WASHINGTON (AP) AP, so you know it's true. Having several older brothers increases the likelihood of a man being gay, a finding researchers say adds weight to the idea that there is a biological basis for sexual orientation. Dutch Rubs, Indian Burns, Wedgies, now you can blame you big bro for your gayness.
"It's likely to be a prenatal effect," said Anthony F. Bogaert of Brock University in St. Catharines, Canada, "This and other studies suggest that there is probably a biological basis for" homosexuality. and being a twisted freak too
S. Marc Breedlove of Michigan State University said the finding "absolutely" confirms a physical basis. Beam me up Mr. Sulu, I've always loved you.
"Anybody's first guess would have been that the older brothers were having an effect socially, but this data doesn't support that," Breedlove said in a telephone interview. No this isn't Scrappleface, his name really is Breedlove.
The only link between the brothers is the mother and so the effect has to be through the mother, especially since stepbrothers didn't have the effect, said Breedlove, who was not part of the research. Now it's mom's fault, make up your mind.
Bogaert studied four groups of Canadian men, Out of respect for our Canadian Rantburgers I'll belay the obvious joke here. a total of 944 people, analyzing the number of brothers and sisters each had, whether or not they lived with those siblings and whether the siblings were related by blood or adopted.
He reports in a paper appearing in Tuesday's issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that having several biological older brothers increased the chance of a man being gay. That and finding another man's hairy arse appealing.
It's an effect that can be detected with one older brother and becomes stronger with three or four or more, Bogaert said in a telephone interview.
But, he added, this needs to be looked at in context of the overall rate of homosexuality in men, which he suggested is about 3 percent. With several older brothers the rate may increase from 3 percent to 5 percent, he said, but that still means 95 percent of men with several older brothers are heterosexual. Thanks Doc, that's a comforting thought.
The effect of birth order on male homosexuality has been reported previously but Bogaert's work is the first designed to rule out social or environmental effects. So in other words, it's not a choice, you are born that way? Where have I heard this before?
Bogaert said he concluded the effect was biological by comparing men with biological brothers to those with brothers to whom they were not biologically related.
The increase in the likelihood of being gay was seen only in those whose brothers had the same mothers, whether they were raised together or not, he said.
Men raised with several older step- or adopted brothers do not have an increased chance of being gay. This guy gets paid to do this, do you realize this?
"So what that means is that the environment a person is raised in really makes not much difference," he said.
What makes a difference, he said, is having older brothers who shared the same womb and gestational experience, suggesting the difference is because of "some sort of prenatal factor." Oh boy, here we go again.
One possibility, he suggests, is a maternal immune response to succeeding male fetuses. The mother may react to a male fetus as foreign but not to a female fetus because the mother is also female.
It might be like the maternal immune response that can occur when a mother has Rh-negative blood but her fetus has Rh-positive blood. Without treatment, the mother can develop antibodies that may attack the fetus during future pregnancies. I'm going to go stick my finger down my throat now.
Whether that's what is happening remains to be seen, but it is a provocative hypothesis, said a commentary by Breedlove, David A. Puts and Cynthia L. Jordan, all of Michigan State.
The research was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
#3
The theoretical speculation toward the end of the article is dismally ignorant. A homosexual preference is (on first examination) an evolutionary death sentence - if you don't procreate then you don't have offspring to carry forward your behaviour.
Homosexuality should be rigorously eliminated from the gene pool. The fact it exists begs the question why?
There is a simple explanation that we see in other animals. The top male gets to breed and especially the blood relatives of the top male have 'an evolutionary incentive' not to rock the boat, as at least half of their genes will be carried forward by the top male breeding.
Therefore, homosexuality is evolution's answer to, how to deal with the sexual drive of the breeding stakes losers.
#4
I have three older brothers, but I also have four older sisters which apparently tipped the scales back in favor of heterosexuality!
*whew!* That was a close one!
