com - News
  Cash could be deciding factor as Tribune/WGN-TV survey finds weak spots for both candidates
  
  Democrat Alexi Giannoulias and Republican Mark Kirk are wounded rivals running neck and neck for the U.S. Senate seat once held by Barack Obama, a new Tribune/WGN-TV poll shows.

  
  

  

• 20:49

  1st-time starter leads Wake past Presby, 53-13

   » ‎ The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment
  WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (AP) — Ted Stachitas had 160 total yards in his first college start and Wake Forest had six rushing touchdowns in a 53-13 rout of Presbyterian in the season opener for both teams Thursday night. Stachitas was 7 of 13 for 84 yards passing in two quarters of work and rushed for 76 more, [...]

• 20:49

  Earl's winds and rains blow into NC coast

   » ‎ RSS feed - channel BNews
  Rain squalls and gusting winds from Hurricane Earl are becoming more pronounced along the North Carolina Outer Banks. The National Weather Service reports winds on the barrier islands...

• 20:48

  Hurricane Earl now Category 2; N.C. and Va. bracing

   » ‎ Los Angeles Times - Top News
  Hurricane Earl weakened slightly Thursday afternoon, downgrading from a Category 3 to Category 2 storm as of 8 p.m., as it moved toward the Virginia and North Carolina coasts overnight Thursday and into Friday.

  
  

  

• 20:48

  US teen Capra upsets Rezai, plays Sharapova next

   » ‎ AP Top Headlines At 7:31 a.m. EDT
  By HOWARD FENDRICH 2010-09-03T01:48:21Z NEW YORK (AP) -- A year ago at the U.S. Open, American teenager Melanie Oudin told the world to "BELIEVE," with her sneakers and her play....

• 20:46

  Don't Sleep on These Guys

   » ‎ FOXNews.com
  FoxNews.com takes a look at some players who are under the radar that would be great pickups for your fantasy football team
• 20:46

  Totally Crazy Star Baby Names

   » ‎ FOXNews.com
  Are names like Kal El, Zuma Nesta, and Sparrow really creative, or borderline child abuse? You decide!
• 20:46

  Clooney: Darfur My 'Failure'

   » ‎ FOXNews.com
  Actor says his charmed life marred by his inability to make impact on Darfur civil war
  Elisabetta Canalis Pics
• 20:46

  Are These in YOUR Water?

   » ‎ FOXNews.com
  You swallow these invisible shrimp with every gulp of New York City tap water -- yet that's nothing to worry about, say experts
• 20:46

  Making Choices to Love

   » ‎ FOXNews.com
  In his latest book, author David Richo uncovers and shares the key to maintaining healthy, fulfilling relationships to help lead balanced, thoughtful lives
• 20:46

  Oval Office Makeover

   » ‎ FOXNews.com
  President Obama's office is sporting a new look. Here's how YOU would redecorate it

• 20:46

  Man on bicycle groping women at ASU

   » ‎ azcentral.com | news
  Bicyclist who has groped 7 women at ASU since March escalated to reaching under a student's shirt.

• 20:44

  Courts could get claim in Jaycee Dugard kidnapping

   » ‎ The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment
  SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — The board that considers compensation for California crime victims is being advised to reject a claim by the mother of Jaycee Dugard, who authorities say was held captive for nearly two decades by a paroled rapist. Lynn Margherita, spokeswoman for the Victim Compensation and Government Claims Board, said Thursday the board’s staff [...]

• 20:43

  Bumpy economy cited as helping improve U.S. roads

   » ‎ RSS feed - channel BNews
  LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - One upside of the worst U.S. economic slump since the Great Depression is that with fewer motorists on the road, the nation's highways are less congested and in...

• 20:42

  Pregnant Amish woman is hurt in Ohio buggy crash

   » ‎ The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment
  MIDDLEFIELD, Ohio (AP) — Authorities say the driver of a sport-utility vehicle rear-ended a buggy in northeast Ohio, injuring an Amish woman who was eight months pregnant, her husband and their six children. A nursing supervisor at a Cleveland hospital says 31-year-old Barbara Kauffman of Parkman gave birth to a boy Thursday and was in critical [...]

• 20:40

  Mesa police make arrest in murder-for-hire case

   » ‎ azcentral.com | news
  Mesa police arrested Stephen M Sawins, 33, of Chandler, for allegedly offering to pay $50,000 to kill his ex-wife, court documents state.

• 20:40

  Is the 'biased' BBC now try to cosy up to the Coalition? Corporation boss lets slip notes for meeting at No 10

   » ‎ Home | Mail Online
  
  The BBC was caught in a political row last night after its boss Mark Thompson was apparently attempting to cosy up to the Government following complaints over Left-wing bias.

• 20:40

  Okolona fire board tables decision on closing Edgewood station

   » ‎ courier-journal.com.com -
  The Okolona Fire Protection District board on Thursday night decided to table a vote on whether to close its fire station in the Edgewood neighborhood off Preston Highway.

• 20:37

  Can't Fix Stupid

   » ‎ Western Rifle Shooters Association
  But David gives it a good try regarding a true maroon.
  
  Don't be that guy.

• 20:35

  Oklahoma native dies during combat in Afghanistan

   » ‎ NewsOK.com RSS - home

  By The Associated Press

  A family member and a friend say an Oklahoma native has been killed in Afghanistan.

• 20:34

  Decomposed body found in Southeast Memphis field

   » ‎ Memphis Commercial Appeal Stories
  Memphis police are investigating a badly decomposed body found early Thursday.

• 20:32

  Video: GOP launches new, er, “Young Guns” ad

   » ‎ Hot Air » Top Picks

  

  Branding.

  A few days old but worth watching. Here’s the thing: I like the overarching “rebranding” concept, and I really like the idea of showcasing the GOP’s younger stars (Paul Ryan especially). But there’s a certain wisdom in the second clip below (via Mediaite) about not giving yourself your own nickname. My appreciation for Ryan’s seriousness [...]

  View the video »

• 20:31

  Phoenix pediatrician charged with distributing child porn

   » ‎ FOX 11 AZ - News
  A Phoenix pediatrician was charged with distributing child pornography following an FBI investigation.

• 20:29

  No sign of oil after Gulf platform fire: Coast Guard

   » ‎ RSS feed - channel BNews
  NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - An oil and gas platform operated by Mariner Energy burst into flames in the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday, but the crew of 13 escaped and there were no signs of an oil...

• 20:28

  Avalanche sign F Chris Stewart to 2-year deal

   » ‎ The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment
  DENVER (AP) — The Colorado Avalanche remain committed to their youth movement, signing forward Chris Stewart to a two-year deal. The 22-year-old Stewart led the team with 28 goals last season and finished with 64 points. The deal’s terms weren’t disclosed. Colorado general manager Greg Sherman says the team is looking forward to seeing Stewart “build on what [...]

• 20:25

  Muslims use Facebook, YouTube in Kashmir fight

   » ‎ Pakistan News latest RSS headlines - Pakistan News.Net
  YouTube under names such as "oppressedkashimir1," is part of a wave of Web-savvy protesters in Indian-controlled Kashmir who have begun using social networking to publicize their fight and keep fellow...

• 20:25

  Arizona Border Patrol agent killed in car wreck

   » ‎ azcentral.com | news
  TUCSON - A U.S. Border Patrol agent was killed in a car accident Thursday near Sells in southern Arizona.

