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Edited on Mon Oct-15-07 08:51 AM by Caro
Morning headlines brought to you by Carolyn Kay MakeThemAccountable.com Top StoryGreenhouse gas and war: How they are related
Paris (AFP) Oct 14, 2007 - How can the Nobel Peace Prize -- intended for those who labour for "fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding of peace congresses" -- be awarded for work on climate change?... The thinking is this: if greenhouse-gas emissions are unchecked, they could so damage Earth's climate system that fragile economies could be pushed over the edge through crop failure, flooding, storm damage and rising seas… Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, New York, cites the war in Sudan's Darfur as an example where climate change has already driven a badly-stressed region over the brink. Dubya’s World
The WorldGore's Nobel Win Greeted With Cheers by Europeans
LONDON, Oct. 12 -- News of Al Gore's Nobel Peace Prize was received with delight Monday across Europe, where President Bush is deeply unpopular, climate change is generally accepted as undisputed fact and the former vice president is widely seen as a welcome anti-Bush.
Insurgent groups condemn al-Qaida tactics
In a development experts call a significant shift, Iraqi insurgent groups are speaking out against al-Qaida and its brutally violent tactics.
An Internet Jihad Sells Extremism to Viewers in the U.S.
A growing constellation of apparently independent operators is broadcasting the message of Al Qaeda and other groups, translated into English and aimed for a Western audience online.
Israel to resume dig near Temple Mount
JERUSALEM - Israel will resume archaeological excavations near a Jerusalem holy site that has often been a flashpoint for violence, Israeli officials said Sunday. The decision drew Palestinian charges that Israel is trying to scuttle next month's U.S.-sponsored peace conference.
Russia divulges Putin assassination plot
MOSCOW - Russian President Vladimir Putin has been told about a plot to assassinate him during a visit to Iran this week, a Kremlin spokeswoman said Sunday.
South Korea denies paying Taliban ransom for hostages
SEOUL (AFP) - South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun's office denied a report that Seoul paid Taliban militants a ransom of 10 million dollars in exchange for the release of aid workers held hostage in Afghanistan.
I’d deny it, too.—Caro
China's Hu offers Taiwan talks for peace
BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese President Hu Jintao offered on Monday to enter into negotiations with Taiwan to reach a peace agreement in an overture to the self-ruled island which China claims as its own.
Hu promises more open China in future
BEIJING - Chinese Communist Party leader Hu Jintao pledged Monday to make the government more open, responsive and law-abiding while moderating the juggernaut economy to produce more balanced and environmentally sound growth.
Howard lures Australian voters with tax promise
CANBERRA (Reuters) - Australian Prime Minister John Howard, facing crushing defeat at a November election, promised A$34 billion ($30 billion) in tax cuts on Monday if returned by voters as he fired the first shots in a tough six-week campaign.
Sound familiar?—Caro
Argentine first lady poised to win presidency
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — With two weeks left until Argentines choose a new president, first lady Sen. Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner is cruising to a historic victory, even though she's revealed little about who she is or what she'd do once in office… Many here credit (her husband) with rescuing the country from an economic crisis that sank nearly 60 percent of the population into poverty in 2002 and shrank the economy by 20 percent. Since his 2003 election, the economy has grown by about 8 percent every year and the poverty rate has dropped to about 25 percent.
Kinda like Hill following Bill—with eight years of misery in between.—Caro The NationCongress must approve U.S. attack vs Iran: Pelosi
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush must seek congressional approval before taking any military action in Iran, unless Tehran attacks the United States first, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Sunday.
“Who cares what you think?” – George W. Bush, July 4, 2001—Caro
Rice worried by Putin's broad powers
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Saturday… "I think there is too much concentration of power in the Kremlin. I have told the Russians that. Everybody has doubts about the full independence of the judiciary. There are clearly questions about the independence of the electronic media and there are, I think, questions about the strength of the Duma," … referring to the Russian parliament.
Who knew that our secretary of state was a satirist.—Caro
Pentagon, FBI misusing secret info requests: ACLU
WASHINGTON (AFP) - The Pentagon has misled Congress and the US public by conniving with the FBI to obtain hundreds of financial, telephone and Internet records without court approval, civil-rights campaigners said Sunday.
