Singapore Hangs Australian Drug Smuggler By CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA, Associated Press Writer
31 minutes ago
SINGAPORE - Singapore executed a 25-year-old Australian on Friday for drug trafficking, despite numerous appeals from the Australian government and hours after the condemned man had a "beautiful last visit" with his family.
Nguyen Tuong Van was hanged before dawn as a dozen friends and supporters, dressed in black, kept an overnight vigil outside the maximum-security prison. His twin brother, Nguyen Khoa, was dressed in white.
Vigils were also held in cities around Australia, with bells and gongs sounding 25 times at the hour of his execution.
"The sentence was carried out this morning at Changi Prison," the Home Affairs Ministry said in an e-mailed statement.
Nguyen received a mandatory death sentence after he was caught in 2002 at Singapore's airport on his way home to Melbourne carrying about 14 ounces of heroin.
Singapore has executed more than 100 people for drug-related offenses since 1999, saying its tough laws and penalties are an effective deterrent against a crime that ruins lives. By contrast, Australia scrapped the death penalty in 1973 and hanged its last criminal in 1967.
While Australian leaders lashed out at the death sentence as "barbaric" and pleaded for clemency for Nguyen, Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong had ruled out a reprieve.
"We have stated our position clearly," Lee told reporters in Berlin on Thursday after meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. "The penalty is death."
Nguyen visited with his mother, Kim, twin brother, Nguyen Khoa, a friend and his lawyers Thursday afternoon.
Julian McMahon, one of his Australian lawyers, said Nguyen was "completely rehabilitated, completely reformed, completely focused on doing what is good and now they are going to kill him."
Another lawyer, Lex Lasry, said the family had a "beautiful last visit."
"It was a great visit and quite uplifting," he said, brushing away tears.
McMahon said Nguyen's mother had been allowed to hold her son's hand and touch his face in her last visit.
"That was a great comfort to her," McMahon said.
Lasry has criticized Singapore's mandatory death penalty for some drugs cases and attacked the clemency appeal process as lacking transparency.
But Singapore's Home Affairs Ministry said in an e-mail statement that every petition for clemency is carefully considered by the president, "taking into account all relevant factors."
"The president has in the past commuted the death penalty," the statement said.
According to local media, Singapore has granted clemency to six inmates on death row â all Singaporeans â since independence in 1965.
Earlier Thursday, Australian Attorney General Philip Ruddock called the planned execution "a most unfortunate, barbaric act that is occurring."
Asked about the comment in Berlin, Lee would only say that "the Australian press is colorful." Lee emphasized that all factors, including Australian letters for clemency, had been "taken into account" but said "the law will have to take its course."
There are signs in the airport at Singapore warning all that "drug trafficking can result in the death penalty."
Decision paves way for homosexual unions, a first for the continent
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - South Africa's highest court ruled Thursday it is unconstitutional to bar gay marriage, paving the way for this country to become the first in Africa to legalize homosexual unions. Gay rights activists welcomed the ruling on a continent where homosexuality remains largely taboo. In its ruling, the court gave the country's parliament a year to change the legal definition of marriage to include same-sex couples...
Evidently leading the world or being in first place in incidents of HIV was not newsy enough for those lads.
INDIANAPOLIS -- The city of Indianapolis is asking a court to shut down what it calls a house-based sexual torture business, saying it violates zoning regulations. The city on Wednesday filed a court complaint against Melyssa Donaghy, alleging that she is illegally operating a business in her home, located in the 4100 block of Central Avenue.
Should have called it a church and yourself as High Priestess
"We have evidence of sexual torture and masochistic activity going on in that residence and on that property," said Justin Ohlemiller, of Indianapolis' Department of Metropolitan Development. Authorities say an undercover Indianapolis police officer went to the home in September. He reported being forced to get down on his hands and knees and kiss Donaghy's boots and feet.
"It was just like going before the promotion board!"
The officer also said he witnessed the use of spurs, whips, chains and clamping devices, and that he was subjected to degrading conversation, RTV6's Jack Rinehart reported.
Had Air America playing, huh?
Doesn't that mandate a referral to the City Mental Health Board?
According to her Web site, Donaghy, also known as Mistress Ann, practices domination and submission arts in the basement of her home. Donaghy issued a statement saying her practice includes domestic training "while encouraging and practicing sexual responsibility and chastity."
"Don't think of it as a leather suit, it's a really big condom. With studs."
In addition to seeking an end to the business, the city wants Donaghy to pay a fine.
Of course they do
Wonder if they'd take a percentage of the cut?
People in Donaghy's neighborhood have expressed concerns about the business's proximity to a Catholic grade school and a public library, Rinehart reported.
Posted by: Steve ||
12/01/2005 12:13 ||
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What's the address of this again??? I need to investigate this in depth!!!!
#2
My question is, what was the cop doing there and was it his first visit? And notice they didn't say he was a vice cop...so what, was Internal Affairs going to meet their professional associates?
#3
a Mistress, role playing, spurs, whips, chains and clamping devices..
aren't all homes furnished with these articles?
Posted by: Red Dog ||
12/01/2005 13:37 Comments ||
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#4
People in Donaghy's neighborhood have expressed concerns about the business's proximity to a Catholic grade school and a public library, Rinehart reported.
