"CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" has solved the mystery of who will replace departing CBS series star William Petersen: It's Laurence Fishburne.
Fishburne will be introduced in the ninth episode of the upcoming 10th season, the network said Monday. He'll play a forensics scientist with a secret.
The air date for Petersen's final episode has yet to be determined but will be early next year. Petersen has been with the series since it debuted in 2000. This has been described as 'like replacing Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes'. Fishburn has his work cut out for him.
#1
Hollywood has a hard time with intellectual characters, but they are extremely popular with the fans. Rational scientists make Hollywood itch, because they want to deal with characters solely on emotional and physical terms.
SYDNEY: A lost humpback whale calf has bonded with a yacht it seems to think is its mother. The less than two-month-old calf was sighted on Sunday off Sydney, and on Monday repeatedly tried to suckle from the yacht, which it would not leave.
Rescuers towed the yacht out to sea, and the calf finally detached from the boat but still swam nearby. The calf appeared exhausted but rescuers hoped it would continue out to sea and search for its mother or another pod of whales. “The outlook is not good, but we are giving the calf its only option. It cant be fed, and in fact we wouldnt know what to feed it” because it is not weaned, an official said
Posted by: john frum ||
08/18/2008 16:09 ||
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A small snake has sparked a big debate in Barbados.
Residents of the wealthy Caribbean nation have been heating up blogs and clogging radio airwaves to vent their anger at a U.S. scientist, who early last week announced his "discovery" of the world's smallest snake and named it "Leptotyphlops carlae," after his wife Carla.
"If he needs to blow his own trumpet ... well, fine," said 43-year-old Barbadian Charles Atkins. "But my mother, who was a simple housewife, she showed me the snake when I was a child."
One writer to the Barbados Free Press blog took an even tougher tone, questioning how someone could "discover" a snake long known to locals, who called it the thread snake. "How dare this man come in here and name a snake after his wife?" said the writer who identified themselves as Margaret Knight.
The man she refers to is Penn State University evolutionary biologist S. Blair Hedges, whose research teams also have discovered the world's tiniest lizard in the Dominican Republic and the smallest frog in Cuba. Hedges recently became the first to describe the snake -- which is so small it can curl up on a U.S. quarter -- when he published his observations and genetic test results in the journal "Zootaxa."
Full-grown adults typically are less than 4 inches long.
Hedges told The Associated Press on Friday that he understands Barbadians' angry reactions, but under established scientific practice, the first person to do a full description of a species is said to have discovered it and gives it a scientific name. He said most newly "discovered" species are already well known to locals, and the term refers to the work done in a laboratory to establish a genetic profile.
In the study, he reported that two specimens he analyzed were found in 1889 and 1963. "There are no false claims here, believe me," Hedges said.
Damon Corrie, president of the Caribbean Herpetological Society, acknowledged that Hedges is the first to scientifically examine and describe the snake, but the so-called discovery makes locals seem ignorant. "It gives the impression that people here ... depend on people from abroad to come and show us things in our own backyard," Corrie said.
Karl Watson, a historian and ornithologist at the University of the West Indies in Barbados, said it's common for people to get excited over very tiny or very large animals. "Probably people have overreacted. ... It's nationalism going a bit awry," Watson said.
Hedges agreed: "I think they're carrying it a bit too far."
"Snakes are really apolitical," he said.
Posted by: john frum ||
08/18/2008 15:48 ||
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The mayor of a remote Australian mining town has come under fire after saying that female "ugly ducklings" might benefit from its shortage of women. John Molony told a newspaper last week that "with five blokes to every girl, may I suggest that beauty-disadvantaged women should proceed to Mount Isa".
The council has since been swamped with complaints from both men and women. But Mr Molony has refused to apologise for the remarks, saying he was "telling it like it is" in the Queensland town.
Located 1,829km (1,136 miles) from Brisbane, Mount Isa is home to one of the world's biggest underground mines. In 2006, there were just 819 women aged 20-24 living there out of a total population of 21,421, according to the most recent census.
