The World Health Organization campaign to fight polio has cost $4 billion so far, but states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference have contributed just $3 million, even though recent outbreaks of polio have occurred mostly in Islamic countries
Posted by: john ||
05/07/2005 20:36 ||
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WHO said it is looking to Bahrain, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia to give more money to its polio eradication campaign. None of those countries has contributed funds.
Not a cent for Polio eradication but millions for terrorists...
Posted by: john ||
05/07/2005 21:13 Comments ||
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#2
I'm tapped out too. Let me know when it gets to Mexico.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
05/07/2005 21:22 Comments ||
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#3
Nigerian clerics couldn't work that $4b off?
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/07/2005 21:58 Comments ||
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Oppsss -- didn't change my name! Fred, you must spend hours making up these names! And, if you read the comments at the film site (don't waste your time, lots of anti-military, Bush, America etc there) seems most think these are British troops. But like the owner said -- more fun to assume French!
A Russian court has ruled that an astrologer can proceed with a lawsuit against the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for its plans to bombard a comet.
The astrologer claims the destruction of the comet would "disrupt the natural balance of the universe."
Marina Bai's case was thrown out of a lower court because Russia has no jurisdiction over NASA, but the ruling was overturned when her lawyer, Alexandra Molokhova, was able to show that the agency's office in the US Embassy in Moscow does fall under Russian jurisdiction.
Ms Bai seeks a ruling that will restrict NASA in its plans to annihilate a section of the Tempel 1 comet, in a project that has been dubbed Deep Impact, as well as punitive damages of $US300 million.
"My client believes that the NASA project infringes upon her spiritual and life values as well as the natural life of the cosmos and would disrupt the natural balance of forces in the universe," her lawyer said.
The lawyer says Tempel 1 has sentimental value to Ms Bai because her grandparents met when her grandfather pointed the comet out to his future wife.
In a $US279 million project, NASA in January launched the Deep Impact spacecraft.
It will travel to the comet and release an impactor - a 370-kilogram self-guided mass - on July 4, which is expected to create a crater that could be as large as a football stadium.
Scientists believe that the exposed material from the resulting crater will yield clues to the formation of the solar system and provide important information on altering the course of comets or asteroids on a collision course with earth.
Effects of the collision will be visible from earth with an amateur telescope.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
05/07/2005 12:22 Comments ||
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Well, I certainly hope the State Dept. does the work of defending this suit. I'd hate to have NASA's money wasted on legal fees. It's bad enough when our local greenies loot developers and businesses that way.
OTOP, I'd kind of like to see this taken to a US court and have a legal decision that Astrology is bunk. We have the science already, sure, but a court decision gives cover to police shutting them down as con-men.
#3
I doubt there will be a defence beyond a diplomatic note explaining to the Soviet Russian government what diplomatic immunity in an embassy is all about.
Astrology is protected by the first Amendment. They're irrational wackos, so it qualifies as religion. It's speech. The press makes money off it. Don't mess with astrology.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
05/07/2005 14:09 Comments ||
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It's 'lawsuits' like this that lead me to believe that one sure fire way to reduce their number is to institute 'loser pays' - the opponent's legal fees, that is.
I'd also like to see an abolition of contingency fees; CPA's, for instance, can't charge on that basis (the AICPA forbids it), but lawyers can.
Haven't given much thought to class-action lawsuits, but a quote from Bill learch, the Class Action King, will always stick out in my mind (paraphrasing a bit): "I love them because I have no clients."
#5
You laugh now, but when the bird-flu-hemmoragic-fever laden Planet X ends its 12,000 year orbit and rams the Earth in December 2012 and brings about the end of time, the melting of the first hundred miles of the Earth's crust, and possibly the start of a higher consciousness for the human race, you'll wish you'd left Tempel 1 alone! The Templars made that comet for a reason!
Posted by: Phil Fraering ||
05/07/2005 14:56 Comments ||
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That must be the only sentence ever uttered by Lerach without a profanity.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
05/07/2005 15:17 Comments ||
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I guess it's nice in a strange sort of way to see that all the nut cases don't live in the USA. I'm surprised the same folks didn't raise hell over the Titan lander. Maybe we could send them there to see if it disturbed the "chi" of the palce.