#5
Thank God for a garden variety dominatrix story. At first I thought this was going to be another never-ending MSM Leftwing Loonie CNN Abu Ghraib prison story.
#6
Go to the whole story, she trained the guards at Abu Ghraibe. She's big on the thumbs up pictures on her web site! Now we know why the AQ are surrendering in droves. The attacks are to get in, not to free the inturns!!! HAHAHAHA
Posted by: 49 pan ||
12/01/2005 18:37 Comments ||
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#7
I asked my masochistic friend why he hangs out with that sadist. He replied:
Environ-mental
Activists protesting wind mills .pdf file, page 18
With all of the various opinions about the need for new sources of renewable energy, youâd think that environmental activists would celebrate Great Britainâs plan to build the worldâs largest windmill farm. However, environmental groups are protesting the plan due to the effect it would have on local birds that could be killed by the rotating turbines. Well, when everyone is sitting in the dark and shivering, the view of the migrating birds in the moonlight will truly take your breath away.
Posted by: Bobby ||
12/01/2005 09:58 ||
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#1
Windfarms are the absolute worst environmental blight imaginable. They are innefficient and a drive through the Altamont pass shows just how hedious these things are.
I can't imagine anyone stupid enought to want windmills spreading across the country.
#5
I think the large windmills along the German North Sea Coast are nice. The problem is windmill farms are ugly. If we had giant windmills (say one or two per town) spread out in the windier areas they wouldnt' have such a bad name.
Imagine if you got the high tech campuses up in windy Silicon Valley (at least Menlo Park where the big Sun Campus is) to purchase two windmills to power the campus and allowed them to sell extra power back to the grid. You get enough doing that any you take the strain off the power grid.
Trush is Environmentalists are not pro-environment as much as they are anti-civilization.
#7
Imagine if you got the high tech campuses up in windy Silicon Valley (at least Menlo Park where the big Sun Campus is) to purchase two windmills to power the campus and allowed them to sell extra power back to the grid.
I haven't seen the big German windmills so I can't comment on them. However, after the fight the cell companies had to go through to put up nearly invisible cell towers, I think that getting California communities to agree to such a plan is like, well, tilting at windmills.
The footprints of one of the most fearsome creatures ever found in the British Isles â a water scorpion the length of a person â have been discovered in Scotland.
Atsa pretty big bug...
Tracks in rock on the east coast of Scotland were created 330 million years ago by the six-legged Hibbertopterus, which was 1.6m (5ft 3in) long and 1m (3ft 3in) wide.
"Honey? Did you remember to feed the six-legged Hibbertopterus?"
The water scorpion, which is distantly related to its small modern cousins, had two claw-like arms, an armoured exoskeleton and a powerful tail tipped with a large, flat spike â although it was not poisonous. âI think it would have been a pretty fearsome sight,â said Martin Whyte, of the University of Sheffield, a geologist who found the tracks.
How can he tell it wasn't poisonous if all he found was the tracks? For that matter, how can he tell it had an armored exoskeleton, rather than a thin, pliable exoskeleton? Would the tracks even tell you it had a tail? Why would it necessarily be a fearsome sight, especially if not poisonous? It could be that the beasts went extinct because they weren't armored or poisonous, but had cute little snub-nosed smiley faces. Because they were so friendly-looking, rather like a large puppy only with 700 big brown eyes, and were easy to take apart, they'd have been much like a very large, ambulatory lobster dinner.
Despite its formidable appearance, the creature would have presented little threat to people.
That's probably because there weren't many people around 330 million years ago.
It fed on smaller prey such as water fleas and as an aquatic animal would have been easy to outrun on land.
uh huh. sure.
Well, I think, having seen similar tracks once in the mud along the Mekong river, that the beast lived on ham sandwiches, sea scallions, and salps, and made noises in a high tenor voice.
The discovery, published today in the journal Nature, is the first of its kind in the world.
Marvelously detailed conclusions, based on a set of tracks...
Two Saudi businesswomen have swept to a surprise victory in chamber of commerce elections in the first polls in which women stood as candidates in the conservative Muslim kingdom. "I am happy, but I am still under shock," Lama al-Suleiman, one of the two winners, said.
She was summing up the feelings of many election activists and watchers who had expected, at best, one woman to be elected to the board of directors of the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry. "It is a big leap for Saudi women, an answer to what people want," said Suleiman, a 39-year-old mother of four. Suleiman and fellow female winner Nashwa Taher ran on a list of heavyweight business people and industrialists which clinched the 12 board seats up for grabs.
With only 100 women among the some 3880 chamber members who cast ballots, the pair's victory was effectively handed to them by men. "This means there is trust (in women). Professionalism is very important ... And this is my message to Saudi women: take your work seriously, without forgetting your role as a mother and wife," said Taher, who helps run a group of family companies with interests ranging from foodstuffs to contracting.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/01/2005 00:00 ||
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#1
Funny, I was just going to invite the ChiComs to kiss my ass.
Posted by: Captain America ||
12/01/2005 0:14 Comments ||
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#2
You'd think they would at least wait until they took care of there benzene contaminated water problem before lecturing us on how to manage the enviroment.
