Latvia Un-Earths Tetrapod Skull From 365 Million Years Ago

The 365 million-year-old fossil skull, shoulders and part of the pelvis of the water-dweller, Ventastega curonica, were found in Latvia, researchers report in a study published in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. Even though Ventastega is likely an evolutionary dead-end, the finding sheds new details on the evolutionary transition from fish to tetrapods. Tetrapods are animals with four limbs and include such descendants as amphibians, birds and mammals.

Harsh Interrogations and the CIA

A senior CIA lawyer advised Pentagon officials about the use of harsh interrogation techniques on detainees at Guantanamo Bay in a meeting in late 2002, defending waterboarding and other methods as permissible despite U.S. and international laws banning torture, according to documents released yesterday by congressional investigators.

Torture "is basically subject to perception," CIA counterterrorism lawyer Jonathan Fredman told a group of military and intelligence officials gathered at the U.S.-run detention camp in Cuba on Oct. 2, 2002, according to minutes of the meeting. "If the detainee dies, you're doing it wrong."

The document, one of two dozen released by a Senate panel investigating how Pentagon officials developed the controversial interrogation program introduced at Guantanamo Bay in late 2002, suggests a larger CIA role in advising Defense Department interrogators than was previously known. By the time of the meeting, the CIA already had used waterboarding, which simulates drowning, on at least one terrorism suspect and was holding high-level al-Qaeda detainees in secret prisons overseas -- actions that Bush administration lawyers had approved.

Konami's METAL GEAR Training Missions

An Egyptian Asks 'Will America Really Elect A Black Man Of Muslim Descent?'

"Obama? Do you think they will let him win?” (It’s always “let him win” not just “win.”)

It would not be an exaggeration to say that the Democrats’ nomination of Obama as their candidate for president has done more to improve America’s image abroad — an image dented by the Iraq war, President Bush’s invocation of a post-9/11 “crusade,” Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo Bay and the xenophobic opposition to Dubai Ports World managing U.S. harbors — than the entire Bush public diplomacy effort for seven years.

Of course, Egyptians still have their grievances with America, and will in the future no matter who is president — and we’ve got a few grievances with them, too. But every once in a while, America does something so radical, so out of the ordinary — something that old, encrusted, traditional societies like those in the Middle East could simply never imagine — that it revives America’s revolutionary “brand” overseas in a way that no diplomat could have designed or planned.

'Blowing the Whistle' in Japan

TOKYO — A car company that hid dangerous flaws to avoid embarrassing recalls. A meat processor that sold ground pig hearts as beef. A fancy restaurant chain that served customers leftover sashimi from other diners.

In recent years, Japan’s faith in its corporate establishment has been shaken by a series of scandals in which companies of all sizes have been caught in frauds ranging from the merely nauseating to the patently dangerous. More shocking than the misdeeds is the fact that employees are blowing the whistle.

A decade ago, corporate whistle-blowing was almost unheard-of in Japan. A person’s place of employment was part of his identity, and unflinching company loyalty was the highest of virtues. But the unquestioningly obedient salaryman is becoming a relic, the result of a broader transformation of Japan and the global economy.

Stabbing Rampage in Tokyo Leaves 7 Dead

TOKYO - A Japanese man rammed a truck into a crowd of shoppers, jumped out and went on a stabbing spree in Tokyo's top electronics district Sunday, killing at least seven people and wounding 10 others.

The deadly lunchtime assault paralyzed the Akihabara neighborhood, which is wildly popular among the country's cyber-wise youth. The killings were the latest in a series of grisly knifings that have stoked fears of rising crime in Japan.

A 25-year-old man, Tomohiro Kato, was apprehended in the attack.

'I Believe' License Plate Offered In South Carolina At Cost

South Carolina is to offer an "I Believe" license plate to drivers with a cross in front of a stained glass window, essentially advertising the religious bent of the driver. Why anyone would sue South Carolina for allowing an individual to select this plate is beyond me. For 70 dollars, you can show your support for the arts, the Boy Scouts, teachers, etc. No one has sued South Carolina saying that this is unconstitutional!

'Things About America I Didn't Know While Lived There'

Check this list out! Some eye-opening, intriguing information about us (i.e. the US) and other places in the world (i.e. Japan).