Posted by: Weird Al ||
05/07/2005 16:32 Comments ||
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If you want to see what some of the off-balance types are saying about the Cassini mission, go to Hoagland's site, where he's talking about the possibility that NASA is covering up the discovery that Iapetus is a giant space station made out of buckeyballs whose geometry gives indications of the lost art of hyperdimensional physics...
There were also ecological types who opposed the launch of Cassini in the first place.
The scariest thing about Hoagland, is that even with all the oddball beliefs, he might STILL have turned out to be a better NASA administrator than some holders of that office. So he believes in pyramids on Mars; at least he really wants to go there.
Posted by: Phil Fraering ||
05/07/2005 17:27 Comments ||
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I've brought out the big guns - my pink crystals - and surrounded myself with them. All you non-believers prepare yourselves... it's nosebleeds, headaches, and odd facial ticks for the lot of you!
Britain's Conservative leader Michael Howard said on Friday he would resign before the next general election and as soon as a successor was found following his party's defeat overnight.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/07/2005 00:00 ||
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This will make our UK cousins happy, right? From my limited knowledge, it seems apparent that the Tories have completely mangled their message and Howard is about as marketable to the UK public as a PM as your average leper... with AIDS and SARS. Is that accurate?
Is there anyone in the Tory party with the requirements (experience, savvy, presence, integrity, name recognition, internal support, etc) to lead and make them viable?
#2
Is there anyone in the Tory party with the requirements (experience, savvy, presence, integrity, name recognition, internal support, etc) to lead and make them viable?
At the rate they're going through candidates, the answer would appear to be no. But then, during the Clinton years whom did the Republicans have who appeared destined to replace him? After Gordon Brown takes the helm and returns to true Labour policies, a Tory leader will emerge. Necessity is the mother of acceptance.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
05/07/2005 6:32 Comments ||
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Michael Heseltine (a fellow veteran from the Thatcher cabinets) has called on Howard to wait a year and a half before stepping down, IIUC. That's not a bad idea - another rushed leadership contest isn't what the Tories need right now.
My prefered choice would be Liam Fox - he's young, sensible and has considerably more charisma than the average Tory. David Davis is bookies' favourite on the other hand. He may be a good choice, but comes across as somewhat posh and aloof - he lacks the common touch, just as Howard did. Blair's perceived approachability has always been the key to his success.
Fair warning though - I thought the disastrous Iain Duncan Smith (Conservative leader 2001 - 2003) looked promising, too.
Howard is about as marketable to the UK public as a PM as your average leper...
True. Who knows how much better the Tories couls have done with a more personable leader? A better figurehead would have added a significant percentage to the Tories' vote. Howard does come across as weird, to be blunt - he talks funny (he's from Wales) and has a disconcertingly smug smile. And he runs (as seen once or twice when canvassing) like a (Monty) Python. Perhaps it's easy to overlook his positive characteristics - most important of which being he succeeded in uniting the Tory party behind him, even if in the latter stages of the campaign there were mutterings about his campaign strategy. His focus on immigration no doubt lost at least as many votes as it gained for the party.
#4
Howard does come across as weird, to be blunt - he talks funny (he's from Wales) and has a disconcertingly smug smile. And he runs (as seen once or twice when canvassing) like a (Monty) Python.
#5
Time to bring back Michael Portillo? How about Boris Johnson [even with all his pecadillio baggage of recent times]. At least these guys will make the Tories interesting to the chattering class.
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
05/07/2005 10:43 Comments ||
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How about some focus on message too? The Tories seem like Labour lite, especially after the triangulation job Tony has done. That's the great opportunity with Gordo coming in to look like old time Labour. I hate to agree with Heseltine, but he's correct.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
05/07/2005 11:02 Comments ||
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The Tories need an ideological revamping more than any PR makeover. In that sense, their situation is closer to the Democrats of today than the Repubs of the '90s.
#8
Boris Johnson , just for the comedy value of stuttering along at prime ministers question time . Plus , I quite like the chap really ..