Posted by: Dar ||
06/26/2006 16:12 Comments ||
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#5
Sounds like a 21st century update of Freud blaming mama for everything,
I dunno, Freud has been completely debunked, but when I think of me and my all-powerful mama, I guess he was probably right for people like me... besides, I've got two younger sisters, and I'm totally "gay", not gay in the sexual orientation way, but "gay" in the lack of coolness meaning... so, this next of kin thing makes sense, somehow... a well spent grant!
/It's all about me! Me! Me!
The Zimbabwe government is reneging on a pledge to invite exiled white farmers back to work the land and is moving to evict the few hundred who survived President Robert Mugabe's six-year ethnic purge. Scores of eviction notices were either delivered or were on their way to productive white farmers last week. The farmers will have 90 days to leave their homes and abandon their businessess to stay. It was a spectacular admission that his 20 million-acre land grab had failed and that the expulsion of more than 4,000 white farmers had wrecked the economy. "Productivity must return to the land," Gideon Gono, the governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, said at the time.
"Which will happen right after my lips reattach themselves," he added.
Mr Mugabe even invited some who had fled their farms to return home and apply for 99-year leases for their properties, which were all nationalised last year. About 900 existing and former white farmers applied for leases, half of them through the Commercial Farmers' Union, but none has been processed. Rest at link.
Posted by: ed ||
06/26/2006 08:41 ||
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#1
Hell bent on famine?
It's a new angle, you have to admit.
#2
I said it a long time ago here on rantburg. There comes a time when its time to cut your losses and move on. Any white farmers still in Zimbabwe have my respect for their tenacity - but it's a losing game. Get out with your lives and be happy.
#3
"..Didymus Mutasa, the lands and security minister, told Western diplomats this week that he did not care if Zimbabwe's land remained unproductive "as long we [blacks] own it".
Puff Didy will own his own grave too. ZimBob sure knows how to hire talent.
#6
A recent Economist article noted signs of growth in Zimbabwe's neighbor Zambia. One possible contributor is the influx of white farmers who crossed the border, taking their expertise and work ethic with them.
Some people think you can steal success outright. You can't. If Bob would have been satisfied with fleecing his economic base instead of skinning it alive, then he'd be just another African despot without the 1200% inflation. But where's the fun in that?
Posted by: matt from ill ||
06/26/2006 14:56 Comments ||
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#7
The situation there begs the question-How bad can it get?
#8
It can get as bad as the Congo, and the tranzis will not let anyone do anything about it. For those who don't know, POWs in the Congo now serve as mobile meals. Mugabe was let into power back in 1980-81, over the objections of a large majority of the tribal cheftains and the whites, and immediately started ethnic cleansing against the opposition blacks and Asians. He waited a few years to really start in on the whites, milking them for all the money and expertise he could. Personally, I feel that if you are a white farmer/businessman, you would have to be clinically insane to stay in Zimbabwe -- it is a lost cause in the most extreme definition of the word. And it will only get worse, because of Western guilt over colonialism and the tranzi socialist brotherhood backing one of their own.
Redacted by moderator. Comments may be redacted for trolling, violation of standards of good manners, or plain stupidity. Please correct the condition that applies and try again. Contents may be viewed in the sinktrap. Further violations may result in
banning.
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/26/2006 18:36 Comments ||
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#11
The writer's view on the media, not my own. I can however, understand the frustration. Not a great deal published in the MSM as you may have noticed.
#12
Please take greater care in quoting next time.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/26/2006 21:14 Comments ||
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#13
Genocide of South African Whites Happening Now
by nationalvanguard Wednesday, Dec. 03, 2003 at 10:27 AM
Will the horrors now suffered by Whites in southern Africa be repeated in Europe and America?
Will the horrors now suffered by Whites in southern Africa be repeated in Europe and America?
