Eeyores news and view

The above cartoon is great to post one the one year aniversry of the Heller case against DC ans for the people.

There is a lot of unrest around the world right now. Here are a few articles today

Honduras torn between ousted leader, replacement
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) - Honduras is now torn between two presidents: one legally recognized by world bodies after he was deposed and forced from the country by his own soldiers, and another supported by the Central American nation's congress, courts and military.
Presidents from around Latin America were gathering in Nicaragua for meetings Monday to resolve the first military overthrow of a Central American government in 16 years, and once again Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez took center stage, casting the dispute as a rebellion by the region's poor.
"If the oligarchies break the rules of the game as they have done, the people have the right to resistance and combat, and we are with them," Chavez said in the Nicaraguan capital, Managua.
There is a deep rift between the outside world - which is clamoring for the return of democratically elected, but largely unpopular and soon-to-leave-office President Manuel Zelaya - and congressionally designated successor Roberto Micheletti.
Micheletti rejected any outside interference and declared a two-night curfew, while Chavez vowed that "we will overthrow (Micheletti)."
Zelaya was seized by soldiers and hustled aboard a plane to Costa Rica early Sunday, just hours before a rogue referendum Zelaya had called in defiance of the courts and Congress, and which his opponents said was an attempt to remain in power after his term ends Jan. 27.
The Honduran constitution limits presidents to a single 4-year term, and Zelaya's opponents feared he would use the referendum results to try to run again, just as Chavez reformed his country's constitution to be able to seek re-election repeatedly.
Micheletti said the army acted on orders from the courts, and the ouster was carried out "to defend respect for the law and the principles of democracy." But he threatened to jail Zelaya and put him on trial if he returned. Micheletti also hit back at Chavez, saying "nobody, not Barack Obama and much less Hugo Chavez, has any right to threaten this country."
Earlier, Obama said in a statement he was "deeply concerned" about the events, and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Zelaya's arrest should be condemned.
"I call on all political and social actors in Honduras to respect democratic norms, the rule of law and the tenets of the Inter-American Democratic Charter," Obama's statement read.
For those conditions to be met, Zelaya must be returned to power, U.S. officials said.
Two senior Obama administration officials told reporters that U.S. diplomats were working to ensure Zelaya's safe return.
The officials said the Obama administration in recent days had warned Honduran power players, including the armed forces, that the U.S. would not support a coup, but Honduran military leaders stopped taking their calls.
Zelaya said soldiers seized him in his pajamas at gunpoint in what he called a "coup" and a "kidnapping." The United Nations, the Organization of American States and governments throughout Latin America called for Zelaya to be allowed to resume office.
"I want to return to my country. I am president of Honduras," Zelaya said Sunday before traveling to Managua on one of Chavez's planes for regional meetings of Central American leaders and Chavez's leftist alliance of nations, known as ALBA.
Zelaya's call for civil disobedience and peaceful resistance appeared to gain only modest support in Honduras, where a few hundred people turned out at government buildings to jeer soldiers and chant "Traitors!"
Some of Zelaya's Cabinet members were detained by soldiers or police following his ouster, according to former government official Armando Sarmiento. And the rights group Freedom of Expression said leftist legislator Cesar Ham had died in a shootout with soldiers trying to detain him.
A Honduran Security Department spokesman said he had no information on Ham.
Armored military vehicles with machine guns rolled through the streets of the Honduran capital and soldiers seized the national palace, but no other incidents of violence were reported.
Sunday afternoon, Congress voted to accept what it said was Zelaya's letter of resignation, with even the president's former allies turning against him. Micheletti, who as leader of Congress is in line to fill any vacancy in the presidency, was sworn in to serve until Zelaya's term ends.
Micheletti belongs to Zelaya's Liberal Party, but opposed the president in the referendum.
Micheletti acknowledged that he had not spoken to any Latin American heads of state, but said, "I'm sure that 80 to 90 percent of the Honduran population is happy with what happened today."
The Organization of American States approved a resolution Sunday demanding "the immediate, safe and unconditional return of the constitutional president, Manuel Zelaya."
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned the coup and "urges the reinstatement of the democratically elected representatives of the country," said his spokeswoman, Michele Montas.
The Rio Group, which comprises 23 nations from the hemisphere, issued a statement condemning "the coup d'etat" and calling for Zelaya's "immediate and unconditional restoration to his duties."
And Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou canceled a planned visit to Honduras, one of just 23 countries that still recognize the self-governing island.
Coups were common in Central America for four decades reaching back to the 1950s, but Sunday's ouster was the first military power grab in Latin America since a brief, failed 2002 coup against Chavez. It was the first in Central America since military officials forced President Jorge Serrano of Guatemala to step down in 1993 after he tried to dissolve Congress and suspend the constitution.
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20090629/D99493GO0.html

Chavez threatens military action over Honduras coup
CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Sunday put troops on alert after a coup in Honduras and said he would respond militarily if his envoy to the Central American country was kidnapped or killed.
Chavez said Honduran soldiers took away the Cuban ambassador and left the Venezuelan ambassador on the side of a road after beating him during the army's coup against his leftist ally, Honduran President Manuel Zelaya.
The Honduran army ousted Zelaya and exiled him in Central America's first military coup since the Cold War, after he upset the army by trying to win re-election.
Chavez said on state television if his ambassador to Venezuela was killed, or if troops entered the Venezuelan Embassy, "that military junta would be entering a de facto state of war. We would have to act militarily ... I have put the armed forces of Venezuela on alert."
Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa, part of a coalition of leftist governments headed by Chavez that includes Honduras, said he would support military action if Ecuador's diplomats or those of its allies were threatened.
The socialist Chavez has in the past threatened to use his armed forces in the region but never followed through. He said that if a new government is sworn in after the coup it would be defeated.
"We will bring them down, we will bring them down, I tell you," he said, while hundreds of red-shirted supporters gathered outside Venezuela's presidential palace in solidarity with Zelaya.
HISTORY OF COUPS
The United States has long accused the Venezuelan former soldier of being a destabilizing force in Latin America. Chavez himself tried to take power in a coup in 1992 and was briefly ousted in a 2002 putsch but was reinstated after protests.
Chavez, who accused the administration of former U.S. President George W. Bush of backing his removal, said there should be an investigation into whether Washington had a hand in Zelaya's ouster.
"They will have to get to the bottom of how much of a hand the CIA and other imperial bodies had in this," he said.
The White House denied any U.S. participation in the coup. "There was no U.S. involvement in this action against President Zelaya," a White House official told Reuters.
President Barack Obama said he was deeply concerned by the events in Honduras and Secretary of State Hilary Clinton condemned the action taken against Zelaya. A senior U.S. official said Washington recognizes only Zelaya as president.
The United States supported a number of military coups in Central America during the Cold War and used Honduras as a base for its counter-insurgency operations in the region in the 1980s.
Washington still has several hundred troops stationed at Soto Cano Air Base, a Honduran military installation that is also the headquarters for a regional U.S. joint task force that conducts humanitarian, drug and disaster relief operations.
Chavez and other Latin American leaders from his ALBA coalition, including Ecuador's President Rafael Correa and Bolivia's President Evo Morales, were headed to Nicaragua on Sunday to discuss what action to take over Honduras.
ALBA's nine members also include Cuba, Honduras and Nicaragua. Ecuador said Sunday it will not recognize any new government in Honduras.
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE55R1S820090628?sp=true

NKorea criticizes US missile defense for Hawaii
SEOUL, South Korea -- North Korea criticized the U.S. on Monday for positioning missile defense systems around Hawaii, calling the deployment part of a plot to attack the regime and saying it would bolster its nuclear arsenal in retaliation.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said he ordered the deployment of a ground-based, mobile missile intercept system and radar system to Hawaii amid concerns the North may fire a long-range missile toward the islands, about 4,500 miles away.
"Through the U.S. forces' clamorous movements, it has been brought to light that the U.S. attempt to launch a pre-emptive strike on our republic has become a brutal fact," the North's main Rodong Sinmun newspaper said in a commentary.
The paper also accused the U.S. of deploying nuclear-powered aircraft and atomic-armed submarines in waters near the Korean peninsula, saying the moves prove "the U.S. pre-emptive nuclear war" on the North is imminent.
... (more of the article at the link)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/29/AR2009062900307_pf.html

Russia Holds Major War Games In Caucasus
Russia Holds Largest War Games Since War With Georgia _ In Signal To Georgia, And To US
Thousands of troops, backed by hundreds of tanks, artillery and other heavy weaponry, began rumbling through the North Caucasus on Monday, as Russia began its largest military exercises since last year's war with Georgia.
The Caucasus 2009 war games are being seen by many experts as a warning shot for nearby Georgia, where the government says it has rearmed armed forces and where NATO recently wrapped up its own exercises.
Experts say the exercises may also be signal to the United States that Russia will give no ground on its efforts to maintain an exclusive sphere of influence in Georgia and other former Soviet republics. The games run through July 6 _ the day that President Barack Obama arrives in Moscow for a highly anticipated summit with Russia's Dmitry Medvedev.
Defense Ministry official say more than 8,500 troops will take part, along with nearly 200 tanks, armored vehicles, 100 artillery units and several units from Russia's Black Sea naval fleet.
... (read more of the story at this link)
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/06/29/ap/europe/main5120564.shtml

China's banks are an accident waiting to happen to every one of us
Fitch Ratings has been warning for some time that China's lenders are wading into dangerous water
China's banks are veering out of control. The half-reformed economy of the People's Republic cannot absorb the $1,000bn (£600bn) blitz of new lending issued since December.
Money is leaking instead into Shanghai's stock casino, or being used to keep bankrupt builders on life support. It is doing very little to help lift the world economy out of slump.
Fitch Ratings has been warning for some time that China's lenders are wading into dangerous waters, but its latest report is even grimmer than bears had suspected.
"With much of the world immersed in crisis, China appears to be one of the few countries where the financial system continues to function largely without a glitch, but Fitch is growing increasingly wary," it said.
"Future losses on stimulus could turn out to be larger than expected, and it is unclear what share the central and/or local governments ultimately will be willing or able to bear."
... (more of the article is at the following link)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/5675198/Chinas-banks-are-an-accident-waiting-to-happen-to-every-one-of-us.html