Just a humble opinion . The problems the Tories face is the legacy the good ol' Maggie left , and she's one mean pair of shoes to fill .
#2
I've been reading "The Court of the Red Tsar" I recommend it, especially if you're like me and get lost in em last name changes and patronyms. This has the cast down tight and right and jeebus are they weird. Mini-series is a must.
Uzbekistan has pulled out of a grouping of five former Soviet republics, a government official said Friday. Uzbekistan has officially informed the other GUUAM members - Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova - about its withdrawal, the official said on condition of anonymity. He did not give any reasons but media reports quoted the notification, signed by President Islam Karimov, as saying the group had deviated from its earlier goal of economic cooperation, focusing too much on security and political issues.
Three pro-Western countries in GUUAM - Georgia, Ukraine, and Moldova - have been using the group to counter Russian influence and pursue their goal of integration with the West. The announcement comes two weeks after a GUUAM leaders' summit in Moldova, which Karimov skipped. The other GUUAM leaders pledged at the summit to seek closer ties with the European Union and the United States, and to boost economic and security ties with one another.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/07/2005 00:00 ||
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KYOTO, Japan (AP) - From violent anti-Japan protests in China to Tokyo's bid for a permanent U.N. Security Council seat, Japanese and Chinese foreign ministers had plenty to discuss Saturday as they met to try to mend a diplomatic rift.
But the dispute - and long-standing rivalry for dominance in Asia - wasn't the only pressing concern for the two sides: North Korea appears to be pushing ahead with its nuclear programs.
That issue could complicate the task of improving damaged relations for Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura and China's Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing, who began their meeting on the sidelines of a two-day Asia-Europe foreign ministers' conference in Japan's western city of Kyoto.
Alarm over the North's unconfirmed claim that it possesses nuclear weapons has cast a shadow over the Asia-Europe gathering, known as ASEM.
At a forum late Friday, nations agreed that Asia's peace and stability hinges on resolving the North Korea nuclear crisis, and called for an immediate and unconditional resumption of talks between the United States, Russia, China, Japan and the two Koreas aimed at preventing Pyongyang from building an atomic bomb.
The declaration coincided with news Friday that U.S. spy satellites may have detected North Korea's preparations for a nuclear test and Tokyo's suggestion that it might ask the U.N. Security Council to address North Korea's nuclear ambitions next month. North Korea, wary of U.N. action, has said it would consider sanctions a "declaration of war."
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
05/07/2005 14:51 ||
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Imagine for a moment that around half the population of Great Britain - men, women and children - died in the second world war. What kind of extraordinary trauma would this represent? How would "victory" in 1945 now be viewed, or even celebrated? Yet 27 million is the estimate of Soviet deaths by the end of the war. Actual British losses represented around 0.6% of the population; American losses were smaller, around 0.3%. But Soviet losses, from war, starvation and repression, represented about 14% of the pre-war population.
These losses were the brutal product of German invasion in 1941 and the Soviet determination to resist that aggression and expel the Germans from their territory. The scarcely credible level of sacrifice exposes just how vast and savage the war on the eastern front was. It was here that the great majority of German casualties occurred. It was here that the war was won or lost, for if the Red Army had not succeeded against all the odds in halting the Germans in 1941 and then inflicting the first major defeats at Stalingrad and Kursk in 1943, it is difficult to see how the western democracies, Britain and the US, could have expelled Germany from its new empire. snip
The Soviet Union is not the only state to be written out of the victory story in the west. The Chinese people also lost an estimated 20 million as a result of Japanese aggression. Just as the Soviet armed forces held down the Germans, so the less effective but numerous Chinese armed forces kept the Japanese bogged down in Asia. This is a record that is still almost unknown in the west, yet if Japan had achieved quick victory in China, large resources would have been released for an assault on the rear of the Soviet Union, or a larger military presence in the Pacific. In this case, too, western allied casualties would have been much greater without the stubborn resistance of their Asian ally.