Unbelievably horrific torture-deaths are happening daily in the South African farmlands, writes New Zimbabwe -- yet the Jewish-controlled media in the West say almost nothing about it, while wailing endlessly about a single drug-crazed Black criminal who died while attacking police in Cincinnati. South African farmers and their families are being slaughtered. The murders are accompanied by torture and rape. The sadism of the attacks suggests either dark perversion or systematic terror. Dr Gregory Stanton of Genocide Watch has even suggested that the killing could be classified as genocide.
When multiracialists were demanding an end to White rule in South Africa they never debated whether the result might lead to horrible suffering for White women, men, and children. White activists in the West would ask why the rhetoric of multiracialists never includes the possible suffering that Whites might experience if the controversial multiracial experiment being performed on them fails.
In South Africa, in the nine years following the end of apartheid and the miracle of South Africas democratic election in 1994, more than 1,000 farmers have been killed. The death rate by murder for South African farmers is 313 per 100,000, perhaps the highest for any group of people on earth who are not at war.
"In 1997 four young men invaded the farm of Beatriz and Jose Freitas in the north-east of South Africa. Jose, who is disabled, was tied up while they ransacked the house. They asked Beatriz where her iron was. Then they dragged her to the laundry, took off her clothes, kicked her to the ground, raped her, poured oil over her, switched on the iron and applied it to her body. Her skin came away in flaps. Three years later Jose was shot dead. This attack, reported by the South African TV programme Carte Blanche, is not unusually gruesome. There are hundreds that are as bad or worse. Old men are forced to watch their wives being raped before the couple are painfully killed. Farmers and farmworkers are tortured over many hours. What is happening?
"There are two opposing theories. At one extreme, these attacks are seen as being directed as part of the Second Revolution. The First Revolution was the takeover of South Africa by a black government. The Second Revolution, using terror, is the establishment of a radical black communist society and the expulsion of whites. Driving the white farmers off their land is part of this process. At the other extreme, the attacks are seen as being purely criminal and without political guidance or motives. The white farming lobby is inclined to believe the former; it points to Peter Mokaba, a prominent young ANC politician, who chanted, Kill the Boer! Kill the farmer! to cheering black crowds. The ANC government says that it believes the latter.
"To explain the sadism, violence and the rape in the farm attacks, you need to understand only two things: the attacks are happening in an extremely violent country with very high unemployment, and the attackers are poor, ill-educated, fatherless, jobless, rootless young men who happen to be black. South Africas murder rate is 58 per 100,000, perhaps the worlds highest. (The rate for England and Wales is 1.3.) I have lived a sheltered life, but a man was shot dead across the street from me; a motorist was clubbed to death with a hockey stick by another motorist at a crossroads near me; in the bushes outside the nearest pub, a young girl was gang-raped, had one of her nipples bitten off and her mouth wedged open with a wooden stick so that they could rape her again in the mouth; I saw the mortuary photograph of a young man who had been tied to a railway line by two friends so that the train had cut off his legs at the shins and his head between the upper and lower jaws. Every South African can give a similar account.
White activists would ask if similar horrors are awaiting the West if multiracialists are successful in making Whites a vulnerable minority, surrounded by alien and disparate races.
#1
In contrast to South and East Asia where poverty has been dramatically reduced in the last ten years. There are several news stories today about this. Here is one.
#2
And this is different from the last 100 "vows" (and years) how, exactly....?
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
06/26/2006 14:24 Comments ||
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#3
It was made in the context of the G8 meeting. Blair showing he's not Bush's puppet, holding Amerikkka to account and keeping Labor in power all that.
MANAMA - Bahrains information ministry has stopped broadcasts by the first privately-held radio station in the tiny Gulf kingdom due to a series of violations, an official said on Sunday. Jamal Daoud, who heads the ministrys publications department, said the ministry had canceled the license granted to Delmon Media, which operates the Sawt Al Ghad, or the voice of tomorrow, radio station.
The ministry also revoked an agreement between Bahraini state-run radio and television corporation and Delmon Media, he said.