Eeyores news and view

Green homeowner hit with noise abatement order because 40ft wind turbine is driving his neighbours mad
When Stephen Munday spent £20,000 on a wind turbine to generate electricity for his home, he was proud to be doing his bit for the environment.
He got planning permission and put up the 40ft device two years ago, making sure he stuck to strict noise level limits.
But neighbours still complained that the sound was annoying - and now the local council has ordered him to switch it off.
Officials declared that the sound - which Mr Munday says is 'the same pitch as a dishwasher and quieter than birdsong' - constituted a nuisance, and issued a Noise Abatement Order.
This is despite the turbine being more than 164ft from the nearest neighbour's house, as ordered by the planners. The ruling could have serious implications for the Government's drive to promote wind power and the use of renewable domestic energy if repeated across the country.
Electrician Mr Munday, 55, and his wife Sandra, a veterinary nurse, challenged the decision by the Vale of White Horse district council in Oxfordshire.
But Didcot magistrates rejected their appeal and they were left to pick up the £5,392 court costs as well.
The turbine generated five kilowatts of electricity a day - the equivalent of boiling 300 kettles - and provided two-thirds of the family's energy needs. It also saved them an average of £500 a year in electricity costs.
Sandra Munday said she and husband Stephen have been slapped with a £5,000 fine after the turbine caused a spate of complaints
Mr Munday, of Stanford in the Vale, near Abindgon, said: 'I am very disappointed.
'We were trying to cut down on our electricity bills and help the environment but have been clobbered for doing so.
'Everyone is encouraged to be environmentally friendly and we wanted to do our bit. We never dreamed that going green would land us in court and £25,000 out of pocket.'
More...Losing the plot... Gardener's fury as he is thrown off his allotment for not growing enough veg
The Government planning inspector granted planning permission on the condition that the turbine did not make more than five decibels of noise above that of the 'prevailing background'.
It stands in a paddock 230ft from the Mundays' four-bedroomed detached house.
Stephen Munday claims the hum emitted by the turbine is softer than birdsong or dishwasher
But five neighbours complained about the noise after the turbine began generating power in February 2007.
Patrick Legge, team leader of the council's environmental protection team, said: 'We accept that the noise did not breach the conditions in the planning application but it was decided that the character of the noise was a nuisance.
'There are no strict overall noise limits but each case is examined by their independent circumstances.'
Michael Stigwood, an independent noise and nuisance adviser to the council, told the court that the noise affected people's ability to 'rest and relax'.
'The noise was continual,' he said. 'It's irritating and gets under your skin and is intrusive.'
Neighbour Virginia Thomasson, 49, said: 'I can hear it inside and outside my house - at night, in the daytime, all the time.
'I cannot sleep with the window open.
'I am a tolerant person but with this noise it superimposes itself over everything I hear.'
Another resident, Michael Brown, 49, added: 'The rhythmic mechanical noise is very irritating and incessant.'
Chairman of the bench Liz Holford told the Mundays, who represented themselves in court, that the council's order was 'reasonable and necessary'.
Now their only option is to appeal to the High Court - but they cannot afford to do so.
According to the BWEA, the wind industry trade body, more than 10,000 small wind turbines have been set up since 2005 and an estimated 600,000 could be installed by 2020.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1187936/Green-homeowner-hit-noise-abatement-order-40ft-wind-turbine-driving-neighbours-mad.html

You need to call me first, then the lawyer (or lair, as friend calls them)
Won the Lottery? First, Call Your Lawyer
While the odds are against you if you play the lottery, you might get lucky and win the jackpot. But if you do, your first call shouldn’t be to friends or family to tell them of your good fortune. It should be to your lawyer.
Once you tell others of your winnings—or they learn about it in the newspaper or on television—they’ll congratulate you. But then, they’ll come to you looking for a handout. Long-lost friends will appear out of nowhere, likewise requesting assistance. Financial experts will contact you and offer their assistance in helping you invest your newfound monies. And of course, the taxman will want his share as well.
However, if you can keep your mouth shut, you can keep the entire matter private. Once you learn that you’ve won the lottery (or received a large inheritance, etc.) simply call your lawyer.
That’s what the winner of a recent US$144 million Powerball jackpot in Maryland did. Instead of accepting the funds directly, he set up a limited liability company (LLC) and named his lawyer as the LLC’s registered agent. Then, he sent the lawyer to collect the check.
This wise winner will never see his in the headlines or on television. Neither will any legal or personal “parasites.”
In this manner, our anonymous Powerball winner will avoid the fate of past lottery winners such as William "Bud" Post, who won US$16.2 million in the Pennsylvania lottery in 1988. He now lives on a social security paycheck and food stamps.
Once word got out of Mr. Post’s good fortune, his former girlfriend sued him for a share of the winnings. She won the lawsuit. Next, his brother hired a hit man to kill him, hoping to inherit the winnings, or at least part of them. Other family members harassed Post until he invested in their pet businesses. All of them failed, resulting in more financial losses. Today, Post says, “"I wish it never happened. It was totally a nightmare."
Naturally, our anonymous Powerball winner will need to take other precautions to enjoy his newfound fortune without falling victim to the common foibles of lottery winners. He might want to avoid casinos and drugs, for instance. Both have been the downfall of numerous lottery winners. And if he’s smart, he’ll invest the bulk of the money outside the United States, where prospective litigants won’t be able to track it. (Of course, he’ll need to make a full accounting to the IRS of his offshore earnings.)
Our Powerball winner should avoid conspicuous consumption as well—at least in his own name. If he wants to live in a new luxury home, fine—but he should have his attorney make arrangements to purchase it through an appropriate structure that doesn’t compromise his identity. Ditto for any luxury vehicles he might want to drive.
Ultimately, if you find yourself the recipient of an unexpected windfall, take a deep breath before you do something stupid. Then, call a lawyer!
Copyright © 2009 by Mark Nestmann
http://nestmannblog.sovereignsociety.com/

China warns Federal Reserve over 'printing money'
China has warned a top member of the US Federal Reserve that it is increasingly disturbed by the Fed's direct purchase of US Treasury bonds.
Richard Fisher, president of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank, said: "Senior officials of the Chinese government grilled me about whether or not we are going to monetise the actions of our legislature."
"I must have been asked about that a hundred times in China. I was asked at every single meeting about our purchases of Treasuries. That seemed to be the principal preoccupation of those that were invested with their surpluses mostly in the United States," he told the Wall Street Journal.
His recent trip to the Far East appears to have been a stark reminder that Asia's "Confucian" culture of right action does not look kindly on the insouciant policy of printing money by Anglo-Saxons.
Mr Fisher, the Fed's leading hawk, was a fierce opponent of the original decision to buy Treasury debt, fearing that it would lead to a blurring of the line between fiscal and monetary policy – and could all too easily degenerate into Argentine-style financing of uncontrolled spending.
However, he agreed that the Fed was forced to take emergency action after the financial system "literally fell apart".
Nor, he added was there much risk of inflation taking off yet. The Dallas Fed uses a "trim mean" method based on 180 prices that excludes extreme moves and is widely admired for accuracy.
"You've got some mild deflation here," he said.
The Oxford-educated Mr Fisher, an outspoken free-marketer and believer in the Schumpeterian process of "creative destruction", has been running a fervent campaign to alert Americans to the "very big hole" in unfunded pension and health-care liabilities built up by a careless political class over the years.
"We at the Dallas Fed believe the total is over $99 trillion," he said in February.
"This situation is of your own creation. When you berate your representatives or senators or presidents for the mess we are in, you are really berating yourself. You elect them," he said.
His warning comes amid growing fears that America could lose its AAA sovereign rating.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/5379285/China-warns-Federal-Reserve-over-printing-money.html

It is all about media bias and politics, 6 months ago this headline (or at least the article) would have vastly different. President Bush, would have been heralded with failed policies and look at the dead and think of the families and how could this heartless President do this and so on. What a shame...
May: U.S. troop deaths up in Iraq; 20 killed
May is already the deadliest month for U.S. troops in Iraq since September.
This month's death toll reached 20 when the military reported a soldier was killed by a roadside bomb Wednesday. The total is due in part to an unusually large number of non-combat deaths, including a mass shooting at a Baghdad military base. An American soldier has been charged in that case.
Still, the spike in fatalities has coincided with a spurt of violence in Iraq in recent months. Militant groups such as al-Qaeda in Iraq have stepped up their campaign of suicide bombings and assassinations at a time when U.S. troops are preparing to withdraw from urban areas by June 30 per a deal with the Iraqi government.
Gen. Ray Odierno, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, has said that he would be willing to stay longer in hot spots, such as Mosul, if asked by the Iraqi government. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has said that he expects all U.S. troops to withdraw as scheduled.
"There needs to be some flexibility in the disposition of these forces," said James Phillips, a Middle East analyst at the Heritage Foundation in Washington. "I understand why the Iraqi government would want to stick to its public pronouncement, but the reality on the ground might force the need for adjustment."
Even with the recent surge in violence, the American death toll remains relatively low compared with 2006-2007, when a fierce insurgency raged through parts of the country, often killing more than 100 U.S. troops per month.
The 20 deaths for May include five servicemembers fatally shot May 11 at a mental health clinic at Camp Liberty in Baghdad. Army Sgt. John Russell has been charged by the military with murder in that incident.
Eight of the U.S. troop deaths this month have been combat-related, according to the U.S. military, a number in line with recent months. There have been 4,303 U.S. troops killed in Iraq since the start of the war in 2003.
Phillips said that it's likely Americans will increasingly be targeted in the weeks and months ahead as the U.S. military reduces its presence.
He said that it's also concerning that the Iraqi government has failed to pay thousands of members of the Awakening movement, Sunni militiamen who turned against al-Qaeda in Iraq and allied with U.S. forces.
"The consequences could be of major concern if the Iraqi government continues to backpedal from its commitments," he said.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2009-05-27-iraqtroops_N.htm

Just to get it off my chest, this flap about the pick for the Supreme Court and her radical comment. If she would have been picked by a republican president and would have been white and either male or female, the Democrats and the press would have hounded them. It would have been in the papers everyday as a headline and all the Democrats would have been talking about it none stop.