• 20:24

  Massacre survivor recounts experience

   » ‎ CNN.com
  A survivor of a massacre in Mexico that left 72 dead advised other would-be migrants to stay at home to avoid a fate like the one he and his companions met.

• 20:23

  Obama considers more tax cuts

   » ‎ washingtonpost.com - Today's Highlights
  White House advisors are mulling another dose of business tax breaks ahead of November elections.
  
  
  White House - Business - President - United States - Government

• 20:20

  10 Worst Cities In America

   » ‎ iOwnTheWorld.com

  Compiled by Popwallet.

  They considered, crime, unemployment, weather, health data and foreclosures to create this list. You can visit the site to see what they have to say about each city.

  1: El Centro, California 2: Cleveland, Ohio 3: Detroit, Michigan 4: Las Vegas, Nevada 5: Oklahoma City, Ok 6: Los Angeles, California 7: Phoenix, Arizona 8: Newark, New Jersey 9: Miami, Florida 10: Memphis, Tennessee

• 20:20

  HP wins 3PAR for $2.4 billion as Dell drops out

   » ‎ RSS feed - channel BNews
  NEW YORK (Reuters) - Hewlett-Packard Co won the bidding war to buy data storage company 3PAR Inc for $2.4 billion, as rival Dell Inc bowed out on Thursday.
• 20:20

  Hiroshima epicenter's prewar landscape restored through CG+

   » ‎ RSS feed - channel BNews
  (Kyodo) _ A documentary movie that uses computer graphics to recreate the Hiroshima City area that became the epicenter of the 1945 atomic bombing was previewed Friday at the Hiroshima...
• 20:14

  Calderon: Violence price worth paying in drug war

   » ‎ RSS feed - channel BNews
  President Felipe Calderon tried to rally frustrated Mexicans behind his increasingly bloody drug war Thursday, saying he knows violence has surged under his watch, but arguing that it is...

• 20:14

  Calderon: Violence price worth paying in drug war

   » ‎ The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment
  MEXICO CITY (AP) — President Felipe Calderon tried to rally frustrated Mexicans behind his increasingly bloody drug war Thursday, saying he knows violence has surged under his watch, but arguing that it is the price of confronting powerful and brutal cartels. Calderon delivered his annual state-of-the-nation address two days after his government brought down the third [...]

• 20:13

  Our Man Costa

   » ‎ The Corner on National Review Online

  Bob Costa is having a cup of MSNBC's Morning Joe tomorrow. Tune in!

  Daniel Foster

• 20:13

  Phoenix airport worker arrested in luggage thefts

   » ‎ The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment
  PHOENIX (AP) — A man who worked at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport was arrested Thursday on suspicion that he stole hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of items from the luggage of passengers in a case that could include hundreds of victims from around the world. Officers saw Michael Hegstad, 23, take two boxes from [...]

• 20:13

  A Kashmir Hospital Is Witness to Conflict

   » ‎ Pakistan News latest RSS headlines - Pakistan News.Net
  SRINAGAR, Kashmir — Bloodied and battered, the wounded arrive daily at the emergency room here, the casualties of weeks of protests against gun-toting Indian police and security forces that spil...

• 20:12

  Sea Shepherd sees dolphins caught in Japan cove

   » ‎ RSS feed - channel BNews
  Dolphins have been herded into a cove as part of an annual hunt in the Japanese seaside town made famous by an Oscar-winning documentary about their slaughter, Sea Shepherd said Friday. ...

• 20:09

  Browns’ Hardesty hurts knee

   » ‎ The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment
  CLEVELAND (AP) — Cleveland Browns rookie running back Montario Hardesty left his exhibition debut because of an injured left knee. Hardesty, who missed all of training camp with a bone bruise in his right knee, was hurt on a 2-yard carry in the second quarter Thursday night against the Chicago Bears. Hardesty stayed on the ground for [...]

• 20:06

  Tony Blair book: Gushing tributes to Barrack Obama and George W Bush in memoirs U.S. version

   » ‎ Home | Mail Online
  
  Tony Blair's introduction in the U.S. edition of his book has described American presidents as occupying 'Olympian heights'.
• 20:05

  Cricket fixer's cash trail leads to captain, but Pakistan's most senior diplomat claims players were set up

   » ‎ Home | Mail Online
  
  Cash used in the cricket betting scandal is understood to have been found in the belongings of the Pakistani captain Salman Butt, the Daily Mail has learned.
• 20:03

  Motorist steals Yorkshire Terrier after road rage incident

   » ‎ Home | Mail Online
  
  After Wookie ran out into the road in front of her, the mystery woman stormed up the driveway of his home to confront the dog’s owners - before taking him away.

• 20:01

  How Terrified is the MSM of Sarah Palin? ‘Vanity Fair’ Hack Michael Joseph Gross Quivers in Fear as He Smears, Anonymously

   » ‎ Big Journalism

  The mighty Sarah Palin, not in any political office but who somehow nonetheless rules the world from her Facebook page, clearly terrifies this pathetic little man, Michael Joseph Gross, who was all over the media today to promote his largely unsourced hatchet job on Sarah Palin.

  Yes, that’s right: Sarah is so terrifying that no one would speak of her on the record, which is why Gross had to, um, quote unidentified sources about her martial relations, her shopping habits, and other such things crucial to our understanding of her as a politician.

  Even on the left, the reviews have been terrible. The Washington Post blogged:

  What to make of it all? Politico’s Ben Smith questioned many of the anecdotes and concluded that “you can really write anything about Palin.” The Alaska Dispatch online magazine found the media bubble around Palin newsworthy itself: “A reporter followed Palin around on a speaking tour through four Midwestern states with apparent back-stage access, wrote more than 10,500 words about his experience, and his story doesn’t feature a single new comment from or interview with his subject ….. it’s very unusual.” The Christian Science Monitor summed it up best: “If you are trying to sell books or magazines or get clicks for your website, Republican Party star Sarah Palin is the gift that keeps giving.”

  Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair should be ashamed of himself.

  And then he should fire Michael Joseph Gross.

  

• 19:59

  4 more devices linked to Discovery gunman

   » ‎ FOX 11 AZ - News
  SILVER SPRING, Md. (AP) — A fire chief says crews detonated four explosives linked to a gunman who took three hostages at Discovery Communications headquarters in Maryland.

• 19:57

  Coast Guard: No sign of leak after rig explosion

   » ‎ chicagotribune.com - News
  NEW ORLEANS, La. (AP) — The Coast Guard is saying that a mile-long oil sheen is spreading from the site off an offshore petroleum platform that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico off Louisiana.

  
  

  

• 19:53

  Muslims asked to pay tithe to help Pakistan

   » ‎ Pakistan News latest RSS headlines - Pakistan News.Net
  The relief effort in the area hit by floods in Pakistan may be helped by a new request for Muslims to tithe for the aid effort.

• 19:53

  LEAD: Japan's corporate capital spending falls 1.7% in April-June+

   » ‎ RSS feed - channel BNews
  (Kyodo) _ (EDS: UPDATING WITH MORE INFO, TO BE LED) Japan's corporate capital spending fell 1.7 percent in the April-June quarter from a year earlier for all industries, partly because...