#5
⦠adding it was unfair to expect China and India USA_ with the world's largest most productive populations _ to ask their impoverished hard working people to cut back on energy consumption.
#6
What is the Chinese gross economic productivity per energy unit or per emmission unit? How does it compare to US ratio? (I can guess the answer, but am curious about the actual numbers.)
#7
Glen, I googled a number of sites on this issue. As you can imagine there is data all over the place. But in general it seems the US and China have comparable $GDP/BTU. This makes sense when you consider that the majority of China is in rural poverty and most of the manufactured GDP is created in coastal enclaves for export. In the US, There is a lot more transportation into the interior, think Interstate highways, and houses are a lot bigger.
China is also very low on the GDP per capita scale, so it should have a much better marginal $GDP/BTU than the US as it picks the low hanging fruit. Were they to rise to the US level of GDP per capita and income distribution, it is likely they would use energy less efficiently.
Contrary to popular opinion, when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions, the United States cannot accurately be labeled as all give and no take. In fact, of the 5 billion tons of carbon dioxide our consumer driven country coughs up a year, roughly 15 to 30 percent is reabsorbed back into the land.
Other studies have indicated even more carbon is "reabsorbed" making North America a minimal producer verging on a negative net.
Picture here The ocean current that gives western Europe its relatively balmy climate is stuttering, raising fears that it might fail entirely and plunge the continent into a mini ice age. The dramatic finding comes from a study of ocean circulation in the North Atlantic, which found a 30% reduction in the warm currents that carry water north from the Gulf Stream. The slow-down, which has long been predicted as a possible consequence of global warming, will give renewed urgency to intergovernmental talks in Montreal, Canada, this week on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol.
I'm sure it will, right or wrong. The weather gets hot, it's evidence of global warming. The weather gets cold, it's evidence of global warming. I'm starting to miss the nuclear winter...
Harry Bryden at the Southampton Oceanography Centre in the UK, whose group carried out the analysis, says he is not yet sure if the change is temporary or signals a long-term trend. "We donât want to say the circulation will shut down," he told New Scientist. "But we are nervous about our findings. They have come as quite a surprise."
The North Atlantic is dominated by the Gulf Stream â currents that bring warm water north from the tropics. At around 40° north â the latitude of Portugal and New York â the current divides. Some water heads southwards in a surface current known as the subtropical gyre, while the rest continues north, leading to warming winds that raise European temperatures by 5°C to 10°C. But when Brydenâs team measured north-south heat flow last year, using a set of instruments strung across the Atlantic from the Canary Islands to the Bahamas, they found that the division of the waters appeared to have changed since previous surveys in 1957, 1981 and 1992. From the amount of water in the subtropical gyre and the flow southwards at depth, they calculate that the quantity of warm water flowing north had fallen by around 30%.
When Bryden added previously unanalysed data â collected in the same region by the US governmentâs National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration â he found a similar pattern. This suggests that his 2004 measurements are not a one-off, and that most of the slow-down happened between 1992 and 1998. The changes are too big to be explained by chance, co-author Stuart Cunningham told New Scientist from a research ship off the Canary Islands, where he is collecting more data. "We think the findings are robust."
But Richard Wood, chief oceanographer at the UK Met Officeâs Hadley Centre for climate research in Exeter, says the Southampton team's findings leave a lot unexplained. The changes are so big they should have cut oceanic heating of Europe by about one-fifth â enough to cool the British Isles by 1°C and Scandinavia by 2°C. "We havenât seen it yet," he points out.
Though unseasonably cold weather last month briefly blanketed parts of the UK in snow, average European temperatures have been rising, Wood says. Measurements of surface temperatures in the North Atlantic indicate a strong warming trend during the 1990s, which seems now to have halted. Bryden speculates that the warming may have been part of a global temperature increase brought about by man-made greenhouse warming, and that this is now being counteracted by a decrease in the northward flow of warm water. After warming Europe, this flow comes to a halt in the waters off Greenland, sinks to the ocean floor and returns south. The water arriving from the south is already more saline and so more dense than Arctic seas, and is made more so as ice forms.
But Brydenâs study has revealed that while one area of sinking water, on the Canadian side of Greenland, still seems to be functioning as normal, a second area on the European side has partially shut down and is sending only half as much deep water south as before. The two southward flows can be distinguished because they travel at different depths.
Nobody is clear on what has gone wrong. Suggestions for blame include the melting of sea ice or increased flow from Siberian rivers into the Arctic. Both would load fresh water into the surface ocean, making it less dense and so preventing it from sinking, which in turn would slow the flow of tropical water from the south. And either could be triggered by man-made climate change. Some climate models predict that global warming could lead to such a shutdown later this century. The last shutdown, which prompted a temperature drop of 5°C to 10°C in western Europe, was probably at the end of the last ice age, 12,000 years ago. There may also have been a slowing of Atlantic circulation during the Little Ice Age, which lasted sporadically from 1300 to about 1850 and created temperatures low enough to freeze the River Thames in London.
#1
was probably at the end of the last ice age, 12,000 years ago.
For the umpteenth time, we are currently in an ice age, which began over a million years ago. An interglacial (a short (relative to the ice age) period of warming within the ice age) began close to 20,000 years ago.