Eeyore's News and View

GPS system 'close to breakdown'
Network of satellites could begin to fail as early as 2010
It has become one of the staples of modern, hi-tech life: using satellite navigation tools built into your car or mobile phone to find your way from A to B. But experts have warned that the system may be close to breakdown.
US government officials are concerned that the quality of the Global Positioning System (GPS) could begin to deteriorate as early as next year, resulting in regular blackouts and failures – or even dishing out inaccurate directions to millions of people worldwide.
The warning centres on the network of GPS satellites that constantly orbit the planet and beam signals back to the ground that help pinpoint your position on the Earth's surface.
The satellites are overseen by the US Air Force, which has maintained the GPS network since the early 1990s. According to a study by the US government accountability office (GAO), mismanagement and a lack of investment means that some of the crucial GPS satellites could begin to fail as early as next year.
"It is uncertain whether the Air Force will be able to acquire new satellites in time to maintain current GPS service without interruption," said the report, presented to Congress. "If not, some military operations and some civilian users could be adversely affected."
The report says that Air Force officials have failed to execute the necessary steps to keep the system running smoothly.
Although it is currently spending nearly $2bn (£1.3bn) to bring the 20-year-old system up to date, the GAO – which is the equivalent of Britain's National Audit Office – says that delays and overspending are putting the entire system in jeopardy.
"In recent years, the Air Force has struggled to successfully build GPS satellites within cost and schedule goals," said the report. "It encountered significant technical problems … [and] struggled with a different contractor."
The first replacement GPS satellite was due to launch at the beginning of 2007, but has been delayed several times and is now scheduled to go into orbit in November this year – almost three years late.
The impact on ordinary users could be significant, with millions of satnav users potential victims of bad directions or failed services. There would also be similar side effects on the military, which uses GPS for mapping, reconnaissance and for tracking hostile targets.
Some suggest that it could also have an impact on the proliferation of so-called location applications on mobile handsets – just as applications on the iPhone and other GPS-enabled smartphones are starting to get more popular.
Tom Coates, the head of Yahoo's Fire Eagle system – which lets users share their location data from their mobile – said he was sceptical that US officials would let the system fall into total disrepair because it was important to so many people and companies.
"I'd be surprised if anyone in the US government was actually OK with letting it fail – it's too useful," he told the Guardian.
"It sounds like something that could be very serious in a whole range of areas if it were to actually happen. It probably wouldn't damage many locative services applications now, but potentially it would retard their development and mainstreaming if it were to come to pass."
The failings of GPS could also play into the hands of other countries – including opening the door to Galileo, the European-funded attempt to rival America's satellite navigation system, which is scheduled to start rolling out later next year.
Russia, India and China have developed their own satellite navigation technologies that are currently being expanded.
http://frc4u.org/phpbb/index.php?topic=1393.0;topicseen

What do we have here? Another evolutionary hoax in a long line of hoax's? Or just a deformed Lemur Monkey? Who knows but i think the last time a "find" like this was made and proclaimed it was found to be a made up "discovery" of made up put together pieces. Science does not do well in the truth department.
Fossil Discovery Is Heralded
n what could prove to be a landmark discovery, a leading paleontologist said scientists have dug up the 47 million-year-old fossil of an ancient primate whose features suggest it could be the common ancestor of all later monkeys, apes and humans.
Anthropologists have long believed that humans evolved from ancient ape-like ancestors. Some 50 million years ago, two ape-like groups walked the Earth. One is known as the tarsidae, a precursor of the tarsier, a tiny, large-eyed creature that lives in Asia. Another group is known as the adapidae, a precursor of today's lemurs in Madagascar.
Based on previously limited fossil evidence, one big debate had been whether the tarsidae or adapidae group gave rise to monkeys, apes and humans. The latest discovery bolsters the less common position that our ancient ape-like ancestor was an adapid, the believed precursor of lemurs.
[lemur] AP Photo/Karen Tam
A fossil discovery suggests humans may be descended from an animal that resembles present-day lemurs like this one.
Philip Gingerich, president-elect of the Paleontological Society in the U.S., has co-written a paper that will detail next week the latest fossil discovery in Public Library of Science, a peer-reviewed, online journal.
"This discovery brings a forgotten group into focus as a possible ancestor of higher primates," Mr. Gingerich, a professor of paleontology at the University of Michigan, said in an interview.
The discovery has little bearing on a separate paleontological debate centering on the identity of a common ancestor of chimps and humans, which could have lived about six million years ago and still hasn't been found. That gap in the evolution story is colloquially referred to as the "missing link" controversy. In reality, though, all gaps in the fossil record are technically "missing links" until filled in, and many scientists say the term is meaningless.
Nonetheless, the latest fossil find is likely to ignite further the debate between evolutionists who draw conclusions based on a limited fossil record, and creationists who don't believe that humans, monkeys and apes evolved from a common ancestor.
Scientists won't necessarily agree about the details either. "Lemur advocates will be delighted, but tarsier advocates will be underwhelmed" by the new evidence, says Tim White, a paleontologist at the University of California, Berkeley. "The debate will persist."
The skeleton will be unveiled at New York City's American Museum of Natural History next Tuesday by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and an international team involved in the discovery.
According to Prof. Gingerich, the fossilized remains are of a young female adapid. The skeleton was unearthed by collectors about two years ago and has been kept tightly under wraps since then, in an unusual feat of scientific secrecy.
Prof. Gingerich said he had twice examined the adapid skeleton, which was "a complete, spectacular fossil." The completeness of the preserved skeleton is crucial, because most previously found fossils of ancient primates were small finds, such as teeth and jawbones.
It was found in the Messel Shale Pit, a disused quarry near Frankfurt, Germany. The pit has long been a World Heritage Site and is the source of a number of well-preserved fossils from the middle Eocene epoch, some 50 million years ago.
Prof. Gingerich said several scientists, including Jorn Hurum of Norway's National History Museum, had inspected the fossil with computer tomography scanning, a sophisticated X-ray technique that can provide detailed, cross-sectional views. Dr. Hurum declined to comment.
lthough the creature looks like a lemur, there are some distinctive physical differences. Lemurs have a tooth comb (a tooth modified to help groom fur); a grooming claw; and a wet nose. Dr. Gingerich said that the adapid skeleton has neither a grooming claw nor a tooth comb. "We can't say whether it had a wet nose or not," he noted.
Since the fossilized creature found in Germany didn't have features like a tooth comb or grooming claw, it could be argued that it gave rise to monkeys, apes and humans, which don't have these features either.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124235632936122739.html

Brazil and China eye plan to axe dollar
Brazil and China will work towards using their own currencies in trade transactions rather than the US dollar, according to Brazil’s central bank and aides to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s president.
The move follows recent Chinese challenges to the status of the dollar as the world’s leading international currency.
Mr Lula da Silva, who is visiting Beijing this week, and Hu Jintao, China’s president, first discussed the idea of replacing the dollar with the renminbi and the real as trade currencies when they met at the G20 summit in London last month.
An official at Brazil’s central bank stressed that talks were at an early stage. He also said that what was under discussion was not a currency swap of the kind China recently agreed with Argentina and which the US had agreed with several countries, including Brazil.
“Currency swaps are not necessarily trade related,” the official said. “The funds can be drawn down for any use. What we are talking about now is Brazil paying for Chinese goods with reals and China paying for Brazilian goods with renminbi.”
Henrique Meirelles and Zhou Xiaochuan, governors of the two countries’ central banks, were expected to meet soon to discuss the matter, the official said.
Brazil: Exports to ChinaMr Zhou recently proposed replacing the US dollar as the world’s leading currency with a new international reserve currency, possibly in the form of special drawing rights (SDRs), a unit of account used by the International Monetary Fund.
In an essay posted on the People’s Bank of China’s website, Mr Zhou said the goal would be to create a reserve currency “that is disconnected from individual nations”.
In September, Brazil and Argentina signed an agreement under which importers and exporters in the two countries may make and receive payments in pesos and reals, although they may also continue to use the US dollar if they prefer.
An aide to Mr Lula da Silva on his visit to Beijing said the political will to enact a similar deal with China was clearly present. “Something that would have been unthinkable 10 years ago is a real possibility today,” he said. “Strong currencies like the real and the renminbi are perfectly capable of being used as trade currencies, as is the case between Brazil and Argentina.”
In what was interpreted as a sign of Chinese concern about the future of the dollar, the governor of China’s central bank proposed in March that the US dollar be replaced as the world’s de-facto reserve currency.
In an essay posted on the People’s Bank of China’s website, Zhou Xiaochuan, the central bank’s governor, said the goal would be to create a reserve currency ”that is disconnected from individual nations” and modelled on the International Monetary Fund’s special drawing rights, or SDRs.
Economists have argued that while the SDR plan is unfeasible now, bilateral deals between Beijing and its trading partners could act as pieces in a jigsaw designed to promote wider international use of the ­renminbi.
Any move to make the renminbi more acceptable for international trade, or to help establish it as a regional reserve currency in Asia, could enhance China’s political clout around the world.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/996b1af8-43ce-11de-a9be-00144feabdc0.html

Venezuela set to build first oil rig with China: report
Venezuela is poised to begin building the first joint Venezuelan-Chinese oil drilling platform in June, according to Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez.
"The oil drilling platform is at a very advanced stage in the (western) Orinoco Belt," Ramirez told the Panorama newspaper, from the northwestern city of Maracaibo, on Monday."In June ... Venezuela will assemble the first oil rig with Venezuelan labor."
Run through a joint venture between Venezuelan Petroleum (PDVSA) with a 60 percent stake, and China National Petroleum Company (CNPC) with a 40 percent stake, the oil rig will maintain 24 active teams equipped with "the latest technology," Ramirez said.
There are currently 276 active oil rigs in Venezuela, 51 of which are owned by PDVSA and the rest are run by contractors. Seventeen others are undergoing maintenance and four are inactive due to cuts agreed with the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), the newspaper said.
"We hope that in a few years, we can assume control of all oil rigs in the country," Ramirez said.
The planned oil rig assembly is the second stage of a 2007 deal under which China agreed to build 13 high-tech oil-drilling platforms that can drill 8,000 feet (2,400 meters) deep.
The third stage anticipates manufacturing and maintaining oil wells in Venezuela.
In 2007, PDVSA said it was investing 3.5 billion dollars in building and maintaining oil rigs through 2012.
During his last visit to Beijing in April, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez discussed the possibility of constructing a refinery in the country, capable of processing 400,000 barrels at day.
China buys 300,000 barrels of Venezuelan crude every day, and is eager for more from the Latin American country as part of its global quest for a diverse range of energy supplies.
The majority of Venezuela's vast oil reserves -- which PDVSA estimates at 3.01 million barrels a day, but the International Energy Agency places at 2.33 million barrels a day -- are destined for markets in the United States.
Venezuela has proven oil reserves of around 99 billion barrels and is the Western hemisphere's largest oil exporter.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.65dc69205fefac56a1edd540d2b1790b.321&show_article=1