Qwest CEO Not Alone in Alleging NSA Started Domestic Phone Record Program 7 Months Before 9/11
Startling statements from former Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio's defense documents alleging the National Security Agency began building a massive call records database seven months before 9/11 aren't the only accusations that the controversial program predated the attacks of 9/11… in May 2006, a lawsuit filed against Verizon for allegedly turning over call records to the NSA alleged that AT&T began building a spying facility for the NSA just days after President Bush was inaugurated.
White House Is Leaning on Interim Appointments
With only 15 months left in office, President Bush has left whole agencies of the executive branch to be run largely by acting or interim appointees — jobs that would normally be filled by people whose nominations would have been reviewed and confirmed by the Senate. In many cases, there is no obvious sign of movement at the White House to find permanent nominees, suggesting that many important jobs will not be filled by Senate-confirmed officials for the remainder of the Bush administration.
FCC: Offer new options to minorities
WASHINGTON - The nation's chief telecommunications regulator wants to take advantage of the television industry's transition to digital broadcasting to make channels available to small businesses that may be owned by minority programmers.
New FDA research center rife with risks
WASHINGTON - The Food and Drug Administration is moving with unprecedented speed to launch a drug research center to be paid for by companies it regulates.
Bush raps Democrats on spending bills
CRAWFORD, Tex. - President Bush never picked a spending fight when his party ran Congress, but with Democrats now in charge of the budget, he's dug in for a challenge.
Armenia genocide measure to advance
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The top Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives said on Sunday she intends to press ahead on a resolution calling the 1915 massacre of Armenians by Ottoman Turks genocide, despite White House concerns it will damage relations with Turkey, a supporter of the Iraq war.
Dems vow new bill if S-chip veto stands
WASHINGTON - House Democratic leaders said Sunday they were working to gather votes to override a veto on a popular children's health program, but pledged to find a way to cover millions without insurance should their effort fail.
Over and over again the Democrats have promised to fight, and then have caved. So I’ll just have to see on this one.—Caro
The Pill: Impact on Maternal Characteristics
(W)e find that early pill access led to an increase in the share of children whose mothers were married, college-(e)ducated, and had professional occupations.
One might draw the conclusion that contraception enables better lives for the children who are born, not to mention their mothers.—Caro
Their own private S&Ls (by Paul Krugman)
Floyd Norris had an interesting piece on Friday on the effects of paying executives largely in stock options… (T)he research he describes basically says that big options grants give CEOs the same incentives that deregulation plus deposit insurance gave S&Ls in the 1980s… (M)any S&L owners started deliberately taking bad risks… And why not? It was heads they win, tails the taxpayers lose… And there was also an explosion of outright fraud. What should have been a $15 billion problem quickly mushroomed into $150 billion.
As I recall, we taxpayers ended up paying half a trillion dollars for that fiasco.—Caro MediaPermanent link to MTA daily media news
Group Plans to Provide Investigative Journalism
As struggling newspapers across the country cut back on investigative reporting, a new kind of journalism venture is hoping to fill the gap. Paul E. Steiger, who was the top editor of The Wall Street Journal for 16 years, and a pair of wealthy Californians are assembling a group of investigative journalists who will give away their work to media outlets. The nonprofit group, called Pro Publica, will pitch each project to a newspaper or magazine (and occasionally to other media) where the group hopes the work will make the strongest impression. The plan is to do long-term projects, uncovering misdeeds in government, business and organizations.
What do you want to bet that it will be mostly Democrats and friends of Democrats “investigated” by this group? And why is it that progressives won’t fund something similar?—Caro
I Am an Op-Ed Columnist (And So Can You!) (by Stephen Colbert)
I’d like to thank Maureen Dowd for permitting/begging me to write her column today. As I type this, she’s watching from an overstuffed divan, petting her prize Abyssinian and sipping a Dirty Cosmotinijito. Which reminds me: Before I get started, I have to take care of one other bit of business: Bad things are happening in countries you shouldn’t have to think about. It’s all George Bush’s fault, the vice president is Satan, and God is gay. There. Now I’ve written Frank Rich’s column too.