#2
Amen, phil_b. It's so much easier to just blurt out some phoney charge than it is to refute it. I used to post, back upon a time, loads of links (there are real scientists out there - in hiding) to substantiate your point, which is 100% rock-solid Truth - then realized no one read 'em, no once cared, the meme rulez. If a favorite Talking Point is refuted, they learn nothing, they just move on (pun intended) to another one - eyes still blazing with the same level of self-righteous Kool Aid Klarity.
#3
While I am an optimist about most things, I can work up a deep depression about the lack of scientific knowledge and understanding of those who are and have recently gone through Western educational systems.
If there was one thing I would fix in this world it would be to make sure everyone had a basic knowledge of science (and economics). Incidentally China and India seem to understand this.
BTW, .com drop me an email, I have idea that has been kicking around in my head for a while now, that I'd like to run by you.
I had me a western edumication, and the reason ima not depressed at all is 'cause i have gud scientific suggestions for K00L AID peples.
1) have they though about burning more cars to git em thru them cooler nites?
2) have they considered how many trillions³ of calories are locked up in all the millions³ of Kyoto & EU documents? burn em for solstice celebrations.
3) Main hot air back up system...just keep feeding Jacques-strap & Dominique de Villepin. [Dominique isa man I think]
Posted by: Red Dog ||
12/01/2005 1:54 Comments ||
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have they considered how many trillions³ of calories are locked up in all the millions³ of Kyoto & EU documents?
Thanks Red Dog. I was wondering how that carbon capture thingy was going to work.
#9
Red Dog, in case you thought I was putting you down, I most definitely wasn't. One of the Burg's considerable charms is when others pick up a joke and spin it in their own style of humour. Mine (on a good day) is 'dry' and it can be hard to tell if I am being serious, sarcastic or ironic. I was just elaborating your joke.
#10
humour. Mine (on a good day) is 'dry' and it can be hard to tell if I am being serious, sarcastic or ironic.
As long as you yourself know which one of them it is , it's probably fine. ;-)
Hope your wife can tell the difference too. ;-)
Just to stir a pot...
Approx. 7500 BCE and 5000 BCE, there was something called a "climatic optimum". The temps averaged about 2.5 deg C more than recently (the period covered by sustained temperature observations).
I would have to dig the info how this was actually extrapolated, and I will do that at some point when time allows. Why I mention this is that if you calculate the effects of it, it translates to disappearing of polar ice caps. Entirely. No ice cover left. Got the idea?
Then the calibration of the ice cores is simply wrong, as it is based on assumptions that are invalid.
In other words, if the temperature data are correct, then the measurements of ice cores are not correct and that the ice has been deposited since about 5000 BCE. There may have been ice before 7500 BCE, but we don't have a precise way to tell when and how much, because it is all gone. The data based mostly on occurences of sea critters (moluscs) suggest, as you correctly state, that the Quartenary is, essentially, and ice age, in comparison with previous climatic conditions. But beyond that, most of the conclusions are rather a conjecture than 'solid truth'.
To try to beat one conjecture (global warming) with another (no matter how consensual the conjecture is) is somewhat... ahm... reminiscent of Flatland disputes whether the visitors are circles or squares, while in reality they were spheres and cubes.
Myself, I'd rather stick with uncertainity than with articles of faith of any kind.
#11
If ocean current changes mess up western Europe's temperate climate, it will have to also change other climates. How? Will North Africa become moist and fertile? Or crank out even more hurricane seeds? Will the Atlantic basin develop monsoons? This is a very study-worthy area although I doubt there is much anyone can do to change things.
This could be the worst catastrophe in French history. The yoots would certainly torch every snowmobile in France when glaciers crush their mosques. Beyond that, how would the tourist trade survive? Who wants to sit at a sidewalk cafe when it's 40 below, on Bastille Day no less?
Certainly all this Greenpeace global warming propaganda is not helping matters. I know. Call out the French Navy, they will know what to do.
While most would agree that serving as president of the United States is more pressing than serving as foreman of a jury, McLennan County officials are waiting for Crawford resident George W. Bush, potential juror number 286, to respond to a summons to report Monday for jury duty. "It is not uncommon that people don't respond for jury duty," said 19th State District Judge Ralph Strother, to whose court the president has been summoned. "It is unique having the president in this situation, so I have never faced this issue before and I am not sure what is going to happen. I am assuming at some point that we will hear something from somebody on his behalf."
White House spokesman Allen Abney said the commander-in-chief was not aware of the situation: "The White House has not received the summons yet." He declined to elaborate on how the president would handle the jury notice when it finally did arrive from Bush's adopted home county.
Strother said one of Bush's daughters, Barbara, received a jury summons for his court a month ago. Someone called to reschedule her jury service because the caller reported that she will be out of the country for the next six months, the judge said. "The president actually appearing for jury duty, I think, would create all sorts of security issues for the Secret Service, for the sheriff's department, for the courthouse, for Mother Sheehan and other moonbats, so I anticipate that we will hear some type of response to the jury summons," Strother said.