St. Louis County man is Missouri's first swine flu fatality
A 44-year-old St. Louis County man is the first person in Missouri to die after becoming ill with swine flu.
According to the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, the man traveled last month to Mexico where the 2009 H1N1 flu virus first emerged. He returned on April 27 and became ill a week later.
The man went to an urgent care center on May 9 and was admitted to a hospital the same day. He died from medical complications related to the flu.
He was the eighth person in the United States to die with swine flu. Most of the more than 5,000 cases nationwide have been relatively mild, health officials have said.
The man’s family and medical personnel who treated him have received anti-viral medications.
An autopsy will be done on the man. State and county health officials and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are investigating the case.
“Our deepest condolences go out to this man’s family and his friends,” said Margaret Donnelly, director of the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services. “We are working hard to determine why this case of flu became so much more severe than other cases in Missouri.”
http://www.kansascity.com/news/breaking_news/story/1205608.html

Figures on government spending and debt
May 19, 2009 - 6:51pm
Total public debt subject to limit May 18 11,226,564
Statutory debt limit 12,104,000
Total public debt outstanding May 18 11,286,593
Operating balance May 18 254,539
Interest fiscal year 2009 thru April 193,439
Interest same period 2008 243,904
Deficit fiscal year 2009 thru April 802,294
Deficit same period 2008 153,471
Receipts fiscal year 2009 thru April 1,256,066
Receipts same period 2008 1,549,720
Outlays fiscal year 2009 thru April 2,058,360
Outlays same period 2008 1,703,191
Gold assets in April 11,041

Eeyore's News and View

Face transplant recipient: 'I'm not a monster'
May 6, 2009 - 7:36am

This is a photo, supplied by the Cleveland Clinic, of Connie Culp, after an injury to her face, left, and then as she appears today. Culp is underwent the first face transplant surgery the United States at the Cleveland Clinic in December 2008. Culp spoke to the media at a news conference at the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, on Tuesday, May 5, 2009. The 46-year-old mother of two lost most of the midsection of her face to a gunshot in 2004. (AP Photo/Cleveland Clinic-HO) By MARILYNN MARCHIONE
AP Medical Writer
CLEVELAND (AP) - When Connie Culp heard a little kid call her a monster because of the shotgun blast that left her face horribly disfigured, she pulled out her driver's license to show the child what she used to look like. Years later, as the nation's first face transplant recipient, she's stepped forward to show the rest of the world what she looks like now.
Her expressions are still a bit wooden, but she can talk, smile, smell and taste her food again. Her speech is at times a little tough to understand. Her face is bloated and squarish. Her skin droops in big folds that doctors plan to pare away as her circulation improves and her nerves grow, animating her new muscles.
But Culp had nothing but praise for those who made her new face possible.
"I guess I'm the one you came to see today," the 46-year-old Ohio woman said at a news conference at the Cleveland Clinic, where the groundbreaking operation was performed. But "I think it's more important that you focus on the donor family that made it so I could have this person's face."
Until Tuesday, Culp's identity and how she came to be disfigured were a secret.
Culp's husband, Thomas, shot her in 2004, then turned the gun on himself. He went to prison for seven years. His wife was left clinging to life. The blast shattered her nose, cheeks, the roof of her mouth and an eye. Hundreds of fragments of shotgun pellet and bone splinters were embedded in her face. She needed a tube into her windpipe to breathe. Only her upper eyelids, forehead, lower lip and chin were left.
A plastic surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic, Dr. Risal Djohan, got a look at her injuries two months later. "He told me he didn't think, he wasn't sure, if he could fix me, but he'd try," Culp recalled.
She endured 30 operations to try to fix her face. Doctors took parts of her ribs to make cheekbones and fashioned an upper jaw from one of her leg bones. She had countless skin grafts from her thighs. Still, she was left unable to eat solid food, breathe on her own, or smell.
Then, on Dec. 10, in a 22-hour operation, Dr. Maria Siemionow led a team of doctors who replaced 80 percent of Culp's face with bone, muscles, nerves, skin and blood vessels from another woman who had just died. It was the fourth face transplant in the world, though the others were not as extensive.
"Here I am, five years later. He did what he said _ I got me my nose," Culp said of Djohan, laughing.
In January, she was able to eat pizza, chicken and hamburgers for the first time in years. She loves to have cookies with a cup of coffee, Siemionow said.
No information has been released about the donor or how she died, but her family members were moved when they saw before-and-after pictures of Culp, Siemionow said.
Culp said she wants to help foster acceptance of those who have suffered burns and other disfiguring injuries.
"When somebody has a disfigurement and don't look as pretty as you do, don't judge them, because you never know what happened to them," she said. "Don't judge people who don't look the same as you do. Because you never know. One day it might be all taken away."
It's a role she has already practiced, said clinic psychiatrist Dr. Kathy Coffman.
Once while shopping, she heard a little kid say, `You said there were no real monsters, Mommy, and there's one right there,'" Coffman said. Culp stopped and said, "I'm not a monster. I'm a person who was shot," and pulled out her driver's license to show the child what she used to look like, the psychiatrist said.
Culp, who is from the small town of Unionport, near the Pennsylvania line, told her doctors she just wants to blend back into society. She has a son and a daughter who live near her, and two preschooler grandsons. Before she was shot, she and her husband ran a painting and contracting business, and she did everything from hanging drywall to a little plumbing, Coffman said.
Culp left the hospital Feb. 5 and has returned for periodic follow-up care. She has suffered only one mild rejection episode that was controlled with a single dose of steroid medicines, her doctors said. She must take immune-suppressing drugs for the rest of her life, but her dosage has been greatly reduced and she needs only a few pills a day.
The clinic expects to absorb the cost of the transplant because it was experimental, doctors said. Siemionow estimated it at $250,000 to $300,000. That is less than the $1 million that other surgeons estimate it costs them to treat other severely disfigured people through dozens of separate operations, she said.
Also at the Cleveland Clinic is Charla Nash of Stamford, Conn., who was attacked by a friend's chimpanzee in February. She lost her hands, nose, lips and eyelids, and will be blind, doctors said. Clinic officials said it is premature to discuss the possibility of a face transplant for her.
In April, doctors at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston performed the nation's second face transplant, on a man disfigured in a freak accident. It was the world's seventh such operation. The first, in 2005, was performed in France on Isabelle Dinoire, a woman who had been mauled by her dog.
On the Net:
Cleveland Clinic: http://www.clevelandclinic.org/face

Chemical weapons disposal on fast track
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon plans to speed the destruction of its aging chemical weapons by more than three years with a $1.2 billion acceleration of construction at two new disposal plants, budget documents show.
The proposal represents a 60% increase in projected spending through 2015 to build the plants at the Pueblo (Colo.) Chemical Depot and the Blue Grass (Ky.) Army Depot, totaling more than $3.2 billion over that period, according to the documents, obtained by USA TODAY. Those sites will be the last to eliminate their stockpiles — and the only ones to use chemical neutralization instead of incinerators.
Despite the acceleration, the Pentagon doesn't expect to eliminate all of its chemical weapons until 2021, well past the 2012 deadline set by the international Chemical Weapons Convention. To date, the military has destroyed 60% of the stockpile, which includes VX, GB and mustard gas produced before the weapons program was ended in 1969.
Defense officials declined to comment on the budget plan because it is not yet released. They did confirm the faster disposal timeline tied to the increased spending.
"The department is committed to accelerating," said Jean Reed, who oversees the program. The weapons "need to be destroyed both for the potential threat they could pose if they fell into the wrong hands and … to reduce the potential risk to local communities and (workers)" of an accidental leak.
The new plan would increase 2010 spending for the Pueblo and Blue Grass plants by 29%, to $550 million.
The question is whether budgets in later years will meet projections, said Craig Williams, head of the Chemical Weapons Working Group, which represents communities near stockpiles. Disposal has been slowed before when projected funds didn't materialize, he added, and such inconsistency "is not sensible or appropriate."
Russia, which has the world's largest chemical arsenal, also has had funding problems and has destroyed just 30% of its 44,000 tons of chemical arms.
Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said he is "pleased" by the new budget plan. "Once the acceleration options are implemented, I expect even more time can be cut from the schedule."
http://www.usatoday.com/news/military/2009-05-05-chemicalweapons_N.htm

Here are a couple of Swine Flu head lines and the talley so far (all are RED)
Flu cancels U.S. Navy mission in Pacific
05 May 2009 21:01:54 GMT Source: Reuters
WASHINGTON, May 5 (Reuters) - The U.S. Navy said on Tuesday it decided not to send a warship on a planned humanitarian mission to the South Pacific after one crew member fell ill with the H1N1 virus and 49 others developed symptoms.
The San Diego-based USS Dubuque had been scheduled to sail on June 1 to begin a four-month mission to deliver medical, dental, veterinary and engineering assistance to Samoa, the Solomon Islands, Tonga, Kiribati and the Marshall Islands.
Navy Lt. Sean Robertson said ailing crew aboard the 16,900-ton (15,300-tonne) amphibious vessel were put on a five-day course of Tamiflu on April 30. The remaining 370 crew members and staff began a 10-day prophylaxis course on May 3....
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N05509787.htm