US Stock Market Falls 400 Points

NEIL KING JR. writes:

Crude oil notched its largest price jump ever on Friday, leaping nearly $11 to more than $138 a barrel, on news of a weakening dollar and continued jitters over the reliability of world supplies.

The surge, coming just as many analysts thought oil prices were set to fall, sent stocks plunging amid fears that the U.S. economy could be in for a combined bout of inflation and slow growth. The skyrocketing price of oil, now up more than 44% so far this year, is battering the airline and auto industries and causing consumers to cut back on driving and nonessential spending.

Going After The Women's Vote

NY Times reports:

With Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s ending her campaign for the Democratic nomination, the presumptive nominees are moving to claim her followers, especially her signature bloc, the millions of women who cast primary votes for her.

'Quake' Lake in China Drains; Orphans Remain

The quake centered in Sichuan province killed 69,127 people, with 17,918 still missing, according to the latest government figures.

The provincial government has estimated about 7,000 of the victims were children with no siblings. The National Population and Family Planning Commission will send a medical team to the quake zone to perform reverse sterilization operations on couples that want to have another child, Xinhua reported.

China's family planning policies restrict most couples to one child, although rules allow for another baby if their child is killed, severely injured or disabled.

Authorities said they had recorded 4,700 unclaimed children whose parents presumably died in the quake. But Civil Affairs Ministry official Zhang Shifeng said the final number of orphans was expected to be about 1,000 to 2,000, as children were gradually handed over to members of their extended families.

Zhang said parents from around China were showing huge interest in adopting quake orphans, with 10,000 families registering for adoption in one province alone. He indicated the ministry could give priority to parents who (lost) children in the quake.

Barack Obama Takes Democratic Party Nomination

MSNBC reports:

Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois claimed the Democratic presidential nomination Tuesday night, NBC News projected based on its tally of convention delegates.

By doing so, he shattered a barrier more than two centuries old to become the first black candidate ever nominated by a major political party for the nation’s highest office.

Mirena: Catering to Men, Mucking with Women

A new drug, Mirena is being marketed to married women (or to women 'in a stable relationships') as a means to decrease the number of normal menstrual cycles during the years of childbirth.

Drug researchers and manufacturers continue to alter a woman's body for the convenience, ultimately it seems, of men. What drug manufacturer or researcher is looking for a pill designed to decrease the number of sperm a man produces or to decrease the quality of a man's sperm so that impregnation is less likely or even impossible? We continue to muck with a woman's physiology without any concern at all for the long-term consequences to her health and well-being. We also continue to cater to men.

Monkeys Learn to Control Mechanical Arm Via Sensors Implanted in Brain

BENEDICT CAREY reports: Two monkeys with tiny sensors in their brains have learned to control a mechanical arm with just their thoughts, using it to reach for and grab food and even to adjust for the size and stickiness of morsels when necessary, scientists reported on Wednesday. The report, released online by the journal Nature
(i.e. Cortical Control of a Prosthetic Arm for Self-Feeding (Nature), is the most striking demonstration to date of brain-machine interface technology.

United Nations Looks Closely at Iran's Nuclear Program

After challenging Iran’s atomic efforts with everything from diplomatic crusades to shows of military force, the Americans backed off late last year, based on a new intelligence finding that Tehran had suspended work in late 2003 on the design of nuclear arms. Now, in the waning days of President Bush’s second term, it would be difficult — politically, diplomatically and militarily— for them to try to press for a new confrontation.

But early this year, Washington also turned over a trove of its own intelligence to the atomic investigators in Vienna, who put it together with clues gathered from many foreign capitals and findings from their own long years of inquiries.

On the basis of that combination of new and old evidence, over the last few months, the inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency have come to worry that Iran — before suspending its work nearly five years ago — may have made real progress toward designing a deadly weapon.

Barack Obama Says 'Good-bye' To Long-Time Trinity Church Membership

My question is: Didn't Mr. Obama hear any of this abhorrent rhetoric from the pulpit in the 20 years he and Mrs. Obama attended Trinity? Surely, he was aware of the views of his pastor prior to this election year? Why did he tolerate it then? Or did he? I think this is the more important question - are we, as members of a church, accountable for the beliefs of our pastors?

'Half-Votes' Given to Michigan and Florida Delegates in Compromise

Democratic Party leaders agreed Saturday seat Michigan and Florida delegates with half votes into this summer's convention with a compromise that left Barack Obama on the verge of the nomination but riled Hillary Rodham Clinton backers who threatened to fight to the August convention.