Sen. Orrin Hatchâs word confusion From DC Examiner's "One Word" editorial page .pdf file, page 18
During a recent interview, Senator Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, accidentally referred to Iraq as Vietnam. His error was of course picked up by several liberal blogs that relished Hatchâs slip. Perhaps their campaign to compare Iraq to Vietnam is actually working.
Posted by: Bobby ||
12/01/2005 10:01 ||
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August 26, 1967, Air Force Major (later Colonel) George "Bud" Day was hit in his F-100 just north of the DMZ... Further down he mentions the Americans who betrayed him.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
12/01/2005 8:15 Comments ||
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Nearly excellent. He should have emphasized that Jane Fonda and her accomplices in addition of being traitors didn't care about Vietnamese and Cambodians killed or tortured. They were only pawns in their little games of rich white kids. Expendable pawns that Jane Fonda was very willing to have expended be it at Hue or in Cambodia.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA, USA -- Members of a black Muslim sect have been arrested for allegedly trashing two Arab-American liquor stores in a predominantly African-American city near San Francisco, police said on Wednesday. Donald Cunningham, 73, and 19-year-old Yusuf Bey IV surrendered to police who had issued warrants for their arrests, according to investigators. Bey is a son of the late Yusuf Bey, a California beauty salon owner turned religious leader who founded an Oakland-based sect under the umbrella of a business called Your Black Muslim Bakery.
Police identified Cunningham and Bey IV as being among the alleged vandals who were dressed in the Muslim group's trademark dapper style when they ransacked two Oakland liquor stores on November 23. Men dressed in suits and bow ties barged into the liquor stores and smashed bottles of wine, liquor and beer to the floor. The attackers reportedly accused the merchants of poisoning blacks. Police said that they were able to identify six suspects based on action caught by a surveillance camera in a vandalized store.
One of those stores was torched early on Monday morning and its owner, Abdel Hamdan, was stuffed in the trunk of a car left in a neighboring city, according to police. A neighborhood resident said that she noticed African-American men in suits lingering near the market shortly before the fire, which police determined was arson. Cunningham and Bey IV were booked on suspicion of robbery, vandalism, conspiracy and making terrorist threats, according to police. Investigators were working to determine whether there is evidence linking the vandalism and the arson.
The dress of the perpetrators drew attention to the local black Muslim group founded about 30 years ago by Yusuf Bey. Members of the group, which advocates strict tenets including shunning alcohol, have been sued in court for allegedly beating a barbecue restaurant owner for selling pork.
Another example of tolerance and respect by the ROP
At the time of his death in 2003, founder Bey was on trial for having sex with underage girls. The patriarch had boasted of siring more than 50 children with women in his sect.
SEE: ROP
The group is distinct from the prominent Nation of Islam black Muslim group headed by Louis Farrakhan, which joined elected officials and convenience store owners over the weekend to condemn the Oakland vandalism. Oakland police and federal agents are investigating the attacks as hate crimes.
Posted by: Steve ||
12/01/2005 10:22 ||
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U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, who will visit Japan from Dec 9-12, suggested Wednesday that Japan should not link its financial contribution to its efforts to secure a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council, while acknowledging its high financial contribution. "But of course, it's not a direct sort of linkage between the contribution and membership of the council, although we do indicate that to be a member of the council you must be able to make contributions to the organization," he said. Annan emphasized that council members are also expected to fulfill their duties by supplying peacekeeping forces, as well participating in diplomatic initiatives, in addition to making financial contributions.
#2
My understanding is that the issue is Japan thinks its contribution is too high - and its not directly linked to the SC seat - and wants to cut it by 25%. I'm betting they will and it may well trigger a cascade of similar cuts. Can't wait!
#5
Japan is, I believe, the 2nd largest contributor. How much has France paid in the last 10 years? Should they have a seat? Does the EU actually NEED 2 sec council seats? Or is Britain pulling out of the EU and taking theirs with them?
#6
Lecturing the Nips about money before paying them a visit? Kofi, you're every bit as stupid as you look. I suspect you'd better be prepared to do more with less.
For reference, the total US contribution to UN programs is over $3 billion (27% peacekeeping, 40% or more to many humanitarian programs). Then there are the unbilled contributions such as US equipment and logistics for peacekeeping missions, US government technical and scientific services, US participation in peacekeeping missions that are not billed or only covered in tiny part by the UN budget.
Posted by: ed ||
12/01/2005 16:05 Comments ||
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#8
BTW, the France's contribution to the UN budget chart for the US general budget contribution is wrong. It was reduced to 22% some years ago. When the UN was formed, the US picked up 50% of the budget.
Posted by: ed ||
12/01/2005 16:14 Comments ||
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What Kofi & Co LLC needs to realize is that responsible countries will look at their contributions in a qualitive cost-benefit ratio. This will be done because the countries need to be accountable to their taxpayers. Kofi's position is that the UN bureaucrats know best, and that it is the responsibility of member countries (at least some of them) to fork over the money, with no questions asked.
Accountability is a bitch for those that are not accountable. Game is not over, but the moves are already predetermined, like the end game in chess. Smart chess players resign before checkmate when they can see that it is all over except the final moves.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
12/01/2005 17:15 Comments ||
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There are a series of 'insulin growth factors' (IGFs) that are similar to insulin in function, if not in structure. There are a series of insulin receptors in cells, and both insulin and IGFs can bind to some or all of them. But the IGFs elicit responses that are varied and different than that of insulin. Further, insulin does more than just regulate blood sugar uptake by cells.