Flu virus kills Texan, European cases rise
HOUSTON (Reuters) - A Texan with H1N1 flu died earlier this week, state officials said, only the second death outside Mexico where the epidemic appeared to be waning.
Health officials said the outbreak seemed to be slowing in the country hardest-hit by the virus but the World Health Organisation gave a different picture for Europe.
There, the virus was still spreading and WHO laboratories confirmed more infections in Britain, Spain, Italy and Germany -- taking the U.N. agency's toll on Wednesday to 1,516 officially reported cases in 22 countries.
The bulk of these remain in North America.
The WHO confirmed 822 infections and 29 deaths in Mexico, and 403 infections and one death in the United States.
Its tally, which lags national reports but carries more scientific weight, includes a Mexican toddler who died in Texas last week but not the later death of the Texan woman in her 30s who U.S. health officials said had chronic health problems.
They predicted the virus known as swine flu -- actually a mix of pig, human and bird flu elements -- would spread and inevitably kill some people, just like seasonal flu.
U.S. authorities say they have another 700 "probable" cases.
"Those numbers will go up, we anticipate, and unfortunately there are likely to be more hospitalisations and more deaths," U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said.
Canada has reported 165 and the WHO said on Wednesday there were 27 cases confirmed in Britain, up from 18.
Spain and Italy both had three more cases, and Germany one more. Guatemala was the 22nd country to confirm a case.
PANDEMIC ALERT REMAINS
For authorities worldwide, the question remained how far the virus would spread and how serious would it be. The WHO remained at alert level 5, meaning a pandemic was imminent.
"If it spreads around the world you will see hundreds of millions of people get infected," said the WHO's Dr. Keiji Fukuda.
If it continues to spread outside the Americas, the WHO would probably move to phase 6, a full pandemic alert. This would prompt countries to activate pandemic plans, distribute antiviral drugs and antibiotics and perhaps advise people to take other precautions like limiting large gatherings.
"It's not so much the number of countries, but whether the virus sets up shop in any of those countries like it has here and starts to spread person to person. And given the number of countries that have cases, one would think that eventually that criteria would be met," said acting CDC director Dr. Richard Besser.
He and Fukuda said it would be important to watch the Southern Hemisphere, where winter and the flu season are just beginning.
Other pandemics have started with a mild new virus in spring that came back to cause severe disease later in the year.
WHO said it would begin sending 2.4 million treatment courses of Roche AG's ROG and Gilead Sciences Inc's Tamiflu, an antiviral proven effective against the new flu, to 72 nations.
CHINESE HEAD HOME
An aircraft carrying 98 Chinese stranded in Mexico by the flu outbreak arrived in Shanghai on Wednesday and all appeared healthy but will have to spend a week in quarantine.
An AeroMexico plane had arrived in Shanghai a day earlier to pick up dozens of Mexicans who had become pawns in a row about how far governments should go to stifle fears of the virus.
None of 43 Mexicans that China had quarantined showed symptoms of H1N1, prompting Mexico to accuse China of discrimination. China denied this, saying isolation was the correct procedure.
http://in.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idINIndia-39423520090506

U.S. reports 642 new H1N1 flu cases
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States now has 642 cases of the new H1N1 flu, with two deaths, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.
CDC officials have said they expect the new swine flu to spread to all 50 states, to cause severe disease and some deaths, although most cases have been mild.
Mexico has confirmed 42 deaths and said it was impossible to get samples from about 70 more people who died of flu-like illness recently. Globally, more than 1,600 cases have been reported in 23 countries.
http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE5454GZ20090506?feedType=RSS&feedName=domesticNews&rpc=22&sp=true

Second strain of flu may complicate picture-study
06 May 2009 15:02:09 GMT Source: Reuters
* Mutations seen in seasonal flu strain
* May have caused Canadian late-season outbreak
Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor
WASHINGTON, May 6 (Reuters) - A second strain of influenza, one of the seasonal strains, may have mutated and may be complicating the picture in Mexico, Canadian researchers reported on Wednesday.
They have found a strain of the H3N2 virus that appears to have made a shift and could have complicated the flu picture in Mexico, epicenter of an outbreak of a new strain of the H1N1 swine flu virus.
One was seen in a traveler returning from Mexico, the team at the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control reported to Pro-MED, an online forum for infectious disease experts. And it may have been involved in an unusually late outbreak of flu in long-term care facilities this year.
The new H1N1 virus has killed at least 42 people in Mexico and two in the United States, has spread globally and brought the world to the brink of a pandemic. It appears to act like seasonal flu but doctors have been confused because it has also killed some young and apparently healthy adults -- not the usual pattern for influenza, which picks off the elderly, chronically ill and very young.
Danuta Skowronski and colleagues said they routinely sequence the hemagglutinin gene from a sample of influenza viruses submitted each season by community doctors, hospitals and care facilities across the province of British Columbia, Canada. Hemagglutinin gives a flu virus the "H" in its name, as in H1N1 or H3N2, and is found on the surface of the virus.
Vaccines target hemagglutinin and when it changes, the vaccine must be changed, too. This year the vaccine targets strains of H3N2 influenza, an H1N1 strain different from the new swine flu strain, and an influenza B strain.
"Until mid-February 2009, amino acid sequences of the hemagglutinin gene of H3 viruses in British Columbia were virtually identical to the vaccine strain," Skowronski wrote.
"In early March 2009, however, we detected additional differences from the vaccine strain among British Columbia viruses collected from facility outbreak settings." They only found these changes in flu samples taken from patients in care facilities.
When news broke of the new H1N1 strain, they ran more tests.
"We have sequenced the hemagglutinin gene of one of the H3 viruses from an ill traveler returning from Mexico and find it shares the same ... changes," they wrote.
"In British Columbia, these H3 mutations arose sometime in early March 2009 and we observe at least one returning traveler to have likely acquired illness due to this virus in Mexico," they wrote.
"We thus also wonder to what extent the profile of influenza-like illness initially reported from mid-March in Mexico may in part be attributed to this H3N2 variant in addition to emergence of the novel A/H1N1 virus."
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N06391128.htm

Chinese and American ships clash again in Yellow Sea
China demonstrated its growing naval confidence again in the latest standoff between American and Chinese ships.
The fifth such incident in two months occurred on Friday in the Yellow Sea when a US Navy surveillance ship turned its fire hoses on two Chinese fishing vessels.
A spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry said that the American ship was operating in China’s exclusive economic zone without permission and had violated Chinese and international laws. “We express our concern about this and demand the US side take effective measures to ensure a similar incident does not happen again,” he said.
The USNS Victorious, an ocean surveillance ship designed for anti-submarine warfare and underwater mapping, was conducting what the Pentagon called routine operations in the waters between China and the Korean peninsula. The Chinese vessels came within 100ft (30 metres) of the vessel.
The Pentagon, which accused five Chinese fishing vessels of harassing another US surveillance ship in the South China Sea near Hainan island in March, cited the incident as an example of unsafe Chinese seamanship.
The Chinese vessels did not withdraw until after the Victorious had sounded an alarm and a Chinese military ship, identified by the Pentagon as WAGOR 17, arrived in response to the call for assistance. It shone a light on the fishing vessels until they left.
The Pentagon earlier played down the confrontation, striking a more low-key tone than during the incident two months ago.
A spokesman for the US Defence Department suggested that the United States was looking to avoid the kind of angry exchanges that followed the March incident. He said: “We will be developing a way forward to deal with this diplomatically.”
The comments by the spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry were also less strident than in March, when Beijing accused the US of distorting the truth.
Niu Jun, a professor of international relations at Peking University, said that both sides could do more to calm tensions. “The US should make its intention more transparent. But the two sides should also have talks on this issue and establish a mechanism to solve it,” he said.
It was not the first time the Victorious had encountered Chinese boats. On April 7 and April 8, Chinese-flagged fishing vessels approached the ship and the USNS Loyal as they operated within China’s 200-mile economic zone.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6233796.ece

Eeyore's News and view

Gates may recommend new 'Cyber Command'
Pentagon hacked, fighter data stolen
April 21: Cyber spies that may have originated in China hacked into the Pentagon and stole several terabytes worth of data about the joint strike fighter program. The Pentagon says no sensitive material was taken. NBC's Jim Miklaszewski reports.
updated 11:48 p.m. ET, Tues., April 21, 2009
While no final decisions have been made, Defense Secretary Robert Gates is expected to recommend the creation of a new military command to face the growing threat from cyber warfare, a senior U.S. official told NBC News on Tuesday.
According to the official, the program would not be on the level of a separate combatant command. Instead, the likely recommendation would be to create a "sub-unified command" that would focus entirely on combating cyber warfare but exist under the current Strategic Command.
A senior Pentagon official revealed that cyber attacks against military computer networks have "increased significantly ... more than doubled" in the past six months. The attacks were said to include "thousands of probes a day" against Web sites associated with the Defense Department.
One such cyber attack occurred two years ago against the military's most expensive weapons system, Lockheed Martin Corp.'s F-35 Lightning II program — also known as the Joint Strike Fighter. Pentagon officials told The Associated Press that the hackers were able to steal data about some of the plane's systems through computer networks, although they insisted that the information was not classified and that the loss of the information did not present any potential threat to the aircraft.
One defense official said it is not clear who did it, or whether it was an attempt at corporate thievery or a hacker trying to harm the program. The Pentagon is expected to pay about $300 billion to buy nearly 2,500 of the F-35 jets for the Air Force, Navy and Marines.
Although the number of cyber attacks and simple "probes" has increased, none of the attacks has resulted in the loss of highly classified information, the officials said. The information is contained only in the U.S. military's internal computer networks, which are not accessible over the Internet and considered largely impenetrable by outside hackers.
The officials talked about the attacks and the Pentagon's response on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
Gates is expected to make a final decision and recommendation on the Cyber Command following the release of a White House strategy on cyber defense. There have been increasingly frequent warnings that the nation's information networks are at risk and have been repeatedly probed by foreign governments, criminals or other groups.
In the wake of disclosures about the cyber attack, Lockheed Martin issued a carefully worded statement saying that "to our knowledge there has never been any classified information breach." The company added that its systems are continually attacked, and that measures have been put in place to detect and stop the hacking.
The statement did not specifically deny a breach into unclassified information or less sensitive areas of the F-35 program.
The cyber attacks were first reported Tuesday by The Wall Street Journal.
One official said that outside cyber scans of the fighter program are not new, and that they could well involve subcontractors and suppliers around the world. Those scans may not involve critical, classified systems, the officials said.
Lockheed is the lead contractor for the F-35. A number of other companies, including Northrop Grumman Corp. and BAE Systems, make parts and systems for the plane.
According to U.S. counterintelligence officials, this is not the first military jet program that has suffered cyber attacks.
During a speech in Texas earlier this month, Joel Brenner, head of the U.S. Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive, said officials have seen counterfeit computer chips "make their way into U.S. military fighter aircraft."
Brenner added: "You don't sneak counterfeit chips into another nation's aircraft to steal data. When it's done intentionally, it's done to degrade systems, or to have the ability to do so at a time of one's choosing."
His comments were not related to the F-35, according to administration officials. But Brenner has also warned that careless, laid-off or disaffected employees can often be the root of corporate cyber leaks. Foreign governments or groups, he said, plan computer attacks that take advantage of sloppy workers or bad network management practices.
In a series of recent speeches, Brenner has repeatedly raised the alarm that foreign governments and other groups are accessing government systems and installing malicious software.
"The Chinese are relentless and don't seem to care about getting caught. And we have seen Chinese network operations inside certain of our electricity grids. Do I worry about those grids, and about air traffic control systems, water supply systems, and so on? You bet I do," Brenner told an audience at the University of Texas at Austin.
While some reports indicated the source of the F-35 hack was traced back to China, Pentagon officials told NBC News that there was no proof of that, and that the U.S. may not be able to prove the Chinese government was behind the cyber attack.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30319722/