Sawt Al Ghad, which began operating in January, committed a series of violations and did not abide by the terms of the agreement that enabled it to transmit, Daoud told AFP. He cited the owners failure to present bank evidence that their company has a capital of three million dollars, their tampering with the airwaves on which they transmitted and other violations.
Although a draft law regulating audiovisual media in Bahrain is still before parliament, the informtion ministry licensed Sawt Al Ghad on the basis of internal bylaws in a bid to open the market to investors, Daoud said. The ministry is currently studying more than 10 requests for licenses for private radio and television stations, he said.
But the newspaper Al Waqt quoted Sawt Al Ghads director, Raja Sawaya, as denying that the company had violated any of the terms of the agreement with the ministry. The cancelation order received on Saturday did not contain any details about, or justifications for, the decision, he said, adding that Delmon was considering making a formal protest.
Sucks to live in a non-democratic state, huh.
Sawt Al Ghad focused on entertainment and steered clear of politics. Delmon is owned by Lebanese investors with Bahraini, Kuwaiti and Saudi partners. It has been preparing to launch a private television channel.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/26/2006 00:00 ||
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Interesting piece on the measure of prosperity Mexico has. Hat tip Orrin Judd.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/26/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
I have been travelling to Mexico City and its surrounding area for 40 years now and I can attest that the improvements cited in the article are true. Mexico City is a far more cosmopolitan place now than when I went there as a kid in the late 60s. That is not to say that it doesn't have its share of problems, but many of the problems now are different than the problems then.
I certainly hope that PAN wins the election 'cuz the moonbats and thugs of the PRD will worsen the situation.
Posted by: DanNY ||
06/26/2006 6:47 Comments ||
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#2
Mexico City and Guadalajara may be fairly cosmo now but rural mexico is just as poor as it has ever been. Sure they have cell phones now, but they still live in the same shack. If they are lucky they live near a tourist town and can wait tables, wash dishes, or mow lawns for $10USD a day. They still get paid every day and do their shopping on the way home, every day. So I think DanNY is right, they better ditch the socialist bullshit and get PAN in there to modernize their economy a little bit.
WEALTHY Mexicans are nervous that next Sunday's presidential election will be won by Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a leftist who proclaims himself a champion of the poor and whose supporters dress as cockerels. They are equally nervous about what might happen if Lopez Obrador loses. After a hard-fought race against Felipe Calderon, his main conservative rival, Lopez Obrador, the former mayor of Mexico City, enters the final week of campaigning with a two-point opinion poll lead.
The closeness of the campaign and the passions it has aroused have raised the spectre of an inconclusive result that could lead to paralysis if Lopez Obrador claims he is being cheated of victory. The threats of mass demonstrations and court challenges are complicating the outlook for the world's most populous Spanish-speaking country.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/26/2006 00:00 ||
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#4
Sometimes you have to hit rock bottom before you can recover. Mexico will hit rock bottom faster with a Obrador at the helm so the next guy can rebuild.
#5
"The threats of mass demonstrations and court challenges are complicating the outlook"
Maybe he can get AlGore to advise him. :-D
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
06/26/2006 14:26 Comments ||
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#6
If he does win, the rich Mexicans have no one to blame but themselves. There is no excuse for Mexico to be as poor as it is, and the average Mexican knows it. The last few presidents have had an unofficial program of sending young men and women up north so they can send checks back home, instead of creating problems in Mexico because they can't find jobs.
Lopez Obrador hit close to home when he said that the emigration of well over 10% of Mexico's population to the US is a disgrace. I'll never believe for a second that they really prefer life up here to life back home (why else would they work like hell to pile up cash with the express desire to return home someday?) I ran into plenty of illegals in my previous job who had just that plan. Their dreams involved going back home with enough money to buy some land or start a small business....not really about staying in America or having their children and grandchildren grow up to be Americans.
Give them the opportunity to make a decent wage in Mexico (or start making even a little progress in that direction), and we won't have to worry about illegals taking over our jobs. They would prefer to stay home with their family any day.