In an interview with the Townsville Bulletin last week, Mr Molony proposed a novel solution to Mount Isa's shortage of eligible women. "Quite often you will see walking down the street a lass who is not so attractive with a wide smile on her face. Whether it is recollection of something previous or anticipation for the next evening, there is a degree of happiness," he said. "Some, in other places in Australia, need to proceed to Mount Isa where happiness awaits. Really, beauty is only skin deep. Isn't there a fairy tale about an ugly duckling that evolves into a beautiful swan," he added.
A fellow councillor, Jean Ferris, said the invitation to "beauty-disadvantaged women" had caused consternation among both sexes. "It's an absolute disgrace," she told the Courier Mail. "It's not council's view and it's not mine. It's hard when you've got to defend something someone else has said. We're definitely appalled."
Mr Molony has since refused to retract his remarks and insisted he is "a bloke who respects women". "I believe we should look after women," he said. "I'm told men outnumber women here by five to one. If that's the case, then perhaps it's an opportunity for some lonely women."
#2
That would be 10,000 Pak brides who would never have to worry about having acid thrown in their faces ...
Posted by: Steve White ||
08/18/2008 16:58 Comments ||
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#3
Hell, either way it is a hell of a deal for the females. You pick of the herd, never have to worry about buying drinks at the bar, treated well all the time...
Kinda reminds me of the females in the Engineering unit next to the 3 leg units at Fort Campbell. Those gals really enjoyed life stationed there.
#4
For any Nation > PAN-ECON DEVELOPMENT + STRONG SOCIETY, etc is based on FAMILIES = FAMILIAL UNITS, NOT BACHELORS OR BACHELORETTES.
As for the "beauty-disadvantaged/lonely" remarks, I'm guessing previous local efforts to attract lookers andor mainstream les femmes demographic didn't pan out, + LOCAL MALES ARE EITHER GETTING READY TO LEAVE THE AREA [read - GHOST TOWN] OR START KIDNAPPING WOMEN FOR WIVES???
#6
That is some gender imbalance. Men can't kidnap women if there ain't any around within a reasonable distance. Maybe the blokes will have to start mating with kangaroos.
Pics at site
JERUSALEM -- Arava the disabled turtle is using her new set of wheels to get around in more ways than one. fficials at the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo say the 10-year-old spurred tortoise has begun mating since being fitted with a custom skateboard to overcome paralysis of her hind legs.
The 55-pound turtle is unable to move herself forward with her front legs alone. So the zoo's staff built her a metal board with two wheels that can be strapped to her stomach.
Arava arrived in Jerusalem a few months ago from a petting zoo in southern Israel with the unexplained handicap, and found no reptile romance. Zoo curator Shmulik Yedvad says it's not that Arava has come out of her shell with her unique new wheelchair, but that a particularly amorous 10-year-old male has been after her.
Days of heavy rains around the Grand Canyon created flooding that breached an earthen dam Sunday and forced helicopters to pluck scores of residents and campers from the gorge. No injuries were immediately reported.
The weather and dam breach caused flooding in a side canyon containing a village where about 400 members of the Havasupai tribe live and where some of the evacuations occurred, said Gerry Blair, a spokesman for the Coconino County Sheriff's Department. There were no confirmed reports of damage in the village, Supai, which is on high ground, Blair said. Many residents and campers chose to stay there, Blair said.
Still, a flash flood warning remained in effect, and search and rescue teams planned to stay in the village overnight as a precaution.
About 150 people had fled by helicopter, and evacuations were to continue until dark for those who wanted to leave, Blair said. The effort was initially intended to include about 200 campers and possibly 200 village residents, but he didn't know how many them were taken out.
As much as 8 inches of rain since Friday caused trouble even before the dam was breached. A private boating party of 16 people was stranded on a ledge at the confluence of Havasu Creek and the Colorado River on Saturday night after flood waters carried their rafts away. The boaters were found uninjured and were rescued from the Grand Canyon, whose floor is unreachable in many places except by helicopter.