China denies its cyber-spies hacked into the Pentagon's most expensive weapons programme
Computer spies have repeatedly breached the Pentagon's costliest weapons program, the $300billion (£206billion) Joint Strike Fighter project.
The intruders - who may have been Chinese - were able to copy and siphon data related to design and electronics systems on the F-35 Lightning II fighter plane.
That could make it easier to defend against the plane, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The spies could not access the most sensitive material, which is kept on computers that are not connected to the Internet, the paper added.
Attacks like these - or U.S. awareness of them - appear to have escalated in the past six months, said one former official.
'There's never been anything like it,' the official said.
'It's everything that keeps this country going.'
Citing people briefed on the matter, it said the intruders entered through vulnerabilities in the networks of two or three of the contractors involved in building the fighter jet.
The Journal said Pentagon officials declined to comment directly on the matter, but the paper said the Air Force had begun an investigation.
The identity of the attackers and the amount of damage to the project could not be established, the paper said.
The Journal quoted former U.S. officials as saying the attacks seemed to have originated in China, although it noted it was difficult to determine the origin because of the ease of hiding identities online.
Today Chinese officials reacted angrily to the accusation.
'China has not changed its stance on hacking,' a Foreign Ministry spokesman was quoted as saying.
'China has always been against hacking and we have cracked down very hard on hacking. This is not a Chinese phenomenon. It happens everywhere in the world.'
A Pentagon report issued last month said that the Chinese military has made 'steady progress' in developing online-warfare techniques.
The Chinese Embassy said China 'opposes and forbids all forms of cyber crimes,' the Journal said.
The officials added there had also been breaches of the U.S. Air Force's air traffic control system in recent months.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1172326/China-denies-cyber-spies-hacked-Pentagons-expensive-weapons-programme.html

Interference Bloomberg Style
Posted by:Sebastian on Apr 20th, 2009
This New York Times piece shines quite a stunning flashlight at Mayor Bloomberg’s anti-gun operation:
He was arrested in 2005 and accused of using his wife and others as “straw buyers” to acquire more than two dozen sawed-off shotguns, semiautomatic pistols and rifles in Virginia, most of their serial numbers obliterated, and selling them for thousands of dollars in New York City. He faced up to five years in prison if convicted.
What follows is outrageous. Federal prosecutors wanted to throw the book at this guy. Bloomberg moved in and cut a deal, and got him off with probation, saying “his cooperation was ‘extraordinary’ and ‘really helpful to the city.’”
So you have a guy the feds managed to catch, who was unambiguously buying guns through a straw purchaser in Virginia, filing the numbers off the gun, and trafficking them illegally up to New York City, and selling them on the streets. And Bloomberg lets him off with a slap on the wrist? Why?
Mr. Winfield was no doubt helped by the timing of his case, which occurred as the city was looking for help in two lawsuits it filed in 2006 against more than two dozen gun dealers in Virginia and four other states.
Yep. Now we know why ATF was pissed at Bloomberg when it happened. They had an honest to God criminal gun trafficker, and Bloomberg got him off pretty much scott free so he could grandstand in public, crap all over ther rights of businessmen with no connection to his state, and all the while pandering to a fawning media who will congratulate him on doing so much to help rid New Yorkers of the scourge of “illegal guns.”
Well, it looks like the gig is up now. It’s never been about controlling crime. It’s about controlling people. Anyone who says that’s nonsense needs to look no further than Michael Bloomberg.
http://www.snowflakesinhell.com/2009/04/20/interference-bloomberg-style/

Robots are narrowing the gap with humans
WASHINGTON — Robots are gaining on us humans.
Thanks to exponential increases in computer power — which is roughly doubling every two years — robots are getting smarter, more capable, more like flesh-and-blood people.
Matching human skills and intelligence, however, is an enormously difficult — perhaps impossible — challenge.
Nevertheless, robots guided by their own computer "brains'' now can pick up and peel bananas, land jumbo jets, steer cars through city traffic, search human DNA for cancer genes, play soccer or the violin, find earthquake victims or explore craters on Mars.
At a "Robobusiness" conference in Boston last week, companies demonstrated a robot firefighter, gardener, receptionist, tour guide and security guard.
You name it, a high-tech wizard somewhere is trying to make a robot do it.
A Japanese housekeeping robot can move chairs, sweep the floor, load a tray of dirty dishes in a dishwasher and put dirty clothes in a washing machine.
Intel, the worldwide computer-chip maker, headquartered in Santa Clara, Calif., has developed a self-controlled mobile robot called Herb, the Home Exploring Robotic Butler. Herb can recognize faces and carry out generalized commands such as "please clean this mess," according to Justin Rattner, Intel's chief technology officer.
In a talk last year titled "Crossing the Chasm Between Humans and Machines: the Next 40 Years,'' the widely respected Rattner lent some credibility to the often-ridiculed effort to make machines as smart as people.
"The industry has taken much greater strides than anyone ever imagined 40 years ago," Rattner said. It's conceivable, he added, that "machines could even overtake humans in their ability to reason in the not-so-distant future.''
Programming a robot to perform household chores without breaking dishes or bumping into walls is hard enough, but creating a truly intelligent machine still remains far beyond human ability.
Artificial intelligence researchers have struggled for half a century to imitate the staggering complexity of the brain, even in creatures as lowly as a cockroach or fruit fly. Although computers can process data at lightning speeds, the trillions of ever-changing connections between animal and human brain cells surpass the capacity of even the largest supercomputers
"One day we will create a human-level artificial intelligence,'' wrote Rodney Brooks, a robot designer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Cambridge, Mass. "But how and when we will get there — and what will happen after we do — are now the subjects of fierce debate.''
"We're in a slow retreat in the face of the steady advance of our mind's children,'' agreed Paul Saffo, a technology forecaster at Stanford University in Stanford, Calif. "Eventually, we're going to reach the point where everybody's going to say, 'Of course machines are smarter than we are.' ''
"The truly interesting question is what happens after if we have truly intelligent robots,'' Saffo said. "If we're very lucky, they'll treat us as pets. If not, they'll treat us as food.''
Some far-out futurists, such as Ray Kurzweil, an inventor and technology evangelist in Wellesley Hills, a Boston suburb, predict that robots will match human intelligence by 2029, only 20 years from now. Other experts think that Kurzweil is wildly over-optimistic.
According to Kurzweil, robots will prove their cleverness by passing the so-called "Turing test.'' In the test, devised by British computing pioneer Alan Turing in 1950, a human judge chats casually with a concealed human and a hidden machine. If the judge can't tell which responses come from the human and which from the machine, the machine is said to show human-level intelligence.
"We can expect computers to pass the Turing test, indicating intelligence indistinguishable from that of biological humans, by the end of the 2020s,'' Kurzweil wrote in his 2005 book, "The Singularity Is Near.''
To Kurzweil, the "singularity'' is when a machine equals or exceeds human intelligence. It won't come in "one great leap,'' he said, "but lots of little steps to get us from here to there.''
Kurzweil has made a movie, also titled "The Singularity Is Near: A True Story About the Future,'' that's due in theaters this summer.
Intel's Rattner is more conservative. He said that it would take at least until 2050 to close the mental gap between people and machines. Others say that it will take centuries, if it ever happens.
Some eminent thinkers, such as Steven Pinker, a Harvard cognitive scientist, Gordon Moore, a co-founder of Intel, and Mitch Kapor, a leading computer scientist in San Francisco, doubt that a robot can ever successfully impersonate a human being.
It's "extremely difficult even to imagine what it would mean for a computer to perform a successful impersonation,'' Kapor said. "While it is possible to imagine a machine obtaining a perfect score on the SAT or winning 'Jeopardy' — since these rely on retained facts and the ability to recall them — it seems far less possible that a machine can weave things together in new ways or . . . have true imagination in a way that matches everything people can do.''
Nevertheless, roboticists are working to make their mechanical creatures seem more human. The Japanese are particularly fascinated with "humanoid'' robots, with faces, movements and voices resembling their human masters.
A fetching female robot model from the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology lab in Tsukuba, Japan, sashays down a runway, turns and bows when "she'' meets a real girl.
"People become emotionally attached'' to robots, Saffo said. Two-thirds of the people who own Roombas, the humble floor-sweeping robots, give them names, he said. One-third take their Roombas on vacation.
At a technology conference last October in San Jose, Calif., Cynthia Breazeal, an MIT robot developer, demonstrated her attempts to build robots that mimic human and social skills. She showed off "Leonardo,'' a rabbity creature that reacts appropriately when a person smiles or scowls.
"Robot sidekicks are coming,'' Breazeal said. "We already can see the first distant cousins of R2D2," the sociable little robot in the "Star Wars" movies.
Other MIT researchers have developed an autonomous wheelchair that understands and responds to commands to "go to my room'' or "take me to the cafeteria.''
So far, most robots are used primarily in factories, repeatedly performing single tasks. The Robotics Institute of America estimates that more than 186,000 industrial robots are being used in the United States, second only to Japan. It's estimated that more than a million robots are being used worldwide, with China and India rapidly expanding their investments in robotics.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/226/story/66530.html