• 19:50

  Video: A huge Republican wave comparable to 1994 is coming, says … Evan Bayh

   » ‎ Hot Air » Top Picks

  

  Waterloo.

  Alternate headline: “Lame-duck Blue Dog free to admit what every other Democrat already knows.” The good stuff comes at the beginning, but if you give up before the end, you’ll miss him talking about what a horrible political miscalculation ObamaCare was. Yes, after 60 years of trying, they finally got a foot in the door [...]

  View the video »

• 19:50

  ClearOne's attorney fees for CEO undecided

   » ‎ RSS feed - channel BNews
  An appellate court ruled that ClearOne Communications Inc.'s agreement to pay attorneys fees for its former CEO came with conditions, including that she not break the law. The 10th U.S....
• 19:49

  Jury hits Ford Motor Co with $131 million verdict

   » ‎ RSS feed - channel BNews
  SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A Mississippi jury ordered Ford Motor Co to pay $131 million to the family of a man who died while driving an Explorer, an attorney for the family said on...

• 19:48

  Man arrested for shooting outside elementary school may have been involved with Brandenburg murder on same day

   » ‎ courier-journal.com.com -
  The man arrested for a shooting another man in the head outside Hazelwood Elementary School early Wednesday night appears to have been involved with the murder of a Brandenburg man that occurred earlier that day.

• 19:46

  Where's the magic gone?

   » ‎ American Thinker Blog
  The reviews on Barack Obama's Iraq speech on Tuesday night, August 31, 2010 are in and they are almost all unkind.

• 19:46

  U.S. employers push increase in cost of healthcare onto workers

   » ‎ Los Angeles Times - Top News
  A new survey shows an average worker with a family plan pays nearly $4,000 a year, up 14% from 2009. Meanwhile, the average employer contribution to a family plan hasn't increased at all.
  
  As employers struggle with rising healthcare costs and a sour economy, U.S. workers for the first time in at least a decade are being asked to shoulder the entire increase in the cost of health benefits on their own.

  
  

  

• 19:43

  Go, Miners! The buzz is big for this year's 20th Minerpalooza

   » ‎ New & Updated

  Enclosure: [download]

  What started out as a picnic has turned into a combination pep rally, concert, festival and fundraising opportunity that draws more than 20,000 people a year.

• 19:43

  Happy beginning for a W.H. production

   » ‎ POLITICO Top Stories
  Obama was able to show on the foreign policy stage.
  
  
  

• 19:42

  Hillary For President Ads Hit Television

   » ‎ iOwnTheWorld.com

• 19:41

  Murdoch: Global economy is still not out of turmoil

   » ‎ RSS feed - channel BNews
  NEW YORK (Reuters) - News Corp Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch said the global economy is still in an uncertain state and the media industry is going through a fundamental transformation...

• 19:39

  International aid for Pakistan has stopped, says UN

   » ‎ Pakistan News latest RSS headlines - Pakistan News.Net
  ROB CRILLY in IslamabadWITH VAST areas of Pakistan still under water and no end in sight to the country’s misery, the United Nations said yesterday the flow of international aid had ground to a ...

• 19:38

  Drug shootout with army kills 25 in Mexico

   » ‎ RSS feed - channel BNews
  MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - As many as 25 people were killed when Mexican soldiers clashed on Thursday with suspected drug gang members in rural northeastern Mexico, local media reported on...
• 19:37

  Comfort Inn a hurricane hostel in NC

   » ‎ RSS feed - channel BNews
  A two-story Comfort Inn has become a makeshift hurricane hostel on North Carolina's Outer Banks for those who want to stay close to their homes but know they need better shelter from the...

• 19:37

  Pakistan's rich 'diverted floods to save their land'

   » ‎ Pakistan News latest RSS headlines - Pakistan News.Net
  A senior Pakistan diplomat has accused "powerful" figures of diverting floodwaters into unprotected areas to save their own land. Abdullah Hussain Haroon, Pakistan's representative to the UN, has cal...

• 19:35

  Tokyo stocks open higher after economic worries ease+

   » ‎ RSS feed - channel BNews
  (Kyodo) _ Tokyo stocks opened higher Friday after better-than-expected U.S. data eased worries about the global economy and drove up shares on Wall Street. In the first 15 minutes of...

• 19:32

  Mac on... The future for Blair

   » ‎ Home | Mail Online
  
  Mac on... The future for Blair

• 19:31

  S.Korea Kia recalls some Soul, Sorento vehicles

   » ‎ RSS feed - channel BNews
  SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea's No. 2 automaker Kia Motors said on Friday that it had started a recall of some Soul and Sorento vehicles sold worldwide because of a fire hazard.

• 19:28

  The Make Believe Mosque and Info On Rauf's Funders

   » ‎ American Thinker Blog
  It would appear a number of tax exempt foundations have joined the UN and a couple of governments to fund a nonexistent mosque.

• 19:28

  President to aides: Find economic spark

   » ‎ CNN.com
  After a week mostly focused on Iraq and Mideast diplomacy, it's back to the economy for President Barack Obama, who will deliver remarks Friday on the August unemployment numbers.

• 19:27

  Hurricane Earl closes in on East Coast

   » ‎ RSS feed - channel BNews
  HATTERAS ISLAND, North Carolina (Reuters) - Hurricane Earl began to strafe North Carolina's barrier islands with dangerous surf and winds on Thursday as it spun parallel to the U.S. East...

• 19:26

  Once Around the Park, Then Farewell

   » ‎ NYT > Home Page
  Getting ready to leave New York, but already missing the High Line, the Shakespeare Garden and more.
  
  

• 19:23

  Sports › Ishikawa leads Fujisankei Classic

   » ‎ Japan Today: Japan News and Discussion
  Ryo Ishikawa fired a 5-under 66 to take a one shot lead in the first round in his bid to defend the title at the…

• 19:22

  Pakistan's rich 'diverted floods to save their land'

   » ‎ Pakistan News latest RSS headlines - Pakistan News.Net
  A senior Pakistan diplomat has accused "powerful" figures of diverting floodwaters into unprotected areas to save their own land. Abdullah Hussain Haroon, Pakistan's representative to the UN, has cal...

• 19:20

  Man donates $1.5 million to defend Arizona immigration law

   » ‎ azcentral.com | news
  Donation from Wyoming resident brings to $3.6 million the total in donations to legal defense fund.

• 19:20

  Gallup: Why likely-voter models may be undercounting Republicans

   » ‎ Hot Air » Top Picks

  

  Enthused.

  We’re entering the period of the election cycle where pollsters start switching to likely-voter models to enhance the predictive value of their surveys — but that’s more of an art rather than a science.  Pollsters try to adjust for the various and unique ebbs and flows in each cycle, but usually that means adjusting existing [...]

  Read this post »

• 19:13

  Pakistan’s Cricket Conspiracy Theory

   » ‎ Pakistan News latest RSS headlines - Pakistan News.Net
  Video of Pakistan’s top diplomat in Britain speaking to the news media on Thursday in London after meeting with three members of the national cricket team accused of corruption. Despite
• 19:13

  In Kashmir, the Front Lines of a Conflict Run Through a Hospital’s Wards

   » ‎ Pakistan News latest RSS headlines - Pakistan News.Net
  SRINAGAR, Kashmir — Bloodied and battered, the wounded arrive daily at the emergency room here, the casualties of weeks of protests against gun-toting Indian police and security forces that spil...