Mikhail Gorbachev has called on Western countries to stop interfering in Russias domestic affairs.
Has he issued a similar statement to the insurgents terrorists who just murdered his countrymen? No? Why not?
Putting pressure on President Putin over human rights at next months G8 summit in St Petersburg, to be chaired by Russia, would be counterproductive, the last leader of the Soviet Union told The Times in an exclusive interview. Russia is not anyones domain. Russia will work these things out together with our partners and friends. The Presidents and Prime Ministers at the G8 can raise whatever they want. But the more it is seen that the West is putting pressure on, the more it will strengthen President Putin, because in essence his position is very close to the aspirations of the people, he said yesterday. I have said myself that Putin has made mistakes. But the principles of democracy are realised in a specific context, and you have to bear in mind the Russian historical, economic and social situation. Russia is moving in the right direction steadily and in its own way, he says.
And who'd know better than Splotch-head?
Critics and human rights groups counter with concerns over a law introduced by Mr Putin strictly regulating nongovernmental organisations, and issues such as deaths and disappearances in Chechnya and police and army brutality. Speaking in Venice at the end of a WPF seminar on Media between Citizens and Power, Mr Gorbachev said: Why should foreign organisations be involved in the Russian political process? The Orange Revolution in Ukraine was mostly of domestic origin, because people were upset about corruption and angry over the Kuchma regime. But there is another factor, that the US Embassy was heavily involved, and of course America has great experience in interfering in the affairs of other countries. Had this same thing been happening in America, I am sure that they would have put an end to outside interference.
The Wests stated concern with human rights was often hypocritical, he said, citing the recent speech in Lithuania by Dick Cheney, the US Vice-President, in which he had criticised the Russian Government. Mr Cheney had then flown to oil-rich Kazakhstan, where President Nazarbayev had won a third term with a Soviet-style 91 per cent of the vote. I dont think many Western Governments are that concerned about these issues. If someone is our son of a bitch he is forgiven, but if someone else takes an independent position, they dont like it. I too have a high opinion of my friend Nursultan Nazarbayev, but in our democratic media he is often criticised for his authoritarian ways. So there are double standards, and triple standards. But Russia has not lost a war other than the Cold War which you lost, Russia is rising and will be rising and some people will find that inconvenient. We have heard a lot in the US about building a new American empire. But that train has left the station. This unipolar approach will not happen. In a multipolar world it is difficult to bring order and governance, but any other approach is dangerous.
#8
"Russia has not lost a war" - what, pray tell, war was that - Besides the Cold War, Russia had a minimal role in Napoleon's first abdication, was not at Waterloo, vacated WW1 under Lenin, and by Stalin's own admission would NOT have won or prevailed/survived WW2 without massive American aid and advisors. Russian men are dying between ages 40-50, leaving Russian society to women, the elderly, and masses of emotion-heavy youths. IS A COMMUNIST-CONTROLLED/DOMINATED, ALLEGED ANTI-COMMUNIST NATIONAL GOVT. A "COMMUNIST GOVERNMENT"???
India and China opened the eighth round of boundary talks in Beijing on Monday to find a political settlement to the vexed dispute.
India's Special Representative to the India-China boundary talks, K Narayanan and his Chinese counterpart, Dai Bingguo met officially after a day of informal parleys in the northwest Chinese city of Xian.
During the two days of talks, the two sides are expected to continue their in-camera sessions in an effort to resolve the boundary issue under the "political parameters" set during Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's visit to New Delhi in April 2005.
The two sides formed the Special Representatives mechanism in June 2003 during the visit of the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to China.
Among other things, these guiding principles commit both India and China sides to arriving at a "package settlement" of the boundary question in a spirit of mutual respect and mutual understanding, analysts said.
India says China is illegally occupying 43,180 sq kms of Jammu and Kashmir including 5,180 sq km illegally ceded to Beijing by Islamabad under the Sino-Pakistan boundary agreement in 1963.