#1
Well, Lake Meade is in desperate need of water. So that's the silver lining, I guess. You'd think people would be somewhat averse to building near the Colorado River, given its characteristics.
In Lashkar Gah, the majority of female prisoners are serving 20-year sentences for being forced to have sex. Terri Judd visited them and heard their extraordinary stories
Beneath the anonymity of the sky-blue burqa, Saliha's slender frame and voice betray her young age.Asked why she was serving seven years in jail alongside hardened insurgents and criminals, the 15-year-old giggled and buried her head in her friend's shoulder.
"She is shy," apologised fellow inmate Zirdana, explaining that the teenager had been married at a young age to an abusive husband and ran away with a boy from her neighbourhood.
Asked whether she had loved the boy, Saliha squirmed with childish embarrassment as her friend replied: "Yes."
Ostracised from her family and village, Saliha was convicted of escaping from home and illegal sexual relations. The first carries a maximum penalty of 10 years, the second 20. These are two of the most common accusations facing female prisoners in Afghanistan.
Two-thirds of the women in Lashkar Gah's medieval-looking jail have been convicted of illegal sexual relations, but most are simply rape victims – mirroring the situation nationwide. The system does not distinguish between those who have been attacked and those who have chosen to run off with a man.
Sitting among the plastic flowers around his desk, where an optimistic United Nations scales of justice poster competed for space with images of Afghanistan's President, Hamid Karzai, Colonel Ghulam Ali, a high-ranking regional security officer, explained sternly that he supported the authorities' right to convict victims of rape. "In Afghanistan whether it is forced or not forced it is a crime because the Islamic rules say that it is," he claimed. "I think it is good. There are many diseases that can be created in today's world, such as HIV, through illegal sexual relations."
But there are signs of progress. A female shura, or consultative council, was established in Helmand province last week to try to combat the injustice of treating an abused woman as a criminal, and not a victim. British officers and Afghan government officials from the province's reconstruction team are also overseeing a project to build humane accommodation for the 400 male and female prisoners.
Inside the fortified compound of the prison in Lashkar Gah, Helmand's capital, the 330 male prisoners laze about in the shade of their straw huts. The prison security was was recently upgraded with new razor wire and guard posts following the attack on Kandahar's prison in which more than a 1,000 inmates escaped, including 400 Taliban. Past the main gate, inmates – whether on remand and awaiting trial or convicts – are incarcerated alongside 50 insurgents.
In a separate area are the female "criminals" – the youngest is just 13 years old – along with their small children, who must stay with their mothers if no one else will claim them. Their only luxury is a carpet, two blankets, basic cooking facilities and two daily deliveries of bread. They have neither medical care nor, as Colonel Ali acknowledged, "basic human facilities", such as washing areas, electricity and drinking water. All this he hopes will be rectified when the new building his finished.
Pushing her five-year-old son's arm forward imploringly, Zirdana, 25, pointed to the festering wound buzzing with flies. The little boy was just two months old when his mother was convicted of murdering her husband, his father. Zirdana had been handed over to him at the age of seven, as part payment in a financial dispute. She gave birth to the first of her children when she was 11 and was pregnant with her fourth when her husband disappeared and she was accused of killing him. Her three older children were taken from her by her brother-in-law. "When I first came to jail I cried so much blood was coming out of my mouth. My husband's brother told me he would give my children back when I came out of jail but he has become a Talib. Nobody comes to see us in jail. There are a lot of diseases," she said.
Next to her, Dorkhani, 55, sobbed so much that the glint of her tears shone through the mesh of her burqa. Married for four decades to a relatively wealthy man from Nowzad, the couple had fled to Lashkar Gah after a family dispute. When he returned to Nowzad, to try and reclaim his money, he disappeared. "The ones who killed my husband, they have money and they threw me in jail. I am 100 per cent innocent. I have no one, no brother to look after me," she said, explaining that those with cash could buy their freedom.