'Quiet Sun' baffling astronomers
The Sun is the dimmest it has been for nearly a century.
There are no sunspots, very few solar flares - and our nearest star is the quietest it has been for a very long time.
The observations are baffling astronomers, who are due to study new pictures of the Sun, taken from space, at the UK National Astronomy Meeting.
The Sun normally undergoes an 11-year cycle of activity. At its peak, it has a tumultuous boiling atmosphere that spits out flares and planet-sized chunks of super-hot gas. This is followed by a calmer period.
Last year, it was expected that it would have been hotting up after a quiet spell. But instead it hit a 50-year year low in solar wind pressure, a 55-year low in radio emissions, and a 100-year low in sunspot activity.
According to Prof Louise Hara of University College London, it is unclear why this is happening or when the Sun is likely to become more active again.
"There's no sign of us coming out of it yet," she told BBC News.
"At the moment, there are scientific papers coming out suggesting that we'll be going into a normal period of activity soon.
"Others are suggesting we'll be going into another minimum period - this is a big scientific debate at the moment."
In the mid-17th Century, a quiet spell - known as the Maunder Minimum - lasted 70 years, and led to a "mini ice-age".
This has resulted in some people suggesting that a similar cooling might offset the impact of climate change.
According to Prof Mike Lockwood of Southampton University, this view is too simplistic.
"I wish the Sun was coming to our aid but, unfortunately, the data shows that is not the case," he said.
Prof Lockwood was one of the first researchers to show that the Sun's activity has been gradually decreasing since 1985, yet overall global temperatures have continued to rise.
"If you look carefully at the observations, it's pretty clear that the underlying level of the Sun peaked at about 1985 and what we are seeing is a continuation of a downward trend (in solar activity) that's been going on for a couple of decades.
"If the Sun's dimming were to have a cooling effect, we'd have seen it by now."
'Middle ground'
Evidence from tree trunks and ice cores suggest that the Sun is calming down after an unusually high point in its activity.
Professor Lockwood believes that as well as the Sun's 11-year cycle, there is an underlying solar oscillation lasting hundreds of years.
He suggests that 1985 marked the "grand maximum" in this long-term cycle and the Maunder Minimum marked its low point.
"We are re-entering the middle ground after a period which has seen the Sun in its top 10% of activity," said Professor Lockwood.
"We would expect it to be more than a hundred years before we get down to the levels of the Maunder Minimum."
He added that the current slight dimming of the Sun is not going to reverse the rise in global temperatures caused by the burning of fossil fuels.
"What we are seeing is consistent with a global temperature rise, not that the Sun is coming to our aid."
Data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) shows global average temperatures have risen by about 0.7C since the beginning of the 20th Century.
And the IPCC projects that the world will continue to warm, with temperatures expected to rise between 1.8C and 4C by the end of the century.
No-one knows how the centuries-long waxing and waning of the Sun works. However, astronomers now have space telescopes studying the Sun in detail.
According to Prof Richard Harrison of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Oxfordshire, this current quiet period gives astronomers a unique opportunity.
"This is very exciting because as astronomers we've never seen anything like this before in our lifetimes," he said.
"We have spacecraft up there to study the Sun in phenomenal detail. With these telescopes we can study this minimum of activity in a way that we could not have done so in the past."

Eeyore's News and View

A 'Copper Standard' for the world's currency system?
Hard money enthusiasts have long watched for signs that China is switching its foreign reserves from US Treasury bonds into gold bullion. They may have been eyeing the wrong metal.
China's State Reserves Bureau (SRB) has instead been buying copper and other industrial metals over recent months on a scale that appears to go beyond the usual rebuilding of stocks for commercial reasons.
Nobu Su, head of Taiwan's TMT group, which ships commodities to China, said Beijing is trying to extricate itself from dollar dependency as fast as it can.
China's jobless migrant workers hits 23m"China has woken up. The West is a black hole with all this money being printed. The Chinese are buying raw materials because it is a much better way to use their $1.9 trillion of reserves. They get ten times the impact, and can cover their infrastructure for 50 years."
"The next industrial revolution is going to be led by hybrid cars, and that needs copper. You can see the subtle way that China is moving into 30 or 40 countries with resources," he said.
The SRB has also been accumulating aluminium, zinc, nickel, and rarer metals such as titanium, indium (thin-film technology), rhodium (catalytic converters) and praseodymium (glass).
While it makes sense for China to take advantage of last year's commodity crash to restock cheaply, there is clearly more behind the move. "They are definitely buying metals to diversify out of US Treasuries and dollar holdings," said Jim Lennon, head of commodities at Macquarie Bank.
John Reade, metals chief at UBS, said Beijing may have a made strategic decision to stockpile metal as an alternative to foreign bonds. "We're very surprised by Chinese demand. They are buying much more copper than they will need this year. If this is strategic, there may be no effective limit on the purchases as China's pockets are deep."
Zhou Xiaochuan, the central bank governor, piqued the interest of metal buffs last month by calling for a world currency modelled on the "Bancor", floated by John Maynard Keynes at Bretton Woods in 1944.
The Bancor was to be anchored on 30 commodities - a broader base than the Gold Standard, which had caused so much grief in the 1930s. Mr Zhou said such a currency would prevent the sort of "credit-based" excess that has brought the global finance to its knees.
If his thoughts reflect Communist Party thinking, it would explain the bizarre moves in commodity markets over recent weeks. Copper prices have surged 49pc this year to $4,925 a tonne despite estimates by the CRU copper group that world demand will fall 15pc to 20pc this year as construction wilts.
Analysts say "short covering" by funds betting on price falls has played a role. But the jump is largely due to Chinese imports, which reached a record 329,000 tonnes in February, and a further 375,000 tonnes in March. Chinese industrial demand cannot explain this. China has been badly hit by global recession. Its exports - almost half GDP - fell 17pc in March.
While Beijing's fiscal stimulus package and credit expansion has helped lift demand, China faces a property downturn of its own. One government adviser warned this week that house prices could fall 50pc.
One thing is clear: Beijing suspects that the US Federal Reserve is engineering a covert default on America's debt by printing money. Premier Wen Jiabao issued a blunt warning last month that China was tiring of US bonds. "We have lent a huge amount of money to the US, so of course we are concerned about the safety of our assets," he said.
This is slightly disingenuous. China has the world's largest reserves - $1.95 trillion, mostly in dollars - because it has been holding down the yuan to boost exports. This mercantilist strategy has reached its limits.
The beauty of recycling China's surplus into metals instead of US bonds is that it kills so many birds with one stone: it stops the yuan rising, without provoking complaints of currency manipulation by Washington; metals are easily stored in warehouses, unlike oil; the holdings are likely to rise in value over time since the earth's crust is gradually depleting its accessible ores. Above all, such a policy safeguards China's industrial revolution, while the West may one day face a supply crisis.
Beijing may yet buy gold as well, although it has not done so yet. The gold share of reserves has fallen to 1pc, far below the historic norm in Asia. But if a metal-based currency ever emerges to end the reign of fiat paper, it is just as likely to be a "Copper Standard" as a "Gold Standard".
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/5160120/A-Copper-Standard-for-the-worlds-currency-system.html

Officials Say U.S. Wiretaps Exceeded Law
Published: April 15, 2009
WASHINGTON — The National Security Agency intercepted private e-mail messages and phone calls of Americans in recent months on a scale that went beyond the broad legal limits established by Congress last year, government officials said in recent interviews.
Several intelligence officials, as well as lawyers briefed about the matter, said the N.S.A. had been engaged in “overcollection” of domestic communications of Americans. They described the practice as significant and systemic, although one official said it was believed to have been unintentional.
The legal and operational problems surrounding the N.S.A.’s surveillance activities have come under scrutiny from the Obama administration, Congressional intelligence committees and a secret national security court, said the intelligence officials, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity because N.S.A. activities are classified. Classified government briefings have been held in recent weeks in response to a brewing controversy that some officials worry could damage the credibility of legitimate intelligence-gathering efforts.
The Justice Department, in response to inquiries from The New York Times, acknowledged Wednesday night that there had been problems with the N.S.A. surveillance operation, but said they had been resolved.
As part of a periodic review of the agency’s activities, the department “detected issues that raised concerns,” it said. Justice Department officials then “took comprehensive steps to correct the situation and bring the program into compliance” with the law and court orders, the statement said. It added that Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. went to the national security court to seek a renewal of the surveillance program only after new safeguards were put in place.
In a statement on Wednesday night, the N.S.A. said that its “intelligence operations, including programs for collection and analysis, are in strict accordance with U.S. laws and regulations.” The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees the intelligence community, did not address specific aspects of the surveillance problems but said in a statement that “when inadvertent mistakes are made, we take it very seriously and work immediately to correct them.”
The questions may not be settled yet. Intelligence officials say they are still examining the scope of the N.S.A. practices, and Congressional investigators say they hope to determine if any violations of Americans’ privacy occurred. It is not clear to what extent the agency may have actively listened in on conversations or read e-mail messages of Americans without proper court authority, rather than simply obtained access to them.
The intelligence officials said the problems had grown out of changes enacted by Congress last July in the law that regulates the government’s wiretapping powers, and the challenges posed by enacting a new framework for collecting intelligence on terrorism and spying suspects.
While the N.S.A.’s operations in recent months have come under examination, new details are also emerging about earlier domestic-surveillance activities, including the agency’s attempt to wiretap a member of Congress, without court approval, on an overseas trip, current and former intelligence officials said.
After a contentious three-year debate that was set off by the disclosure in 2005 of the program of wiretapping without warrants that President George W. Bush approved after the Sept. 11 attacks, Congress gave the N.S.A. broad new authority to collect, without court-approved warrants, vast streams of international phone and e-mail traffic as it passed through American telecommunications gateways. The targets of the eavesdropping had to be “reasonably believed” to be outside the United States. Under the new legislation, however, the N.S.A. still needed court approval to monitor the purely domestic communications of Americans who came under suspicion.
In recent weeks, the eavesdropping agency notified members of the Congressional intelligence committees that it had encountered operational and legal problems in complying with the new wiretapping law, Congressional officials said.
Officials would not discuss details of the overcollection problem because it involves classified intelligence-gathering techniques. But the issue appears focused in part on technical problems in the N.S.A.’s ability at times to distinguish between communications inside the United States and those overseas as it uses its access to American telecommunications companies’ fiber-optic lines and its own spy satellites to intercept millions of calls and e-mail messages.
One official said that led the agency to inadvertently “target” groups of Americans and collect their domestic communications without proper court authority. Officials are still trying to determine how many violations may have occurred.
The overcollection problems appear to have been uncovered as part of a twice-annual certification that the Justice Department and the director of national intelligence are required to give to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on the protocols that the N.S.A. is using in wiretapping. That review, officials said, began in the waning days of the Bush administration and was continued by the Obama administration. It led intelligence officials to realize that the N.S.A. was improperly capturing information involving significant amounts of American traffic.
Notified of the problems by the N.S.A., officials with both the House and Senate intelligence committees said they had concerns that the agency had ignored civil liberties safeguards built into last year’s wiretapping law. “We have received notice of a serious issue involving the N.S.A., and we’ve begun inquiries into it,” a Congressional staff member said.
Separate from the new inquiries, the Justice Department has for more than two years been investigating aspects of the N.S.A.’s wiretapping program.
As part of that investigation, a senior F.B.I. agent recently came forward with what the inspector general’s office described as accusations of “significant misconduct” in the surveillance program, people with knowledge of the investigation said. Those accusations are said to involve whether the N.S.A. made Americans targets in eavesdropping operations based on insufficient evidence tying them to terrorism.
And in one previously undisclosed episode, the N.S.A. tried to wiretap a member of Congress without a warrant, an intelligence official with direct knowledge of the matter said.
The agency believed that the congressman, whose identity could not be determined, was in contact — as part of a Congressional delegation to the Middle East in 2005 or 2006 — with an extremist who had possible terrorist ties and was already under surveillance, the official said. The agency then sought to eavesdrop on the congressman’s conversations, the official said.
The official said the plan was ultimately blocked because of concerns from some intelligence officials about using the N.S.A., without court oversight, to spy on a member of Congress.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/16/us/16nsa.html?_r=1