Juan Williams: Kristol Is Pushing For ‘The Next World War’
On Fox News Sunday, right-wing pundit Bill Kristol continued to beat the war drums for a strike against Iran. “I hope the administration is willing to do what it takes to back Iran off,” he said, adding that “we may need to do stuff across the border.” NPR’s Mara Liasson claimed that the Bush administration could politically “withstand” an attack against Iran, and that a bombing raid inside Iran would not count as “an all-out war.” NPR’s Juan Williams noted that Liasson and Kristol were in effect condoning “the next world war”.
Good going, Juan. Up to now, you’ve been willing to go along with whatever craziness the neocons have come up with. Click through to watch the video.—Caro
Sam Donaldson blasts George Will’s climate denial.
Today on ABC This Week’s roundtable, right-wing columnist George Will mocked the Nobel Peace committee for awarding Al Gore the Peace Prize, saying that all Gore does is engage in “hyperbole.” Will continued to argue that there is no “planetary crisis,” until Sam Donaldson of ABC News interrupted him: “Now if you and Sen. Inhofe want to continue to stick your heads in the sand, I’m going to make it out. I’m old enough and I’ll will probably get out of here before the earth collapses. But I have grandchildren, George.”
Click through to watch the video.—Caro
About self-righteousness and Al Gore (by James Fallows)
I am old enough to remember, from my school years, the disdainful reaction in my home town to the news that Martin Luther King had won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. The reaction was, of course, racial at its root… But the stated form of the objection concerned not King's race but his obnoxiousness as a man. He was a windbag. He was pompous and self-dramatizing, He was holier than thou. Plus, he had started getting involved where he didn't belong, in raising questions about the Vietnam War… I think something similar will be true regarding Gore.
Gore Derangement Syndrome (by Paul Krugman)
On the day after Al Gore shared the Nobel Peace Prize, The Wall Street Journal’s editors couldn’t even bring themselves to mention Mr. Gore’s name. Instead, they devoted their editorial to a long list of people they thought deserved the prize more. And at National Review Online, Iain Murray suggested that the prize should have been shared with “that well-known peace campaigner Osama bin Laden, who implicitly endorsed Gore’s stance.” You see, bin Laden once said something about climate change — therefore, anyone who talks about climate change is a friend of the terrorists... (T)he smear campaign has failed. (Gore has) taken everything they could throw at him, and emerged more respected, and more credible, than ever. And it drives (right wingers) crazy.
Coulter's anti-Semitic comment too dangerous to ignore (by Tim Rutten)
It is fair to say that the rails leading to Auschwitz were greased by precisely the opinion (Ann) Coulter expressed on American television this week. It's a scandal that in this pluralist nation it falls to the voices of organized Jewry to make this case, because it is a case whose outcome is of the greatest consequence to us all. For too long we've pretended that the brutal political rhetoric that now characterizes our partisan politics can be quarantined, that it won't inevitably leach over into every other aspect of our lives. In fact, it's doing just that.
Lindsey Graham throws Lt. Gen. Sanchez under the Bus: “…his criticism is a bit astounding to me given his role in the war itself.”
Let the GOP attacks begin! Sen. Lindsey Graham wasted no time reminding the American people how awful retired General Sanchez’ tenure was in Iraq. He joined Blitzer this morning and commented about the General after he came out and criticized the Iraq war policy. The key phrase you’ll hear is that they appreciate his service, but….I wonder if Graham violated the Cornyn (anti-MoveOn) amendment?
Even Right-Wing Wall Street Journal Edit Page Says Wingnut Assault On SCHIP Family Is Bogus
You'd think this would be chastening to the wingnuts who are tormenting the family of SCHIP poster kid Graeme Frost. But of course it isn't, because nothing ever is… (E)ven the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial page, which opposes the SCHIP expansion, has come out with a new opinion piece denouncing the wingers as an "Internet mob" that is hopelessly wrong on the facts. WSJ says the false winger attacks are actually helping the Dems.
The latest they’re saying is that the Frosts have to be rich because their wedding announcement appeared in The New York Times.