Last week, in Helmand, the new Women and Children's Justice Shura met and voted in its constitution with the help of advisers from the Afghan Human Rights Committee and support from the Women's Affairs Department, as well as a government legal adviser.
The shura, made up of 20 influential women, mostly teachers, hopes to tackle the inequality of the system by first ensuring that women in the province become aware of their basic right: not to have to endure abuse.
Earlier this year a report by Womankind, Taking Stock: Afghan Women and Girls Seven Years On, revealed that violent attacks against women, usually in a domestic setting, are at epidemic proportions – 87 per cent of women complain of such abuse, and half of it is sexual. More than 60 per cent of marriages are forced and, despite laws banning the practice, 57 per cent of brides are under 16. Many of these girls are offered as restitution for a crime or as debt settlement. Afghanistan is the only country in the world with a higher suicide rate among women than men.
In the UK, the MP Malcolm Bruce, chairman of the House of Commons International Development Committee, warned: "There is a dangerous tendency to accept in Afghanistan practices which would not be countenanced elsewhere, because of 'cultural' differences and local traditions."
The shura is hoping to provide a place where women can report abuse and create a separate centre for women and girls incarcerated for running away. It would be a compromise of custody without the stigma of being thrown in jail.
"They are very aware of the inequality in the system," said Royal Navy Lieutenant Rebecca Parnell, a member of the Cimic, or civil-military co-operation, team. "The most refreshing thing is that there are plans coming from the Department of Women's Affairs. It is not just us pushing our ideas on to them." The military aid team has programmes for monthly health checks and trauma counselling in the prison as well as vocational training in carpet weaving, tailoring, literacy and basic health education.
As she was led away to her jail cell yesterday, Dorkhani lifted her burqa to reveal a sun-battered face streaked with tears and pleading eyes: "Please, please take our words somewhere where people will be kind and help us."
Posted by: john frum ||
08/18/2008 09:53 ||
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#1
Lashkar Gah is in the heart of Taliban country, as I understand it. I suspect both this idea of justice and the Taliban support are the result of the dominance in the area of a harsh strain of Islam. I doubt there is an acceptable solution.
#2
Playing "punish the victim" seems to be a popular sport in many Muslum countries, not just Afghanistan.
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
08/18/2008 12:44 Comments ||
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#3
That's nothing compared to what women in the USA have to endure. Did you know that you can't even have a partial birth abortion in most places anymore. Its medieval, a total outrage! And to make it worse, you may even have to put up with "suggestive looks", which until recently I didn't even realize was sexual harassment. But apparently women all over the country have to languish as men LOOK at them. Awful, just awful. Thank your lucky stars girls, that you don't have to face that on a daily basis.
Posted by: Bob Flaish5931 ||
08/18/2008 14:39 Comments ||
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#4
Lies. That couldn't happen in a country supported by the Amerikan people. Amerikans only support kind and decent countries like Saudi Arabia.
A 16-year-old Saudi girl drank a bottle of bleach in an attempt to commit suicide to escape a forced marriage to a 75-year-old man, press reports revealed Sunday.
The girl identified only as, Shaikha, said her father was forcing her to marry the old man so that he could marry his 13-year-old daughter in an exchange deal, Bahrain's Tribune reported.
Shaikha described how her father took her to meet the old man and his 13-year-old in a marriage office where they all had pre-marital tests done, the Tribune quoted the Saudi Gazette as reporting.
Shaikha told the paper how she begged and pleaded not to be forced into marriage but both of the men ignored her pleas.
The 16-year-old appealed to the National Society of Human Rights to intervene and stop the marriage saying she never consented to it, the Tribune said, adding Shaikha also begged to go live with her mother.
Shaikha's mother said she should be protected from her father and demanded the marriage contract be cancelled because Shaikha was threatened to marry the man, the paper said.