Our view on public safety: Security smokescreen hinders chemical plant inquiry
Should Coast Guard control what you know about industrial risks?
Last August, an explosion at a pesticide plant in West Virginia killed two workers. That was bad enough. But since then, the accident has become a troubling example of what can happen when national security concerns collide with the public's right to know about safety threats.
In this case, the public has a major interest in finding out as much as possible. The blast occurred in a part of Bayer CropScience's plant in Institute, W.Va., that's just 80 feet from an above-ground tank containing one of the deadliest industrial chemicals on earth — methyl isocyanate, or MIC.
That's the chemical that leaked from a sister facility in Bhopal, India, in 1984, killing thousands of people. Had this explosion punctured the MIC tank, the results could have been catastrophic. Some 300,000 people live within 25 miles of the plant, located about 7 miles northwest of Charleston.
Those people, and others who live near similar facilities, deserve to understand the risks they face and what plant owners are doing to mitigate them. Yet when the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board launched an investigation of the Institute blast, and scheduled a public hearing to disclose its preliminary findings, obstacles were thrown in its way.
Bayer declared that some of what the safety board planned to disclose was "sensitive security information" under a post-9/11 law meant to safeguard the docks at chemical plants. Though the accident occurred atanother part of the 400-acre site, the Coast Guard agreed with Bayer that it had security jurisdiction over the entire plant. Anything the safety board planned to divulge to the public would have to be cleared first by the Coast Guard.
The safety board canceled its first hearing while it worked out what it could say. Eventually, the agency agreed to withhold just one fact: what time of day chemicals are transferred at the plant, which could conceivably give terrorists information about when to strike. The public hearing has been rescheduled for next Thursday, two days after a congressional hearing into the accident.
Though the safety board and the Coast Guard have come to terms for now, the episode is a worrisome demonstration of how easy it is for a company to overwhelm a small agency — the chemical safety board has 36 employees — by burying it with paperwork and making broad national security claims.
Like the National Transportation Safety Board, the chemical safety board has no regulatory authority, and public pressure is often the only tool it has to force companies to change dangerous practices. That makes it crucial for the safety board to be able to make its investigations and recommendations public.
To be sure, national security is a legitimate concern, and chemical plants are an inviting target. But reflexively invoking secrecy, in the name of thwarting al-Qaeda, risks going too far and could allow companies to get away with shoddy safety procedures. The blunt truth is that neighbors are more likely to die in industrial accidents than terrorist attacks. Policy should be set accordingly.
http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2009/04/security-smokescreen-hinders-chemical-plant-inquiry.html

The country stood up yesterday on tax day, and said enough is enough. I hope it does not end here, though.
CNBC Asks Santelli to React to Tea Parties: 'I'm Pretty Proud of This'
Chicago Mercantile Exchange floor reporter and taxpayer tea party revolt inspiration calls movement 'about as American as it gets.'
By Jeff Poor
Business & Media Institute
4/15/2009 9:25:04 AM
While Fox News has celebrated the Taxpayer Tea Party rallies and MSNBC has denigrated them, the impetus of the movement – CNBC and specifically Rick Santelli, its inspiration – had been conspicuously quiet about it.
But on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” April 15, co-host Joe Kernen asked Santelli what he thought of being a “cultural phenomenon.” That was the same show Santelli famously called out President Barack Obama for the unfairness of his housing bailout proposal on Feb. 19.
“A lot of articles about these tea parties,” Kernen said. “They all have your name in them, like you caused it. Are you actually attending any or are you just sort of got the idea going initially? What do you think? I mean, you’re like a cultural phenomenon at this point.”
Santelli didn’t shy away. He called the rallies American and said he was proud of what he inspired.
“I don’t know about cultural phenomenon, but I’ll tell you what,” Santelli said. “I think that this tea party phenomenon is steeped in American culture and steeped in American notion to get involved with what’s going on with our government. I haven’t organized. I’m going to have to work to pay my taxes, so I’m not going to be able to get away today. But, I have to tell you – I’m pretty proud of this.
He also said despite the claims from others in the media, including people at CNBC’s sister network MSNBC, calling the movement “Astroturf,” Santelli declared it a grassroots movement.
“I think from a grassroots standpoint, I’m sure some of the media out there is not going to peg it that way, but isn’t it about as American as it gets – for people to roll their strollers and make their signs and go voice their opinion about the direction of the country?” Santelli said. “Good, bad or indifferent – that’s a great thing. There’s not a lot of countries, of course, that afford their people that, that type of right. It’s a great thing.”
Kernen warned some may try to capitalize off the phenomenon he inspired.
“Just be careful, you may have some self-righteous type go off on a populist rant about your populist rant,” Kernen added.
However, Santelli told Kernen inciting mobs and pitchforks wasn’t part of his playbook.
“Well, you know, populist rant – mobs, pitchforks, that’s the vocabulary I’m certainly not using,” Santelli responded. “But, I’m sure it’ll be out there nonetheless.”
http://www.businessandmedia.org/articles/2009/20090415092104.aspx

Somali pirates vow to hunt down, kill Americans
MOMBASA, Kenya (AP) - Somali pirates vowed to hunt down American ships and kill their sailors and French forces detained 11 other brigands in a high-seas raid as tensions ratcheted up Wednesday off Africa's volatile eastern coast.
Pirates fired grenades and automatic weapons at an American freighter loaded with food aid but the ship escaped and was heading to Kenya under U.S. Navy guard.
The Liberty Sun's American crew successfully blockaded themselves inside the engine room—the same tactic that the Maersk Alabama crew used to thwart last week's attack on their ship. They were not injured in the attack Tuesday night but the vessel sustained some damage, owner Liberty Maritime Corp. said.
One of the pirates whose gang attacked the Liberty Sun said Wednesday his group was specifically targeting American ships and sailors.
"We will seek out the Americans and if we capture them we will slaughter them," said a 25-year-old pirate based in the Somali port of Harardhere who gave only his first name, Ismail.
"We will target their ships because we know their flags. Last night, an American-flagged ship escaped us by a whisker. We have showered them with rocket-propelled grenades," boasted Ismail, who did not take part in the attack.
The French forces launched an early morning attack on a pirate "mother ship" after spotting the boat Tuesday with a surveillance helicopter and observing the pirates overnight.
A "mother ship" is usually a seized foreign vessel that pirates use to transport speedboats far out to sea and resupply them as they plot their attacks. The ship was intercepted 550 miles (900 kilometers) east of the Kenyan city of Mombasa.
The French Defense Ministry said the raid thwarted the sea bandits' planned attack on the Liberian cargo ship Safmarine Asia. The detained pirates were being held on the Nivose, a French frigate among the international fleet trying to protect shipping in the Gulf of Aden.
The attack on the Liberty Sun foiled the reunion between the American sea captain rescued by Navy snipers and the 19-man crew of the Maersk Alabama who he saved with his heroism.
Capt. Richard Phillips had planned to meet his crew in Mombasa and fly home with them Wednesday, but he was stuck on the USS Bainbridge when it was diverted to help the Liberty Sun. The crew left without him, flying to Andrews Air Force base in Maryland in a chartered plane.
Despite President Barack Obama's vow to take action against the rise in banditry and the deaths of five pirates in French and U.S. hostage rescues, brigands seized four vessels and more than 75 hostages since Sunday's dramatic rescue of Phillips.
That brought the total number of sailors being held by Somali pirates to over 300 on 16 different ships—a distinct surge in the number of captives over the last few days.
Pirates can extort $1 million or more for each ship and crew seized off the Horn of Africa—and Kenya estimates they raked in $150 million last year.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D97J00JG1&show_article=1

Another man-bites-python story
A Kenyan man who was dragged up a tree by a python fought back for more than an hour by biting the serpent before he could summon help with his cell phone, The Daily Nation reports.
The Kenyan national newspaper says Ben Nyaumbe, a farm manager, was at work when the python, apparently hunting for goats, struck.
"I stepped on a spongy thing on the ground and suddenly my leg was entangled with the body of a huge python," he told The Nation.
As it coiled around his body, Nyaumbe took desperate measures: “I had to bite it."
The python then dragged him up a tree, but Nayaumbe says that after about an hour, the snake relaxed long enough for him to reach his mobile phone and call for help. After police arrived, Nyaumbe smothered the snake's head with his shirt while rescuers tied a rope around its body and pulled.
"We both came down, landing with a thud," said Nyaumbe, who suffered torn and bruised lips.
But not everyone jumped right in, he tells The Nation. "The snake was hissing so much they all got so scared," Nyaumbe says. "One officer remained in the car, scared out of his skin.”
The python? It was stuffed into three sacks and taken to a nearby sanctuary, but by the next day had slithered away.
http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2009/04/another-man-bites-python-story.html