• 19:13

  Eddie Bernice Johnson: 'I never heard the rules' on scholarships

   » ‎ dallasnews.com Latest News
  Eddie Bernice Johnson: 'I never heard the rules' on scholarships

• 19:08

  Sun City pediatrician accused of distributing child pornography

   » ‎ azcentral.com | news
  Dr. Emilio Luna arrested on suspicion of sharing thousands of photos depicting child pornography.

• 19:08

  Three Pakistan players suspended by ICC and charged under anti-corruption code

   » ‎ Pakistan News latest RSS headlines - Pakistan News.Net
  Pakistan cricketers at the centre of an alleged betting scam that has thrown world cricket into crisis were tonight charged under the anti-corruption code of the game's governing body and provisionall...

• 19:07

  Girl, four, weighing just 15 pounds, found dead in 'filthy' New York apartment

   » ‎ Home | Mail Online
  
  Marchella Pierce had marks on her ankles that were consistent with being tied up, officers said. Detectives are now questioning the child's mother, 30-year-old Carlotta Pierce (left) and grandmother.

• 19:06

  Exercising - Meeting My Goal - What's Next?

   » ‎ Maggie's Notebook
  Most of you have figured out by now that my exercise routine stops at my pedometer and 10,000 steps. Now that the steps have become fairly easy, and mostly accomplished every day, I needed a new goal. You know how YouTube has something for everyone? This is what I'm working on now.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  My morning run (video)
  Thanks pmh!

  
  

  

• 19:04

  WH mulling emergency economic stimuli

   » ‎ POLITICO Top Stories
  The administration is considering a raft of emergency fixes to stimulate the economy before the midterms.
  
  
  

• 19:00

  Kentucky to share in grants for education assessments

   » ‎ courier-journal.com.com -
  Though it has failed to land a big federal Race to the Top grant, Kentucky will benefit from federal grants awarded Thursday to groups of states for improving systems to assess the progress of students, according to a news release from Gov. Steve Beshear.

• 18:57

  Health fear over metal in formula milk as researchers discover up to 40 times more aluminium than breast milk

   » ‎ Home | Mail Online
  
  Traces of the metal in milk were found to be much higher than is legally allowed in water, according to scientists, with one brand containing more than 800 micrograms per litre.
• 18:55

  Quarter of primary schools have no male teachers: Fears over vanishing role models as trend worsens

   » ‎ Home | Mail Online
  
  Staff rooms at 4,700 primaries are solely populated by women - 150 more than last year. And just one man under the age of 25 works in a state-run nursery.
• 18:49

  'I gave too much away': David Blunkett's startling admission on UK-U.S. extradition treaty

   » ‎ Home | Mail Online
  
  The Act - which opponents say is biased against British citizens - is being used to extradite Asperger’s sufferer Gary McKinnon for computer hacking.

• 18:48

  Religious Minorities Suffering Worst in Pakistan Floods

   » ‎ Pakistan News latest RSS headlines - Pakistan News.Net
  Digg In one of the more unfortunate developments attending the catastrophic floods in Pakistan, the country's religious minorities are being denied relief and aid — and being attacked by extremis...

• 18:48

  Our Secret Weapon Against the GZ Mosque

   » ‎ Blue Collar Corner Blog

  There is one group of Islamophobes that infest this city and most of the country and I believe their kind should be eradicated. They hide in plain site and spew forth their dishonest ways in the most cowardly methods. I speak of our elected officials of course. Never have I seen a group of spineless fools fall over themselves to try and show how incredibly tolerant they are even at the expense of our values, safety and mental abuse towards our brave 911 families and our incredibly valiant military.

  You should really check out the way this old tax cheat liar and crook talks about the Constitution like he actually gives a damn. I was at the gathering of the 55 Imams at City Hall on Wednesday in disguise and ol’ good and plenty Charlie shows up full of piss and vinegar lying like a rug. Afterwards I thought I needed to bathe in ammonia in case I contracted political herpes. Please check out video:

  [www.youtube.com]

  See this guy doesn’t even answer the question. Well I have finally found the solution to the ” Victory Mosque” issue. Thanks to my very creative and resourceful readers and Mr. Greg Gutfeld of ” Red Eye” ( The conservatives answer to John Stewart) we could test the level of tolerance of Shariff Al Gemal our waiter turned real estate mogul and Imam Feisal 911 is the United States fault Rauff by building a gigantic Gay Cultural Center right next store.

  Now if they past that test then we advance to the opening up: Fat Andy’s Pork Store on the other side. I will make sure every employee has a store issued bacon strip apron and an outdoor free pigs in a blanket. All the waste and discarded pork fat and bone I will have to store on the property till the sanitation man comes but I’m sure my fellow Americans will be tolerant of such things after all I will set up the store as a charity feeding those who are hungry. What religion could possibly be against such a merciful charitable act?

• 18:45

  YISD Board Member Named In Indictment

   » ‎ KFOXTV.com - Local El Paso News
  Current YISD board trustee Linda Chavez faces federal charges.

• 18:44

  Phoenix police issue warrant in 2009 bystander shooting

   » ‎ azcentral.com | news
  Gilbert Leon was caught in the cross-fire of gang-related shooting, police said.

• 18:42

  2 men charged in shooting of 2 Chicago cops

   » ‎ chicagotribune.com - News

  
  

  

• 18:40

  Great news: Left-wing president turns into tax-cutting conservative just before midterms

   » ‎ Hot Air » Top Picks

  

  Change.

  Why not? Policy-wise, he’s tried Keynesianism, and politically, there are no other options for wooing back a few independents to the Democratic side before November. The left will forgive him if it helps to preserve the congressional majority in the Senate, and since the majority in the House is a lost cause, he’d probably be [...]

  Read this post »

• 18:37

  Gang vs. Gang: Unofficial gangs complain about treatment from the Official Dailey Gang.

   » ‎ Sipsey Street Irregulars
  Ironic as all get out.

• 18:36

  Older women more prone to fertility problems

   » ‎ Home | Mail Online
  
  As a woman gets older, levels of a crucial protein that helps eggs prepare for the moment of fertilisation decline sharply, a team of British researchers has found.

• 18:32

  Wanted Poster.

   » ‎ Sipsey Street Irregulars
  Of course this isn't an official agency poster, but the FBI certainly is in "dire need." Especially in dire need of ethics, morals and a constitutional purpose.

• 18:32

  Leadership Louisville offering coaching to nonprofits

   » ‎ courier-journal.com.com -
  The Leadership Louisville Center is offering local nonprofits free coaching and support under the newly dubbed "Yum! Ignites Louisville Challenge."

• 18:28

  IMF provides $450 mln for Pakistan

   » ‎ Pakistan News latest RSS headlines - Pakistan News.Net
  "},"id":"ymh-browse-load","current_item":"21716015"}], "data":{"total":300,"items":{"21716015":{"clipId":"21716015","title":"IMF provides $450 mln for Pakistan","description":"The International Monet...

• 18:28

  Racing panel votes for 5-10 year ban for drug violation

   » ‎ courier-journal.com.com -
  The Kentucky Horse Racing Commission's Equine Drug Research Council voted Thursday for a ban of five to 10 years for first-time violators of a proposed out-of-competition drug testing policy.