"Judges can punish men who force their daughters to marry like this," Sheikh Abdul Mohsin Al Obeikan, Shura Council member and adviser to the Minister of Justice said, adding the marriage contract was void because it violated Shariah law, the Tribune reported.
Shaikha's case is under investigation.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/18/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
This is a place where frontier style justice would be nice. Find a suitable punishment for the father and the dirty old man.
I can't participate because I'm biased. I have two daughters. If I was meting out the punishment, they wouldn't live long enough for it to be fair.
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
08/18/2008 7:54 Comments ||
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#2
That is simply nasty. Every perverts dream come true, with judicial approval built right in.
#4
Islam brings a whole new idea to the 'pursuit of happiness'. And, if it weren't so pathetic, this shit would be comical.
I'm not sure that drinking bleach can be considered a sex act, but she is now clean and white, just like a virgin.
Finally, I'm not 75 yet, but any 16 year old with a little muscle can beat the crap outta any 75 year old.
#1
A Gulag they're calling it. But a gulag where you only spend 2 hours, and you don't work, and its warm, and nobody kills you. But other than that, yeah, I guess it's kind of like a gulag.
#3
Less likely to find in Denver a sympathetic judge as the one back in New York City who'd order immediate release versus the standard 72 hours or book'm Dan'O?
#5
And these are the folks you'll probably be voting for.
No, I think this is the Cynthia McKinney voting bloc ...
Posted by: Steve White ||
08/18/2008 17:00 Comments ||
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#6
What's with all the comments about Rush Limbaugh inciting riots?
Caught a bit on an infrequent drive in to the city, seems Rushbo was citing and reading moonbat website stuff on the air. In the old days that was called reporting.
#8
These "activists" are nostalgic for 1968 & want to re-create it in Denver during the Democratic convention. The convention promises to be more entertaining than more recent ones.
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran said on Monday it was ready to help fellow Muslim states launch satellites into orbit after it successfully put a dummy satellite into orbit -- a move that may increase Western suspicions over its atomic ambitions.
Iran said on Sunday it had put the home-grown dummy satellite into orbit on a domestically made rocket for the first time. The long-range ballistic technology used to put satellites into space can also be used for launching weapons. Iran says has no intention to do so.
Head of Iran's Aerospace Organization, Reza Taghipour, said Iran wanted to help Muslim countries to launch satellites. "I am announcing now that Iran is ready to launch satellites of friendly Islamic countries into space," Taghipour told state television.
Embroiled in a standoff with the West over its nuclear ambitions, Iran in February tested another domestically made rocket as part of its satellite program. Washington, accusing Iran of aiming to equip missiles with nuclear warheads, called the February test 'unfortunate'. It cites Iran's missile potential, among others, as the reason why it needs to install an anti-missile defense system in eastern Europe.
Yup. It's not just the development of nuclear weapons but also a system to deliver them quickly.
France and Russia both said the February test raised the suspicion that Iran was seeking to develop nuclear weapons.
Iran says it has home-grown missiles with a range of 2,000 km (1,250 miles), meaning it could hit Israel or U.S. military bases in the Gulf.
Western experts say Iran rarely provides enough details for them to determine the extent of its technological advances, but that much Iranian technology consists of modifications of equipment supplied by China, North Korea and other countries.
Taghipour said Iran was planning to build and launch more satellites by 2010. "We are working on these satellites and gradually they will be put into orbit," he told the semi-official Mehr news agency.
Posted by: john frum ||
08/18/2008 08:34 ||
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#1
Yep.. I can the Safir launching a 5 ton bird into GTO real soon...
Posted by: john frum ||
08/18/2008 9:00 Comments ||
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#2
I thought the Koran explains the world is flat.
As politicians continue to debate how to reduce U.S. dependency on foreign oil, a Houston partnership is spending $2 billion to prepare for an energy future that inevitably will include oil imports.