'The Worst Is Over': U.S. Economy

Barton Biggs, 75 years old, believes the worst is over for the economy and for the stock market. While the market is likely to move sideways for the rest of 2008, he says there will be no recession -- and with the remaining poisons purged from the system, stocks should move upward next year.

He left Morgan Stanley in 2003 to start a hedge fund, Traxis Partners LLP, where he is a managing partner. Traxis has $1.7 billion under management. It's down 4% so far this year after posting a 25% gain last year. Mr. Biggs, his hair still reddish, is an intense fellow who follows the world from the modernistic Traxis office towering over New York's Rockefeller Center.

A creative-writing major at Yale, Mr. Biggs peppered his investor notes at Morgan Stanley with literary references from Shakespeare and other authors. Mr. Biggs's latest book, "Wealth, War and Wisdom," studies the rise and fall of international markets from 1935 through 1945, and focuses on the role of public psychology in driving market performance.

Angelina and Brad Deny Twins' Births in France

Quake Lakes in China

Divers Stranded Off Great Barrier Reef Tell All

Guest Blogger On 'Indiana Jones' And That Crystal Skull

It is odd that Putin has taken issue with the fourth Indiana Jones film, with its Communists as bad guys flick. It's obviously that although the film has updated the antagonists from Nazis to the Red Menace, the film's heart isn't in it.

For whatever reason, the movie is not interested in showing anything truly frightening about Communism. The flick is too focused on a US-centric viewpoint, concerned almost exclusively with the effect Cold War paranoia had on American society. But unfortunately it doesn't put this fear in context. We see protests against the Reds on a college campus, but we don't hear anything about the formation of the Warsaw Pact (in fact the film omits the very existence of the countries that were Soviet satellites.

Apparently the Reds are a bunch of Russians, one Ukrainian woman and a British turncoat). We see academic intimidation, but the fact the Soviets had "The Bomb" during this time period is also omitted (it is actually implied that only the US had atomic bombs). However the film can't quite bring itself to condemn McCarthyism with anything other than light tones.

The Nazis in Raiders had Toht the vile Gestapo agent, but the Communists have no political officers in their ranks. There is no spying within the Soviet ranks, no fear of surveillance. The Russian soldiers are faceless grunts, and not even stereotypically evil ones at that. There is no corruption or ideological rigidity or group-think constraining their combat progress.

The film cannot bring itself to really show even a resemblance of reality within the Soviet forces, but neither can it exaggerate them to Cold War-era levels. The movie seems desperate to prove it is not Cold War right-wing propaganda, that this film can't be used by the Right to showcase the negatives of Communism, as if the Right was the only critic of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union's own treatment of dissident academics is omitted, there are no dissenting Soviet citizens in this movie who want out. Every Red is a happy little minion of Stalin-ville. The villainess seems untouched by any past hardship, which is amazingly unlikely due to Stalin's paranoia. Surely some people she cared about were mistreated in the past, she doesn't seem heartless enough.

Cate Blanchett's villain is a cipher: she's got medals aplenty from Stalin, but she's not a believer. Where is the indoctrination? The ideology? For Communists, they seem remarkable devoid of any interest in the working class. They don't even cloak their true interests in Marxist ideology, in fact Marx is omitted. Unlike Last Crusade, there are no scenes within the Sovet Union, let alone the Warsaw Pact. We see nothing of life behind the Iron Curtain, or any of the countries that were within The Second World.

The film dodges all the misery or even the visions that drove the Soviets during that time period. It is a Cold War-era movie without much in the way of conviction: it can point out McCarthyism on the most superficial of levels but it can't seriously condemn or explore it, nor can it even begin to speak ill of the Sovet Union for a movie that is supposedly old-fashioned "Indy against the Reds". Indiana Jones fights the Soviet Union in name only, these villains are faint shadows of what the Soviets were. Our hero doesn't even seriously speak ill of his Red opponents, and these are the people he is fighting. The Soviets don't even threaten to send him to the Gulag, or do anything ill to those he associated with! What nice people, heh. They probably sent enemies of the working class to summer camp.

And so it does a disservice to even the pulp history (which wouldn't even think twice about exaggerating Communism's danger) on which Indiana Jones is inspired by, yet alone actual history. Indiana Jones would not mince words when talking about what was wrong with Communism or Cold War Paranoia, and neither should this movie. With all we do know about the Soviet world, you would think we'd depict it with at least a bit more historic accuracy than this whitewash.