• 18:27

  Road Rage Incident Nets 40 Years

   » ‎ WREG - Memphis News: daily news, local news and tv news
  Shooting left victim paralyzed
  
  Shooting left victim paralyzed

  
  

  

• 18:27

  Afghan civilian casualties increase under Petraeus

   » ‎ RT
  United States Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is flying to Afghanistan to meet with Afghan President Hamid Karzai to discuss a NATO airstrike that killed 10 civilians.

• 18:26

  Game chat: Cowboys-Dolphins

   » ‎ dallasnews.com Latest News
  Game chat: Cowboys-Dolphins

• 18:26

  Burglary suspect found wearing victim's blue suede boots

   » ‎ azcentral.com | news
  Wednesday a man was arrested after leaving his pants at a victim's home.

• 18:25

  'Pakistan Taliban has no support'

   » ‎ Pakistan News latest RSS headlines - Pakistan News.Net
  A day after the United States designated the Tehrik-e-Taliban or Taliban Movement in Pakistan (TTP) as a "foreign terrorist organisation," elevating the group's international profile, Pakistan's forei...

• 18:23

  Arizona sheriff being sued by federal government

   » ‎ Latest news, breaking news, current news, UK news, world news, celebrity news, politics news
  An Arizona sheriff is being sued by the US Justice Department after refusing to hand over records for a year into an investigation into allegations his department discriminates against Hispanics

• 18:23

  Jury deliberating punishment for Dallas woman convicted of intoxication manslaughter for fatal wrong-way crash on Dallas North Tollway

   » ‎ dallasnews.com Latest News
  Jury deliberating punishment for Dallas woman convicted of intoxication manslaughter for fatal wrong-way crash on Dallas North Tollway

• 18:23

  DeSoto Sheriff Wants Ankle Bracelets For Non-Violent Offenders

   » ‎ WREG - Memphis News: daily news, local news and tv news
  Southaven Mayor opposed to plan
  
  Alex Coleman reports

  
  

  

• 18:22

  Man found slain in burning truck was killed by multiple gunshots

   » ‎ dallasnews.com Latest News
  Man found slain in burning truck was killed by multiple gunshots

• 18:22

  Why Did HBO Decide to Renew Hung?

   » ‎ TIME.com: Top Stories
  Yesterday HBO announced that Hung, its dark comedy about a suburban Michigan gigolo and his pimp, will get a third season

• 18:22

  Disney, Time Warner Cable strike new deal

   » ‎ Los Angeles Times - Top News
  After several weeks of tense negotiations, Walt Disney Co. struck a new deal to keep its broadcast and cable channels on Time Warner Cable, one of the nation's largest pay-TV distributors with more than 14 million subscribers nationwide with markets including New York City and Los Angeles.

  
  

  

• 18:19

  In Coverage of the Ground Zero Mosque, the Not-So-Hidden Agenda of the New York Times

   » ‎ Big Journalism

  On Sunday, August 8, the New York Times ran a front-page article by Laurie Goodstein entitled “Across Nation, Mosque Projects Meet Opposition.”   Three days prior to the publication of the story, Ms. Goodstein contacted ACT! for America president Brigitte Gabriel to get her comments for the story.

  It was clear from the questions Ms. Goodstein asked that the newspaper was planning to re-frame the opposition to the mosque at Ground Zero into an “Americans are opposing mosques everywhere” narrative.

  Such a narrative is an expression of the political left’s worldview that opposing the mosque at Ground Zero is motivated by bigotry and intolerance.  By recasting the debate as one where “opposition to mosques everywhere proves Muslims are being denied religious freedom,” rather than “Americans are concerned about the location of the mosque at Ground Zero,” the New York Times and its friends in the media are trying desperately to stem a growing and understandable tide of opposition to the Ground Zero mosque.

  Of course, the Times’ narrative isn’t true.  It referred to three locations where so-called “mosque controversies” have occurred – hardly a battle “Across [the] Nation,” as the article headline states. There are approximately 100 mosques in New York and at least 2,500 mosques nationwide, virtually all of which encountered no opposition.  One pastor in Tennessee told us that plans for his church expansion received far more scrutiny from the local government than did the proposal for a mosque in the area.  But since when have the facts gotten in the way of a narrative the New York Times wants to peddle?

  The questions posed to Ms. Gabriel, president of ACT! for America, all centered around whether or not she, or ACT! for America, was involved in or on a mission to stop the building of mosques in this country.  Ms. Gabriel answered each of the questions, explaining in different ways and multiple times that the mission of ACT! for America is to combat the threat of radical Islam, not the construction of mosques.

  The New York Times did not print any of Ms. Gabriel’s responses.  Apparently, her answers did not fit the narrative the newspaper desired.  However, the article did include a reference to ACT! for America, referring to “ACT! for America, a Florida-based group that says its purpose is to defend Western civilization against Islam.”

  

  There’s only one problem with this – it misstates the ACT! for America mission.  When our public relations firm contacted Ms. Goodstein and demanded a correction, she insisted this was an accurate characterization because it was lifted directly from the ACT! for America website.

  That’s the second problem.  Nowhere on the ACT! for America website will you find the statement in Ms. Goodstein’s story.  What you will find are references such as:

  • ACT! for America was created to provide American citizens a means to be a collective voice for the democratic values of Western Civilization, such as the celebration of life and liberty, as opposed to the authoritarian values of radical Islam, such as the celebration of death, terror and tyranny.

  Note the difference.  The ACT! for America mission is combating “radical Islam,” the political ideology committed to advancing sharia law through jihad and other means.

  The Times article dropped “radical,” to lead the reader to believe ACT! for America opposes Islam in its totality.  This is a real difference and a blatant, and I believe intentional, mischaracterization.  Why?  Because it served the narrative the New York Times wanted to print – that this is about opposition to all Muslims and all of Islam.

  We demonstrated to the Times that its representation of our mission was inaccurate and not supported by our mission statement or other descriptions of our organization on our website.  The newspaper refused to budge, insisting we must have altered the website after the story ran.

  They are wrong.  But then, the Times has a long record of not letting the facts get in the way of its agenda and its narratives.

  

• 18:16

  Settlement policy closes the door to peace – Palestine’s chief negotiator

   » ‎ RT
  Middle East talks in Washington have produced a pledge from Israeli and Palestinian leaders to continue regular negotiations, with the goal of a new peace deal by the end of the year.

• 18:13

  Middle East talks begin with work plan

   » ‎ Los Angeles Times - Top News
  Israeli and Palestinian leaders meet in Washington and agree on fortnightly talks to work toward a peace deal even as the issue of settlement construction in the West Bank threatens to derail the effort.
  
  Israeli and Palestinian leaders formally reopened peace talks Thursday by setting a work plan for the next year, but adjourned without progress on their conflict over Israeli housing construction in disputed areas, an issue that threatens to quickly undermine the negotiations.

  
  

  

• 18:12

  Bundesbank official to be sacked after controversial Jewish and Muslim comments

   » ‎ Latest news, breaking news, current news, UK news, world news, celebrity news, politics news
  Germany's Bundesbank has agreed to sack board member Thilo Sarrazin, whose comments stereotyping Jews and Muslims have drawn outrage.