China accuses India of possessing some 90,000 sq km of Chinese territory, mostly in Arunachal Pradesh.
Posted by: john ||
06/26/2006 16:15 ||
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ISLAMABAD: Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) has discreetly launched an investigation into reports of misuse of million of rupees meant for victims of human rights abuses by Law Minister Wasi Zafar. An ISI officer reportedly visited the ministry offices on Friday to collect information and documentary evidence.
The ISI investigation has been ordered from the 'top' after it was reported that the minister had mistreated a woman bureaucrat who refused to approve funding from the human rights fund for 560 applicants who belonged to Zafar's constituency of Jaranwala tehsil, Faisalabad. Sources said the ISI might not have interfered in the affairs had damaging findings of the auditor general of Pakistan not been made public. The AGP has confirmed reports of the misuse of HR funds, along with the fresh disclosure that last year a total of 365 people successfully applied to get funding from the Ministry of Law, Justice and Human Rights, out of which 305 belonged to Jaranwala tehsil.
The funds are meant for victims of rape, torture, extra judicial killings, police torture, and other human rights abuses, and they are supposed to have FIRs and recommendations from the authorities concerned. But the 865 constituents from Jaranwala for whom funding was approved over the last two years only supplied their identity cards.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/26/2006 00:00 ||
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Of course it's in the NYT so we'll need confirmation.
DILI, East Timor, June 26 -- Bowing to intense pressure from his peers and from the streets, Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri of East Timor resigned today, clearing the way for a resolution to the violence that has devastated this small, impoverished nation.
Cheering crowds gathered at the main government building as word spread that President Xanana Gusmao, the charismatic leader who had pushed for Prime Minister Alkatiri's removal, had accepted the resignation.
In a brief appearance, Mr. Alkairi told reporters that that he accepted his share of the responsibility for the crisis and that he was stepping down for the good of the nation.
Earlier in the day, demonstrators wearing T-shirts emblazoned with images of President Gusmao packed into flatbed trucks outside the prime minister's home and taunted him by singing, "No one has a long life in this world."
In a statement this evening, Mr. Gusmao said he would convene a meeting of the 12-member council of state on Tuesday to organize a transition government. A likely replacement for Mr. Alkatiri, a hard-line politician who has been accused in the last ten days of providing arms to hit squads, is the Nobel Peace Prize winner José Ramos-Horta, the foreign and defense minister.
Mr. Ramos-Horta, a close friend of the president's, announced his own resignation Sunday as foreign and defense minister as part of the maneuvering to force Mr. Alkatiri's ouster, but in fact he was expected to remain in office.
The announcement of Mr. Alkatiri's demise ushered in a particular sense of relief since the popular Mr. Gusmao had also threatened to resign three days ago in disgust over the prime minister's refusal to budge. Now, Mr. Gusmao not only remains in power but becomes something of a kingmaker in choosing the new prime minister.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/26/2006 11:07 ||
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#1
Good news. Mr. Ramos-Horta will make a good prime minister.
Via Green Car Congress
General Motors Corp., losing sales to fuel-efficient cars from Toyota Motor Corp., is developing a hybrid-electric vehicle with a battery that recharges at any outlet, said GM officials familiar with the plan.
The so-called plug-in hybrid would travel more than 60 miles on a gallon of gasoline, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the research is secret. GM, which had the first modern electric car in 1996, lags behind Toyota in hybrids, which combine electric motors and gasoline engines.
A 28 percent rise in U.S. gasoline prices this year helped boost sales of Toyota's gasoline-electric models 37 percent, giving the Japanese automaker almost three-fourths of U.S. retail hybrid sales. GM doesn't make competing vehicles now. Automakers are trying to raise fuel efficiency as U.S. lawmakers consider tougher requirements for cars and trucks.
``There is rising regulatory demand and consumer demand for improved fuel economy and lower emissions,'' said John Casesa, an auto analyst at New York-based Casesa Shapiro Group LLC. ``There's a lot of pressure to show you're responsive.''