In the end, the western freedom to plan and execute a global strategy depended on the ability of the Soviet and Chinese forces to hold the main enemies at bay while western air forces bombed the Axis motherlands flat. When victory is celebrated tomorrow, it is important that we pause to remember the almost 50 million Soviets and Chinese who perished to contain the imperial aggression of Germany and Japan.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
05/07/2005 18:09 ||
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Achieving the goals of the Kyoto Treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is nowhere more difficult than Spain according to two studies released Wednesday, which reported that emissions last year were about 46 percent above levels in 1990. During the first quarter of 2005, the reports added, emissions rose to levels 50 percent higher than in 1990, according to studies by the CC OO labor union and by WorldWatch.
According to the international treaty, which took effect this year, Spanish levels should increase by only 15 percent over the 1990 figure between 2008 and 2012.
Last year, the Socialist government launched a national plan, known as the PNA, to reduce emissions to 24 percent over 1990 levels. "The PNA is heading in the right direction... But the Industry Ministry maintains an energy policy based on the past," said JoaquÃn Nieto from CC OO union. "The government's policies are contradictory, and will be unable to achieve compliance with the Kyoto Treaty," he added. 50% is a hellofa miss.
#1
The dirigiste regimes of France and Germany can meet Kyoto because their economies are so stagnant.
Spain was growing, and thus increasing its emissions, but having a Socialist government should put a stop to that. Pittsburgh became a much cleaner city once all the steel mills went bankrupt.
1) The entire socialist government should immediately resign.
2) All Islamists should be invited to take over the government and run things their way.
3) ???
4) Profit!!! Back to the stone age!
#4
I thought the numbers were BS and this confirms it. 40% of spain's energy consumption is in transportation. Hydroelectricity is only a couple of percent of energy production (and hence a complete red herring) and nuclear energy is the big one after fossil fuels. I guess building a few more nuclear power stations is just not nuanced enough for them.
Scientists are helping blind people see again, one pixel at a time. If all goes well, an artificial retina could be commercially available within three years. Artificial retinas have been successfully implanted in six patients, allowing them to see light and detect motion, researchers announced at the 2005 annual meeting of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Developed by researchers from the University of Southern California and the Doheny Eye Institute, the artificial retina pairs a tiny electronic eye implant with a video camera mounted on a pair of sunglasses.
The implant, a four-by-four grid of electrodes, connects to damaged photoreceptors -- rods and cones -- on the patient's retina. The electrodes stimulate the photoreceptors, which transmit signals to the brain through the optic nerve. Signals from the sunglasses-mounted videocam take a rather circuitous route to the electrodes. The camera translates the field of view into electrical impulses that are transmitted wirelessly to a microchip located behind the ear. In turn, the microchip is connected to the retinal implant by wires under the skin. The system -- known as the Argus, after the mythological Greek god who had 100 eyes -- works only with patients with degenerated rods and cones, a condition often caused by disease. It will not help people with damaged optic nerves or other types of blindness. "These patients are blind because they don't have the photodetectors," said lead researcher Dr. Mark Humayun, a professor of ophthalmology and biomedical engineering at the University of Southern California. "The implant jump-starts the remaining cells. You're effectively coupling a blind person with a wearable camera." According to Humayun, all the six test patients, who had been totally blind, are now able to detect light and sense motion.
Posted by: God Save The World ||
05/07/2005 00:00:00 AM ||
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my ex parents-in-law used to have one of those "Jesus on the cross with the eyes that watched you" above their bed.....tell me that didn't cause longterm damage
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/07/2005 19:21 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Uzbekistan has pulled out of a grouping of five former Soviet republics, a government official said Friday. Uzbekistan has officially informed the other GUUAM members - Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova - about its withdrawal, the official said on condition of anonymity. He did not give any reasons but media reports quoted the notification, signed by President 
Scientists are helping blind people see again, one pixel at a time. If all goes well, an artificial retina could be commercially available within three years. Artificial retinas have been successfully implanted in six patients, allowing them to see light and detect motion, researchers announced at the 2005 annual meeting of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Developed by researchers from the University of Southern California and the Doheny Eye Institute, the artificial retina pairs a tiny electronic eye implant with a video camera mounted on a pair of sunglasses. 