• 18:10

  ID efforts continue on remains believed to be missing Scott woman

   » ‎ courier-journal.com.com -
  Authorities have yet to positively identify the skeletal remains found in the Bethlehem area of Clark County last week and believed to be those of Nina Rae Keown, a 26-year-old Scott County woman who had been missing since Aug. 7.

• 18:09

  Hamas, 10 groups vow to target Israelis

   » ‎ CNN.com
  "Resistance operations" will continue against Israelis despite the arrests of Hamas activists in the West Bank, a Hamas official said Thursday.

• 18:09

  Prosecutors detail corruption charges against 11 indicted

   » ‎ New & Updated
  Taxpayers in the El Paso, Ysleta and Socorro school districts as well as the county were deprived of honest services from their elected officials and contracted vendors, federal prosecutors said today.

• 18:08

  Vote on "Who Was the Biggest Hack from the Alaska Senate Contest?"/Open Thread

   » ‎ Conservatives4Palin.com
  Leave your vote in the comment section for who was the biggest hack from the Alaska Senate primary. Here are our contestants:
  
  1) Andrew Halcro
  2) Dave Stieren
  3) Ivan Moore
  4) Marc Hellenthal
  5) Pat Forgery
  6) Tom Jensen from Public Policy Polling (D)
  7) Celtic Diva
  8) Some trash called CBN2
  9) Alexandra Gutierrez
  
  We'll have some honorable mentions tomorrow. In any event, here's the news:
  
  -The Today Show ran a feature on Governor Palin's political future. As I predicted, the media will continue to cite hack Marc Hellenthal despite the fact that he was embarrassed by the Alaska Senate primary results.
  
  -Adrienne's thoughts on Bristol and Dancing with the Stars. Here are some early photos from practice.
  
  -The center-right, pro-Tim Pawlenty Powerline blog writes that "Miller's defeat of incumbent Senator Lisa Murkowski in the Republican primary must be attributable in substantial part to the support of Sarah Palin, and it replayed Palin's own surprising defeat of former Governor Frank Murkowski in the 2006 Republican gubernatorial primary."
  
  -The Daily Telegraph agrees with Powerline.
  
  -The center-right Daily Caller writes that the "Palin hit piece an example of shoddy journalism"
  
  -Joe Miller is looking at the armed services and judiciary committees.
  
  -Susan Mulligan writes in the US News that "sexist shots at Palin...signal new backlash against women."
  
  -We have the momentum in West Virginia: "To show you the relative momentum of the two campaigns in this race right now, let me ask you: Do you really think Joe Manchin would ask President Obama to come in here and stump for him? But I wouldn't be surprised if Sarah Palin or John McCain came in for Raese."
  
  -If you are in Alaska, here is where you can get tickets to the event featuring Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin on September 11th.
  
  What's going on today?

• 18:07

  Twitter War: White House vs. Stephen Hayes

   » ‎ The Weekly Standard

  WEEKLY STANDARD writer Steve Hayes got plenty of attention from White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs today, who used his Twitter account to carry on a long back-and-forth with Hayes over the small business bill the White House has been touting this week, but which stalled in the Senate earlier this summer.

  It began when Hayes retweeted this Gibbs tweet about the bill:

• 18:07

  World Bank, IMF step up aid to Pakistan

   » ‎ Pakistan News latest RSS headlines - Pakistan News.Net
  The World Bank on Thursday raised flood aid to Pakistan to $US1 billion ($A1.1 billion) while the IMF approved $US450 million ($A494.56 million) in emergency financing to help the nation cope with its...

• 18:06

  What Does El Paso Corruption Case Mean For Residents

   » ‎ KFOXTV.com - Local El Paso News
  Dr. Gregory Rocha says distrust brewing may have gotten worse.

• 18:06

  Wiesenthal Worked for Israeli Spy Agency, Book Alleges

   » ‎ Breaking News

  Source: New York Times (9-2-10)

  Simon Wiesenthal, a Holocaust survivor who gained worldwide fame for decades as a one-man Nazi-hunting operation, was in fact frequently on the payroll of the Mossad, Israel’s spy agency, a new biography asserts.
  
  The assertion, based on numerous documents and interviews with three people said to be Mr. Wiesenthal’s Mossad handlers, punctures not only a widely held belief about how he operated; it also suggests a need to re-evaluate the standard view that the Israeli government took no interest in tracking down Nazis until the 1960 capture in Argentina of Adolf Eichmann, and little thereafter.
  
  Mr. Wiesenthal died in 2005 at the age of 96 in his Vienna home.
  
  “This requires us to adjust in some small way our view of history,” said Tom Segev, the author of the new book “Simon Wiesenthal: The Life and Legends,” which is being published by Doubleday this week in the United States and simultaneously in six other countries.
  
  Mr. Segev, who is Israeli and a columnist for the newspaper Haaretz here, is the author of half a dozen other books, mostly about Israeli history. In a telephone interview, he said he had been given unfettered access to Mr. Wiesenthal’s papers — some 300,000 of them, previously closed to the public — by Mr. Wiesenthal’s daughter, Paulinka Kreisberg.
  
  While reading through Mr. Wiesenthal’s correspondence, Mr. Segev came across names of people he did not recognize and discovered that they were Mossad agents and handlers. He interviewed three of them and named two in the book.
  
  Mr. Segev said that Mr. Wiesenthal was first employed by the political department of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, a forerunner to the Mossad, and then by the agency itself. It financed his first office in Vienna in 1960, paid him a monthly salary and provided him with an Israeli passport, the biography says. Mr. Wiesenthal’s code name was Theocrat.
  
  His main task was to help locate Nazi criminals, including Eichmann, one of the architects of the Final Solution, and especially to watch out for neo-Nazis and provide information on the activities of former Nazis in Arab countries, the book says.
  
  It also says that Mr. Wiesenthal was part of a largely unknown earlier attempt to trap Eichmann in Austria in the last days of 1948. According to the book, an Israeli agent who was helping Mr. Wiesenthal probably caused the operation to fail when he regaled fellow New Year’s drinkers in local bars with stories of Israel’s war of independence. Word spread that an Israeli was present and Eichmann’s planned visit to his wife and child was abruptly called off, the book says.
  
  The operation was started by Asher Ben Natan, later Israel’s first ambassador to Germany, who spoke about it with Mr. Segev. The operational report, newly declassified, is also cited. Mr. Segev said he passed his manuscript through the Israeli military censor, which is required of any work published here on security-related issues.
  
  Mr. Wiesenthal’s role in the 1960 capture of Eichmann has been a matter of dispute. Isser Harel, the former Mossad head, now dead, claimed that the Nazi hunter deserved no credit.
  
  But the book says that Mr. Wiesenthal, financed by the Israeli Embassy in Vienna, told the Mossad in 1953 that Eichmann was hiding in Argentina, leading ultimately to his capture by agency operatives. Eichmann’s televised trial in Israel was a milestone in modern Holocaust awareness. He was found guilty and hanged by Israel in 1962.
  
  Mr. Wiesenthal, a complex and often controversial figure, opposed the execution, Mr. Segev shows by examining previously unknown correspondence. It was not moral objection to the death penalty but the belief that Eichmann had not yet told everything he knew and that his future testimony could be useful.
  