The plug-in designs GM is testing may be ready in time for the Detroit auto show in January, the people said. Any commercial production is at least a year away, they said. The people declined to say how much the company is investing. Rest at link.
Posted by: ed ||
06/26/2006 10:57 ||
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#1
Their electric car was a "hot" sportscar but they only let folks lease them then junked them. Most people that had them loved them. Why doesn't GM just make the damn successful sports car?
Not even low-level civil conflict in the Niger River Delta can stop price stabilization. Iraq oil production highest since Liberation; Iraq will soon beat Saudi production levels.
SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Oil edged down on Monday after signs of improved Iraqi production, but held near $71 a barrel as U.S. gasoline demand is still growing despite near-record prices while traders worry over supply disruptions. U.S. crude traded 9 cents down at $70.78 a barrel by 2340 GMT, after a rise of three cents on Friday that took gains for last week to 1.4 percent.
Iraq's oil minister, Hussain al-Shahristani, offered an optimistic forecast for the country's industry on Sunday, saying daily output has reached 2.5 million barrels a day and that Iraq hoped to rival top exporter Saudi Arabia within a decade.
Iraq issued a tender for 6 million barrels of Kirkuk crude on Sunday, the second tender this month after a halt of nearly a year in exports from its northern oilfields due to sabotage.
Concerns remain over U.S. fuel supplies during peak summer demand, after the U.S. Coast Guard said on Friday a closure of a key shipping channel in Louisiana was extended after heavy rains caused an oil spill, supporting gasoline prices as the channel connects three refineries with the Gulf of Mexico.
Data last week showed U.S. drivers are buying more motor fuel than last year, despite paying almost $3 a gallon at the pump, while gasoline stocks rose less than expected. "Previously inventories looked very comfortable -- now a big swing lower is in sympathy with other worries for the oil market, like Iran and Nigeria," said Tobin Gorey of the Commonwealth bank of Australia.
Iran on Sunday repeated threats that it was ready to use its massive oil exports as a weapon to defend itself if it felt in danger in an international dispute over its atomic program.
We're getting ready to use Iran's massive gasoline imports as a weapon ...
But Oil Minister Kazem Vaziri-Hamaneh said international sanctions on 2.5 million barrels per day of Iranian crude exports would be impractical and would send oil prices over $100 a barrel.
Adjusted for inflation, oil is at its most expensive since 1980, the year after the Iranian revolution. It is within sight of its $75.35 record high hit in April.
OPEC crude output edged 300,000 barrels per day higher in June to 29.7 million bpd because of increases in the group's two biggest producers, Saudi Arabia and Iran, oil consultant Petrologistics told Reuters on Friday. The exporter group has kept its official output ceiling, which binds the 10 members excluding Iraq, at a near-maximum 28 million bpd for almost a year in response to a rally that has taken oil from $20 at the start of 2002.
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.
WASHINGTON (AP) 
MANAMA - Bahrains information ministry has stopped broadcasts by the first privately-held radio station in the tiny Gulf kingdom due to a series of violations, an official said on Sunday. Jamal Daoud, who heads the ministrys publications department, said the ministry had canceled the license granted to Delmon Media, which operates the Sawt Al Ghad, or the voice of tomorrow, radio station.
WEALTHY Mexicans are nervous that next Sunday's presidential election will be won by Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a leftist who proclaims himself a champion of the poor and whose supporters dress as cockerels. They are equally nervous about what might happen if Lopez Obrador loses. After a hard-fought race against Felipe Calderon, his main conservative rival, Lopez Obrador, the former mayor of Mexico City, enters the final week of campaigning with a two-point opinion poll lead. 
ISLAMABAD: Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) has discreetly launched an investigation into reports of misuse of million of rupees meant for victims of human rights abuses by Law Minister Wasi Zafar. An ISI officer reportedly visited the ministry offices on Friday to collect information and documentary evidence.