So the finding that insulin / insulin receptors / IGFs drop in the brains of Alzheimers patients is very interesting, but doesn't tell you that it's all about blood sugar. It doesn't even establish cause and effect -- it's just an association. That said, it's a very interesting association, and I'm sure a whole group of investigators will turn to it and see what's going on.
[/mount]
Posted by: Steve White ||
12/01/2005 14:47 Comments ||
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#2
I've learned to live with it. I'm constanting meeting new people.
#3
Steve White: I remember a few years ago when it was noticed that there was a marked correlation between the lack of nitrous oxide blood gas in Alzheimer's patients. They also noted that schizophrenics are just they opposite, they have an abundance of NO in their blood. Lastly that schizophrenia and Alzheimer's seem to be mutually exclusive.
Rantburg Civil Engineering Division:
The floodwall on the 17th Street Canal levee was destined to fail long before it reached its maximum design load of 14 feet of water because the Army Corps of Engineers underestimated the weak soil layers 10 to 25 feet below the levee, the state's forensic levee investigation team concluded in a report to be released this week. That miscalculation was so obvious and fundamental, investigators said, they "could not fathom" how the design team of engineers from the corps, local firm Eustis Engineering and the national firm Modjeski and Masters could have missed what is being termed the costliest engineering mistake in American history.
The failure of the wall and other breaches in the city's levee system flooded much of New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina slammed ashore Aug. 29, prompting investigations that have raised questions about the basic design and construction of the floodwalls. "It's simply beyond me," said Billy Prochaska, a consulting engineer in the forensic group known as Team Louisiana. "This wasn't a complicated problem. This is something the corps, Eustis, and Modjeski and Masters do all the time. Yet everyone missed it -- everyone from the local offices all the way up to Washington."
Team Louisiana, which consists of six LSU professors and three independent engineers, reached its conclusions by plugging soil strength data available to the corps into the engineering equations used to determine whether a wall is strong enough to withstand the force of rising water caused by a hurricane. "Using the data we have available from the corps, we did our own calculations on how much water that design could take in these soils before failure," said LSU professor Ivor van Heerden, a team member. "Our research shows it would fail at water levels between 11 and 12 feet -- which is just what happened" in Katrina.
Several high-level academic and professional investigations have found that the sheet piling used in the design to support the floodwalls was too short for the 18.5-foot depth of the canal. In addition to holding up the concrete "cap" on the walls, the sheet piling is supposed to serve as a barrier preventing the migration of water from the canal through the porous soils to the land side of the levee, an event that rapidly weakens the soils supporting a wall and can cause it to shift substantially. The corps has long claimed the sheet piling was driven to 17.5 feet deep, but Team Louisiana recently used sophisticated ground sonar to prove it was only 10 feet deep.
I'll bet if you could find the purchase orders, they'd say they purchased 17 foot piles.
Van Heerden said Team Louisiana's latest calculations prove investigators' claims that a depth of 17 feet would have made little difference. He said the team ran the calculations for sheet piles at 17 feet and 16 feet deep, and the wall still would have failed at a load of 11 to 12 feet of water.
Investigators have been puzzled by the corps' design since it was made public in news reports. They said it was obvious the weak soils in the former swampland upon which the canal and levee were built clearly called for sheet piles driven much deeper than the canal bottom. It was not a challenging engineering problem, investigators said. Prochaska said a rule of thumb is that the length of sheet piling below a canal bottom should be two to three times longer than the length extending above the canal bottom. "That's if you have uniform soils, and we certainly don't have that in the New Orleans area," he said. "It kind of boggles the mind that they missed this, because it's so basic, and there were so many qualified engineers working on this."
According to records, Eustis Engineering provided the detailed analyses of the ability of soils along the path of the levee to withstand water pressure once the wall was built on top. The information was provided to Modjeski and Masters, the contractor that designed the wall for the corps. If the project followed normal procedures, the engineers with those firms were using design criteria spelled out in various corps handbooks. "You use the corps cookbook, and you usually have to work it out using corps (computer) programs," Prochaska said.
Private-sector engineering work must be reviewed by corps personnel in relevant sections. In this case, legal documents show, the work was reviewed by engineers in the corps' geotechnical and structural engineering branches, as well as the flood control structures section. It was approved and accepted by the district's chief engineer at the time, Chester Ashley, according to the documents. Robert Bea, a University of California, Berkeley professor who led a National Science Foundation investigation of the levee failures, said the mistakes made by the engineers on the project were hard to accept because the project was so "straightforward."
"It's hard to understand, because it seemed so simple, and because the failure has become so large," Bea said. "This is the largest civil engineering disaster in the history of the United States. Nothing has come close to the $300 billion in damages and half-million people out of their homes and the lives lost," he said. "Nothing this big has ever happened before in civil engineering."
A lot of people should at least loose their jobs over this as well as do jail time.
Posted by: Steve ||
12/01/2005 09:11 ||
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#1
Nothing to see here. Move along, don't worry I'll be part of the new levee system.