The team will announce today that it plans to build and operate an oil terminal 36 miles off the coast of Freeport. Enterprise Products Partners and TEPPCO Partners, both affiliated with Houston billionaire Dan Duncan, and the German company Oiltanking Holdings Americas, call the project the Texas Offshore Port System -- TOPS.
It would include two floating connections for supertankers to unload crude, 160-miles of pipelines to bring the oil onshore and along the coast to refineries in Houston, Port Arthur and Beaumont, as well as new onshore storage for more than 5 million barrels of crude. Exxon Mobil Corp. and Motiva have committed to take shipments through the system for their coastal refineries.
Motiva is a joint venture of Royal Dutch Shell and Saudi Arabia's state-owned oil company Aramco. When it begins operations, which could be as early as 2010, the $1.8 billion project will be able to unload up to 1.8 million barrels per day, about 18 percent of the current U.S. oil imports.
"The main catalyst for this project is the expansion that's taking place at refineries along the Texas Gulf Coast," said Wynne Harvey, a director of commercial development with Enterprise. Most folks prolly don't know the refineries are expanding -- that's where the profits are going
The coastal region from Freeport north to Houston and Port Arthur has about 3.6 million barrels per day of oil refining capacity, according to the companies. About 2.5 million barrels per day of that oil comes in on tankers. But major refinery expansions will increase the need for oil in the region. The upgrades include two in Port Arthur -- Motiva's $7 billion, 325,000 barrel-per-day expansion and San Antonio-based Valero's $1.4 billion, 105,000 barrel-per-day expansion.
Texas ports are not deep enough to accommodate the largest oil tankers, so oil arriving from the Middle East, Nigeria, Venezuela and other foreign sites on supertankers must be transferred to smaller ships for transport to the refineries, a process called lightering. The largest supertankers carry about 2 million barrels of oil and typically offload to four smaller tankers.
The TOPS project would be in 115 feet of water, so even the largest tankers will be able to anchor next to a buoy with pipes connecting it to a pumping station that will move the oil to shore. "This would provide an alternative to lightering, help reduce congestion in the Houston Ship Channel and other ports and help companies avoid extra port fees," said Jim Schepens, head of commercial development for Oiltanking.
The offshore terminal also is less likely than a coastal port to be shut down by fog and can operate around the clock. In addition to cutting back on tanker traffic in ports, the terminal may help reduce the risk of oil spills.
About 34 percent of all oil spills between 1974 and 2007 worldwide occurred while tankers were being loaded or unloaded, according to data compiled by the International Tanker Owners Pollution Federation. Cutting back on lightering reduces the number of spill opportunities. Lightering led to at least three spills off Freeport and Galveston between 1993 and 1995, ranging from 65 barrels to more than 800 barrels spilled, according to the data.
The TOPS project will be similar to the existing Louisiana Offshore Oil Port, known as the LOOP, which started up in the late 1970s. With a capacity of about 1.2 million barrels per day the LOOP takes in an estimated 12 percent of the annual U.S. crude oil imports. Earlier this year the facility pumped its 8 billionth barrel of crude.
Harvey said TOPS will be near Freeport because the water reaches the 115-foot depth there closer to shore than in areas farther east, helping cut undersea pipeline costs. And by coming ashore near Freeport the terminal can serve future customers in the massive chemical refining complex there or at refineries farther south.
The offshore terminal will require approval by the U.S. Coast Guard, while the onshore pipeline and storage facilities will be subject to review by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Army Corps of Engineers and Department of Transportation.
#1
The refineries are expanding? Good. What happened to the refineries in Louisiana -- did they ever get repaired? Finally, if the oil port can handle incoming oil from abroad, can it pump in the opposite direction into the supertankers if there's a surplus of, presumably refined, oil from American producers?
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.
A 16-year-old Saudi girl drank a bottle of bleach in an attempt to commit suicide to escape a forced marriage to a 75-year-old man, press reports revealed Sunday.