Hollan M Kreil

Going Home: Ted Kennedy Diagnosed With Malignant Brain Tumor

NBC News, BOSTON - Sen. Edward M. Kennedy walked out of the hospital accompanied by family members on Wednesday, one day after being diagnosed with a cancerous brain tumor that experts say is almost certainly fatal.

A square bandage at the back of his head marked the spot where doctors performed a biopsy Monday that led them to diagnose him with malignant glioma.

The 76-year-old senator, the last son in a famed political family, was diagnosed with a malignant glioma in his left parietal lobe — which helps govern sensation, movement and language — after suffering a seizure in his home Saturday morning. Malignant gliomas are diagnosed in about 9,000 Americans a year.

Quake in China - Ian Williams Reporting

Graduation From College of Charleston

My son, Hollan, graduates from College of Charleston, Charleston, South Carolina!

Graduation From Earlham

My daughter, Kim, graduates from Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana!

Surviving Fall Into Strip Mine Pit

ALLENTOWN, Pa. - A man survived a 500-foot fall into a strip mine Friday, astounding rescuers who spent hours on a risky descent into the abyss to bring him back out.

Police said Nathan Bowman was trespassing on coal company property around 1 a.m. Friday when he slipped and fell into the Springdale Pit, an inactive mine about 700 feet deep, 3,000 feet long and 1,500 feet wide.

Bowman tumbled down a jagged slope and then free-fell several hundred feet, his descent broken by a rock ledge not far from the bottom of the pit.

Wall Street Rallies Up Fourth Straight Day

Earnings Relief Rallies Stocks
By Peter A. McKay

Stocks leapt as investors hailed both Citigroup's horrid but not as bad as expected earnings report and surprisingly strong results at bellwethers in industries away from Wall Street.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose for a fourth straight day, finishing up 228.87 points, or 1.8%, at a three-month high 12849.36, down 3.1% on the year. The blue-chip indicator was boosted by a 4.5% jump in its component Citigroup after the banking giant announced early Friday that it swung to a $5.11 billion first-quarter loss as it booked more than $13 billion in write-downs amid surging credit costs.

416 Children Taken By The State

The 416 children, ranging from infants to 17 years old, were removed from the communal ranch near Eldorado starting April 3, after authorities said they had received a phone call from a 16 year old girl saying she had a child and had been beaten and raped by her 50-year-old spiritual husband. During Thursday’s hearing, authorities admitted that they had not identified the girl among the children removed from the ranch.

Ms. Voss, the state investigator, testified that several girls said they knew the caller, who had identified herself as Sarah. But they were uncooperative under further questioning, Ms. Voss said.

The children were taken from the 1,691-acre Yearning for Zion ranch operated by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which long ago broke away from the mainstream Mormon Church.

The question facing Judge Walther is whether the children on the ranch were abused or whether they are at risk of being abused. Among the difficulties facing authorities was identifying which children were abused. And the judge might have to decide whether the community’s practice of under-age marriage meant the entire culture constituted a danger to children.

Not A Corporate Deer Hunting Retreat: Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints

The men in Western shirts and jeans who appeared in the west Texas town of Eldorado in 2003 said they were shopping for land to build a corporate hunting retreat. The 1,691-acre former exotic game ranch was just what they were looking for. Set amid rolling hills of rocky scrub dotted with mesquite trees, oil rigs and goat ranches, it was remote, and the land was cheap.

But the sheriff and other residents of Schleicher County soon discovered that their new neighbors had much more on their agenda than deer hunting. Leaders of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-day Saints (FLDS), a renegade sect that broke with mainstream Mormons (who banned polygamy in 1890), were under siege by authorities in Utah and Arizona. Their enclave of 10,000 based in the twin cities of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz., openly practiced "plural marriage"—their ticket to heaven, they believe—via clandestine ceremonies for "celestial" brides to circumvent bigamy laws.

Yet polygamy, though illegal, didn't spark the crackdown in recent years. Church members, including their prophet Warren Jeffs, were under investigation for marrying off girls as young as 13. Women and girls who fled the group, and boys pushed out or abandoned, told stories of forced marriages, incest and abuse. Some who left called it a destructive cult.