#2
A lot of people should at least loose their jobs over this as well as do jail time.
But that isn't going to happen. All the evidence was destroyed in the flood, heh. That too is evidence of how endemic corruption is in NOLA. What should and can happen is that the tax payers of New Orleans, not the Federal government, should foot the bill for rebuilding. If few return, rebuild little. I don't know why we should rebuild an amusement park in a flood zone if it can't support itself. Cheaper to get releases, pay everybody off, and let them re-start their lives in a place other than a flood plain. If it makes sense for NOLA to be rebuilt, it will be done regardless of how much the feds spend there.
#5
What this article fails to explain is that Professor Ivor van Heerden predicted the consequences of mega-storms like Katrina well prior to her actual arrival. Here is one of his quotes: "Imagine you're the poor person who decides not to evacuate: Your house will disintegrate around you. The best you'll be able to do is hang on to a light pole, and while you're hanging on, the fire ants from all the mounds -- of which there is two per yard on average -- will clamber up that same pole. And eventually, the fire ants will win. The levees intended to protect the city vary in height, from as low as 10 feet above sea level to about 14 feet, he said. They too are vulnerable because they are made of earth, he said." A native a Natal South Africa, Van Heerden is the deputy Director of LSU's Hurrican Center.
#9
They're ants. Mold is food. OMG, New Orleans is gonna be neck deep with trillions of well fed fire ants! Run for the hills, or at least 10 (19 if you are NoI) feet above sea level.
Posted by: ed ||
12/01/2005 17:48 Comments ||
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#10
Soeaking of which, you'd at least think the environmentalists would be giving us some credit for growing the world's largest population of free-range mold.
Posted by: Matt ||
12/01/2005 17:49 Comments ||
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#11
absolutely NO reason why this happened other than massive fraud and/or incompetence. Jailtime, confiscation of wealth, confiscation of licenses, firings....and then you really kick ass
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/01/2005 19:30 Comments ||
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#12
Frank - you're a civil engineer, yes? (And AP, IIRC).
I worked with the COE in KC in 1982. Inconceivable they could have permitted this sort of failure.
Unbelievable.
Corruption makes it less unbelievable....
Posted by: Bobby ||
12/01/2005 21:41 Comments ||
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#13
yep - Registered in CA
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/01/2005 22:40 Comments ||
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#15
IOW, its the guesstimates now post-KATRINA/FEMA-GATE versus the guesstimates when the levees were first built many decades ago - either way, NOLA wants the Fed to pay out.
Looks fair comely from the back. I'd rather strip search her than some old fart with a turban, too.
Malaysia's deputy internal security minister has apologised for inflaming a police abuse scandal by apparently defending the stripping of a Chinese woman at a police station, an act made public by a secretly shot video.
Do I get the impression that if it wasn't on tape it wouldn't have happened?
Deputy Internal Security Minister Noh Omar on Wednesday said his remarks were misinterpreted. "I openly apologise if the meaning of my comments was received negatively," Noh was quoted as saying by state news agency Bernama. Noh whipped up a storm of protest by saying on Tuesday that he believed police had not violated procedures in making the Chinese woman strip and perform squats in a lockup.
"It's right there in the manual, page 308!"
A video of the incident made public last week sparked a national scandal. "If the foreigners think we are cruel, ask them to go back to their own country... For me, it was conducted in accordance with the rules," Noh told reporters in parliament on Tuesday, according to local media. On Wednesday, Noh denied those remarks.
"Nope. Nope. Never happend. Who? Me? Nahhh!"
"I said that if our country isn't peaceful or if the police are as cruel as what is being claimed about them nowadays, then how could it be that many foreigners live in our country," he said.
"... regardless of what it sounds like on the tape!"
Earlier on Wednesday, Lim Kit Siang, the opposition leader in Parliament, urged Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi to suspend Noh. The Malay Mail newspaper said Noh had "lost his cool after repeated badgering" by journalists over the issue.
Personally, I think he's just an anus.
It was not clear whether the woman in the video is a Chinese citizen or an ethnic Chinese Malaysian, but the incident has bolstered long-standing claims by human rights activists that detainees are routinely mistreated in police custody. It has also raised concerns that police unfairly target Chinese.
At least the cute ones.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/01/2005 00:00 ||
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MP Teresa Kok has been covering the issue at her blog.
Yes, an Malaysian congresscritter has her own blog. :D
The US has asked the UN Security Council to put Myanmar on its agenda for the first time, accusing its military rulers of repressing political opponents, including the pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi. In a letter to the council president, US ambassador John Bolton accused the government of destroying villages, targeting ethnic minorities and failing to initiate democratic reforms. He also cited press reports that the authorities in Myanmar - formerly known as Burma - are seeking nuclear power capabilities. Russia and China blocked the last US attempt to get the Security Council to discuss Myanmar in June - and it was unclear whether they would do so again.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/01/2005 00:00 ||
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SALT LAKE CITY, Utah An atheist advocacy group sued the Utah Highway Patrol and Utah Department of Transportation on Thursday seeking the removal of large steel cross memorials from state property that honor troopers killed in the line of duty.