  The biography provides new details on Mr. Wiesenthal’s often strained relations — ultimately mended — with Rabbi Marvin Hier, the founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which is based in Los Angeles. The disputes, recorded in numerous letters from Mr. Wiesenthal, were mostly petty, regarding accusations that the center failed to inform or consult properly with him.
  
  The book also shows that Mr. Wiesenthal came to the quiet and consistent aid of Kurt Waldheim, the former secretary general of the United Nations and president of Austria, when he was being accused by Jewish groups of having lied about his service in the German Army. The harshest suspicions of war crimes against Mr. Waldheim were never proved and Mr. Wiesenthal’s role was largely as a behind-the-scenes consultant to his fellow Austrian.

• 18:05

  Double hand transplant recipient shows he can curl fingers

   » ‎ Latest news, breaking news, current news, UK news, world news, celebrity news, politics news
  The recipient of a rare double hand transplant has shown the world he can curl his fingers and make half a fist.

• 18:03

  Shepherdsville man charged with shooting girlfriend

   » ‎ courier-journal.com.com -
  A Shepherdsville man was arrested early Thursday after police say he shot his girlfriend in the back.

• 18:02

  Prince Harry faces animal cruelty claim over polo pony's stab wound from his spur

   » ‎ Home | Mail Online
  
  The Prince was accused yesterday after his horse suffered a bloody injury during a polo match. He was photographed riding the animal despite it appearing to have been stabbed by one of his spurs.

• 18:01

  The Biggest Celebrity Sex Scandals: Lessons Learned

   » ‎ FOXNews.com
  We can all learn valuable lessons from these classic celeb sex scandals

• 18:00

  NTU: Dems planning to hike taxes on oil, energy companies

   » ‎ Hot Air » Top Picks

  

  Bit by bit.

  During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama repeatedly vowed to force American companies to pay taxes on overseas earnings, rather than take a tax credit for taxes paid by its international operations.  Eventually the White House backed down from that plan after heavy criticism from business leaders made it clear that multinationals would simply move their [...]

  Read this post »

• 17:59

  It's a masterpiece, whatever that means

   » ‎ Los Angeles Times - Top News
  The inaugural exhibition at the new Centre Pompidou-Metz revives a long-standing debate about what, if anything, deserves the lofty label.
  
  "Chefs-d'Oeuvre?"

  
  

  

• 17:58

  PM leaves Washington after peace summit

   » ‎ ynet - Updates for RSS
  PM leaves Washington after peace summit

• 17:57

  Hidden Camera Video: The Islamization of Paris

   » ‎ Gateway Pundit

  An ordinary French citizen posted this video and several others that show the Islamization of Paris.
  Via Big Peace

  “An ordinary French citizen who has been watching the Islamization of Paris decided that the world needed to see what was happening to his city. He used a hidden camera to start posting videos on YouTube. His life has been threatened and so he uses the alias of “Maxime Lepante. ”

  The photographer says this is a weekly display at the mosque.
  

• 17:56

  US student wanted to become 'world's most infamous sociopath'

   » ‎ Latest news, breaking news, current news, UK news, world news, celebrity news, politics news
  An American student who plotted to blow up his school said he wanted to become "the world's most infamous sociopath for the rest of mankind", authorities said.

• 17:56

  Schroeder jury to resume deliberations Friday

   » ‎ courier-journal.com.com -
  The jury in the federal fraud case against an Illinois man charged with conspiring with former University of Louisville education dean Robert Felner to steal $2.3 million from U of L and two other entities, will go into a second day of deliberations on Friday.

• 17:54

  Donald Trump Vs David Letterman on GZ Mosque Debate (Video)

   » ‎ Gateway Pundit

  Newsbusters has the transcript:

  When Trump repeated his point, to more applause, about how “it’s very insensitive to build it there and I think they should go someplace else,” a befuddled Letterman wondered: “Describe for me what insensitivity is manifested if it’s built there?” And Letterman fretted: “Does this suggest that we are in fact officially at war with Muslims?”

  To which, Trump observed: “Well, somebody knocked down the World Trade Center.

• 17:52

  Former gym coach convicted of child porn possession

   » ‎ chicagotribune.com - News

  
  

  

• 17:52

  Ban on bargain booze: Minimum price law could be introduced across UK

   » ‎ Home | Mail Online
  
  Supermarkets will now be forced to charge at least 45p per unit of alcohol, under the scheme unveiled by the Scottish government.

• 17:49

  Hungry Elephants Are No Match for Fearless Ants

   » ‎ Discovery News - Top Stories
  Talk about your David and Goliath story: ant colonies have found a way to ward elephants away from their turf with painful, precise attacks.

• 17:47

  Who is Dismantling America? Dr. Thomas Sowell Takes the Pulse

   » ‎ Big Government

  Always a popular guest, Dr. Thomas Sowell returns to the show to discuss his latest book, Dismantling America.  The book’s focus is wide ranging, as is the discussion.  To take one example, Dr. Sowell questions whether most people understand what is meant by President Obama’s background as a “community organizer.”  A community organizer isn’t a friendly local expert doling out advice on better living, but is rather someone who mobilizes resentment at the behest of third party interests to put the public into battle on their behalf.

  Dr. Sowell’s basic accusation of those who he believes are destroying America is that they do not–and have never–believed in the fundamental principles of the United States.  President Obama, he argues, has always sought out associates who share this skepticism.  Nevertheless, Obama is not responsible for the development of this thinking, but is rather the culmination of a long standing trend.  This trend has been happening rapidly under Democratic presidents and unfortunately persists ,albeit more slowly, under Republican presidents.

  Watch the full video below:

  

  Follow @UncKnowledge on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook.

• 17:47

  Have LDS, Jews resolved proxy baptism dispute?

   » ‎ Breaking News

  Source: Salt Lake City Tribune (9-2-10)

  The LDS Church and Jewish leaders in New York are looking forward to working together on relief efforts and other endeavors after announcing Wednesday the resolution of a sticky dispute: posthumous proxy baptisms by Mormons of Jewish Holocaust victims.
  
  But not everyone is convinced the problem is settled.
  
  The Utah-based church reiterated its willingness to eliminate names of Holocaust victims from its massive genealogical database. The Jewish delegation, headed by Robert Abrams, New York’s former attorney general, acknowledged the church’s good intentions.

  Read More...

• 17:45

  “Kashmir situation needs a human touch”

   » ‎ Pakistan News latest RSS headlines - Pakistan News.Net
  “It is a big message for the whole India that Kashmir people neither identify themselves with Pakistan nor hobnob with them. The impression that the ongoing protests were engineered or provoked ...

• 17:44

  COO(l)

   » ‎ iOwnTheWorld.com

  I thought a quarter to three meant “no one in the place except you and me”?

  

  Update: For anyone that said the punchline should have been 9:15

  

• 17:44

  West Bank city of Hebron could be powder keg as Mideast peace talks begin

   » ‎ Los Angeles Times - Top News
  Hebron, home to more than 150,000 Palestinians and 400 Jewish settlers, is often at the center of the storm, and it is once again. Residents are bracing themselves and warn violence could spread.
  
  The fate of the U.S.-sponsored peace talks launched Thursday in Washington could hinge in part on how things play out in this hotly disputed West Bank city, where extremists on opposite sides suddenly find they share a common purpose: to sabotage the process.

  
  

  

• 17:40

  Odessa American: El Paso man, 23, killed in wreck near Balmorhea, Texas

   » ‎ New & Updated
  One person was killed and another was in critical condition following an early morning rollover about 23 miles west of Balmorhea on Interstate 10, according to a report from the Texas Department of Public Safety.

• 17:40

  Mark Levin Emails...

   » ‎ The Weekly Standard

  Mark Levin emails in response to my interview with Delaware GOP Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell:

• 17:40

  Enforce the law--it works!

   » ‎ America under ObamaCare
  Posted By: Laura Ingraham
  
  According to the Arizona Daily Star, Arizona's answer to the immigration problem is the right answer. Why? Because it works.
  
  

  The number of illegal immigrants in Arizona is down much more sharply than in the rest of the country, a new estimate says.
  
  New figures from the Pew Hispanic Center say that in 2009 there were about 375,000 people in Arizona who either entered the country illegally or overstayed their legal visas. That compares with Pew's estimate 475,000 for 2008. That 21 percent drop compares with a decline of just 4.3 percent nationwide.
  
  The new figures, released Wednesday, show a sharp departure from the trends Pew has been tracking since 1990: This is the first time the numbers have dropped...

• 17:32

  Mr Unpopular? Understatement!

   » ‎ An Ol' Broad's Ramblings

  How Barack Obama Became Mr. Unpopular

  The Barack Obama that most Hoosiers remember voting for can still be found on YouTube. He stands before a cheering Elkhart high school gymnasium in August 2008, tireless, aspirational, promising a new America of jobs and hope. “We can choose another future,” says the newcomer with the funny name. “So I ask you to join me.”

  And so many, foolishly it turns out, did just that!

  Across the gym floor, Joe Donnelly, Elkhart’s pro-life, pro-gun Democratic Congressman, worked the crowd. He was part of the moderate wave that won Congress for Nancy Pelosi in ’06, and he was re-elected with 67% of the vote while campaigning for Obama in ’08. The President has since returned to the region three times, but Donnelly is nonetheless fighting for his political life. In a recent television ad, an unflattering photo of Obama and Pelosi flashes while Donnelly condemns “the Washington crowd.” This is basically a Democratic campaign slogan now: Don’t blame me for Obama and Pelosi. “I’m not one of them,” Donnelly told me when I caught up with him. “I’m one of us.”

  If you’re curious to find out just why Donnelly is fighting for his political life, check out his voting record.  I definitely take issue with that ‘moderate wave’ winning Congress FOR Pelosi!  It’s not HER freakin’ Congress!  It’s OUR Congress and YOU work for US!  Morons.  Anyone wondering why Congress has an approval rating lower than a gnat’s IQ?

  White House aides explain this change as a largely inevitable reflection of the cycles of history. Midterms are almost always bad for first-term Presidents, and worse in hard times. “The public is rightly frustrated and angry with the economy,” says Dan Pfeiffer, Obama’s communications director, explaining the White House line. “There is no small tactical shift we could have made at any point that would have solved that problem.” In more confiding moments, aides admit that the peak of Obama’s popularity may have been inflated, a fleeting result of elation at the prospect of change and national pride in electing the first African-American President. As one White House aide puts it, “It was sort of fake.”

  No, you dipwad, we are NOT angry at the ‘economy’. What a maroon! The economy isn’t something with which a person can be angry! Try again! Think a little harder. Should I give you a hint? How about the people are ANGRY with those who are running the economy into the ground by their constant tinkering! Pushing our children and grandchildren TRILLIONS of dollars into debt. (What comes after trillion? Quadrillion!)  Inflated approval numbers?  Ya know, this doesn’t shock me at all.  And honestly, what difference does it make what his skin tone is if he’s nothing more than an empty suit?  Unfortunately, he’s not all that empty.  He’s an anti-American socialist!

  Rather than address these concerns as the economic crisis grew, Obama made a conscious choice to go big with government reforms of health care and energy. The bailouts of the auto companies, the rescue of Wall Street and the new regulation of banks and the financial industry only deepened the public’s skepticism, especially among independent voters. Rather than dwell on the political problems, the President pushed his team forward, believing, in the words of top adviser David Axelrod, that “ultimately the best politics was to do that which he thought was right.”

  Yep. He made a conscious choice alright.  He consciously decided he was so above it all, he would do what he damn well pleased, and the hell with those who continuously shouted “NO!  That’s not the right thing to do!”  He consciously dragged the economy down into the sewers of socialism.

  For someone who so carefully read the political mood as a candidate, Obama has been unexpectedly passive at moments as President. Whereas other Democrats had hoped to spend the late summer talking about two things — jobs and the unpopularity of many Republican policies — the White House has been distracted by a string of unrelated issues, from immigration reform to a mishandled dismissal of a longtime USDA official to the furor over the proposed Islamic cultural center and mosque near Ground Zero. On Aug. 31, Obama gave a prime-time speech about the partial troop pullout from Iraq, touching on jobs only tangentially, before spending the following day in an intensive effort to restart the Middle East peace process. “It is inconceivable that a team so disciplined during the presidential campaign can’t carry a message with the bully pulpit of the White House,” says one Democratic strategist working on the midterm elections. “It’s politically irresponsible, and Americans have little patience for it.”

  Psst! We’ve heard the ‘message’, loud and clear, and we do NOT like it! Oh, sure….there are some who are still in the cheer leading section for the POTUS: unions, socialists, and the like. But for the rational portion of the population, we understand that raising taxes and continuous spending is NOT conducive to economic recovery.

  As his poll numbers fell, Obama responded with his perpetual cool. His appeals to the grass-roots army that he started, through online videos for Organizing for America, took on a formal, emotionless tone. He acted less like an action-oriented President than a Prime Minister overseeing some vast but balky legislative machinery. When challenged about his declining popularity, the President tended to deflect the blame — to the state of the economy, the ferocity of the news cycle and right-wing misinformation campaigns. Aides treated the problem as a communications concern more than a policy matter. They increased his travel schedule to key states and limited his prime-time addresses. They struggled to explain large, unpopular legislative packages to the American people, who opposed the measures despite supporting many of the component parts, like extending health insurance to patients with pre-existing conditions or preventing teacher layoffs. “When you package it all together, it can be too big to succeed as a public-relations matter,” says Axelrod.

  What Time calls “perpetual cool”, most folks call just plain arrogance, looking down from on high at his subjects. I’ve often wondered how there can be ‘misinformation’ when said information comes straight from the source. Communication isn’t the problem. We get it. We don’t like it, and we are saying so!

  For now, Obama’s aides hope that the controversial reforms in health care and financial rules will produce benefits felt by voters, if not by November 2010, then two years later. That would vindicate the President’s vision of government as a solution and not just a problem. Even in Indiana, the disappointment is matched by a real yearning for a leader who can make a difference. “I think he’s trying,” says Griffin, the laid-off payroll administrator who said she didn’t know what Obama had done for her. “Nobody can turn it around overnight.”

  Oh, we’re feeling them already! Higher insurance premiums, in advance of the implementation of Obamacare, is just one of the many pains we are feeling out here in the real world. High unemployment, more people on food stamps, the uncertainty in the business world…..just a few more. Thanks, but no thanks. We’ve seen what all that ‘hope and change’ is about, and we don’t like it!

  H/T: Fausta’s Blog