American Atheists Inc. contends the placement of the crosses, which carry the Highway Patrol's beehive logo, in state rights of way is an unconstitutional promotion Christianity...
look at the work to return "Christmas" instead of "Happy Holidays"...
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/01/2005 22:09 Comments ||
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#4
Ohhh, that's brillant! Good way to get the local cops on your side! If those nutjobs are smart, they'll drive the exact speed limit and follow EVERY traffic law at all times for the rest of their lives.
The California Supreme Court refused Wednesday to halt the scheduled execution of convicted killer Stanley Tookie Williams, the Crips gang founder who became an anti-gang activist while in prison and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
In a last-ditch legal move, defense attorneys petitioned the high court earlier this month, alleging shoddy forensic testing and other errors may have wrongly sent Williams to San Quentin State Prison, where he is scheduled die by injection Dec. 13. The defense derided as "junk science" ballistics evidence showing that a shotgun registered to Williams was used to kill three people during a 1979 motel robbery. The attorneys asked the court to allow re-examination of the evidence. Prosecutors argued there was no good reason to reopen Williams' case. Allegations about the shotgun evidence were based not on fact but on "innuendo, supposition and the patent bias of his purported expert," prosecutors said. The high court voted 4-2 without comment to deny the inmate's petition. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger or a federal court could still intervene to spare the 51-year-old Williams.
Nathan Barankin, spokesman for Attorney General Bill Lockyer, expressed satisfaction with Wednesday's ruling. "The extraordinary relief Williams sought is reserved for those cases which have legal merit," he said. Williams, condemned in 1981, has maintained his innocence. Among his claims is that fabricated testimony sent him to death row. He also says prosecutors violated his rights when they dismissed all potential black jurors from his case. The California Supreme Court, federal trial and appeals courts, and the U.S. Supreme Court have already ruled against him in earlier appeals.
Williams is asking for clemency from Schwarzenegger for killing Yen-I Yang, Tsai-Shai Chen Yang and Yu-Chin Yang Lin in the motel robbery, and Albert Owens, a 7-Eleven clerk gunned down in a separate killing. Clemency would commute his sentence to life without parole. While in prison, Williams has campaigned for an end to youth gang violence and written a series of children's books. He has been nominated five times for the Nobel Peace Prize and four times for the Nobel Prize for literature. Williams and a high school friend started the Crips in Los Angeles in 1971 and it grew into one of the nation's most notorious street gangs.
I was in LA during some of the worst Crips v. Bloods violence. Bad bad juju.
#5
Williams is asking for clemency from Schwarzenegger
From the time they get up in the morning and flush the toilet, they're taxed. Then they go and get the cup of coffee, they're taxed....This goes on all day long. Tax, tax, tax.Well now, some tax money I can save the people of California. Close the door Maria please darling. FLUSHHHHHHHHH! Good bye Tookie, you rotten, no good bastard!
Arnold Schwarzenegger
#6
Tookie should consider signing an organ donor card. It could even save the life of someone his Crips shot.
Posted by: ed ||
12/01/2005 16:22 Comments ||
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Tookie's refusal to recognize that his posture with respect to fighting crime includes helping to dismantle his super-violent gang enterprise merits him a swift visit with Mr. Needle and not much else. His insistence that the prison system was trying to turn him into a snitch shows that he has in no way abandonded his criminal mentality. Glad to see that the justice department was firing on all cylinders with this case.
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.
Decision paves way for homosexual unions, a first for the continent
INDIANAPOLIS -- The city of Indianapolis is asking a court to shut down what it calls a house-based sexual torture business, saying it violates zoning regulations. The city on Wednesday filed a court complaint against Melyssa Donaghy, alleging that she is illegally operating a business in her home, located in the 4100 block of Central Avenue. 
The footprints of one of the most fearsome creatures ever found in the British Isles â a water scorpion the length of a person â have been discovered in Scotland.
Two Saudi businesswomen have swept to a surprise victory in chamber of commerce elections in the first polls in which women stood as candidates in the conservative Muslim kingdom. "I am happy, but I am still under shock," Lama al-Suleiman, one of the two winners, said.
The ocean current that gives western Europe its relatively balmy climate is stuttering, raising fears that it might fail entirely and plunge the continent into a mini ice age. The dramatic finding comes from a study of ocean circulation in the North Atlantic, which found a 30% reduction in the warm currents that carry water north from the Gulf Stream. The slow-down, which has long been predicted as a possible consequence of global warming, will give renewed urgency to intergovernmental talks in Montreal, Canada, this week on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol.
U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, who will visit Japan from Dec 9-12, suggested Wednesday that Japan should not link its financial contribution to its efforts to secure a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council, while acknowledging its high financial contribution. "But of course, it's not a direct sort of linkage between the contribution and membership of the council, although we do indicate that to be a member of the council you must be able to make contributions to the organization," he said. Annan emphasized that council members are also expected to fulfill their duties by supplying peacekeeping forces, as well participating in diplomatic initiatives, in addition to making financial contributions.
The US has asked the UN Security Council to put Myanmar on its agenda for the first time, accusing its military rulers of repressing political opponents, including the pro-democracy leader 
The California Supreme Court refused Wednesday to halt the scheduled execution of convicted killer 