New Rules: The Nonsense of “Lapelgate”
Bill Maher goes off on the sheer ridiculousness of the right-wing’s faux outrage over Obama’s flag-less lapel, and the braindead media that perpetuates the non-scandal scandal. This is typical press hypocrisy. They say they want someone who doesn’t give pat political answers, but when they get one, they call him a loser. They say they don’t want safe robots like Hillary, but they create conditions where only that species can survive.
Click through to watch the video.—Caro
Untraceable e-mails spread Obama rumor
When Fox News aired a report in January claiming that Sen. Barack Obama had been educated at a radical Muslim madrassa, his campaign beat the story back — hard — with the candidate himself going on television to call it “ludicrous” and a “smear.”… But rather than vanish, the whispered smear campaign appears to have gone underground, and in its purest form: Obama himself, according to a pair of widely circulated anonymous e-mails, is a Muslim.
The soldier son of talk radio relationship (thanks to John Aravosis at AMERICAblog, who was one of the people behind the Stop Dr. Laura campaign, which succeeded in having her television show canceled)
The soldier son of talk radio relationship counselor Laura Schlessinger is under investigation for a graphic personal Web page that one Army official has called "repulsive." The MySpace page, publicly available until Friday when it disappeared from the Internet, included cartoon depictions of rape, murder, torture and child molestation; photographs of soldiers with guns in their mouths; a photograph of a bound and blindfolded detainee captioned "My Sweet Little Habib"; accounts of illicit drug use; and a blog entry headlined by a series of obscenities and racial epithets.
Remember, Dr. Laura’s mother keeled over dead in her apartment and wasn’t discovered for months. How’s that for family values?—Caro Technology & ScienceMen imprisoned for pornographic spam
PHOENIX - Two men who sent millions of unsolicited pornographic e-mails have been sentenced to more than five years in federal prison as part of the first prosecution under a federal anti-spam law, U.S. Department of Justice officials said Friday.
I’m glad they were stopped, and it’s true that the porn is almost completely gone from my inbox. That’s a good thing, even if I suspect this move by DoJ was to please religious conservatives more than anyone else. Now, will someone please tell the feds that pharmaceutical companies are being harmed by most of —Carothe spam messages I still get?
You Might Wear Computing's Next Wave
BOSTON (AP) - From clothes riddled with sensors to name tags that detect our moods, computing's next wave could unleash small devices that increasingly augment everyday activities with digital intelligence.
Google's GPhone strategy could keep user costs low
Google's (GOOG)widely anticipated and top secret GPhone mobile phone project could trump Apple's (APPL) glitzy iPhone by going low cost and low tech, tech analysts say.
Feds: Cell Phones Safe From Telemarketers
An e-mail warning consumers that cell phone numbers will soon be released to telemarketers is making the rounds again, and government officials have a key detail they'd like to add: it's totally bogus.
Sex and marriage with robots? It could happen
Humans could marry robots within the century. And consummate those vows.
Puh-leeeeeeeeze. Sounds like another one of those crazed right-wing nightmares that they’ll use as an excuse to keep gays from marrying each other.—Caro
Genes influence people's choices in economics game
Traditionally, social scientists have been quite hesitant to acknowledge a role for genes in explaining economic behavior. But a study by David Cesarini, a Ph.D. student in MIT's Department of Economics, and by colleagues in Sweden indicates that there is a genetic component to people's perception of what is fair and what is unfair.
Genes found that slow both aging and cancer
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Researchers have identified a batch of genes that not only prevent cancer but slow the aging process in worms, and say they are now looking to see if the genes have the same properties in humans.
U.S. maternal death rate higher than Europe's: report
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has a sharply higher rate of women dying during or just after pregnancy than European countries, even some relatively poor countries such as Macedonia and Bosnia, according to the first estimates in five years on maternal deaths worldwide.
Drug Makers Withdraw Cough, Cold Meds for Infants
Move comes as U.S. regulators scrutinize safety of products linked to dozens of deaths
Home Spray Cleaners Could Raise Asthma Risk
Spritzing just once a week boosted odds by 50%, study found
Swarm Theory
A single ant or bee isn't smart, but their colonies are. The study of swarm intelligence is providing insights that can help humans manage complex systems, from truck routing to military robots.
85 million-year-old dinosaur skull found in Japan
TOKYO (Reuters) - An 85 million-year-old dinosaur skull has been found in southwestern Japan, one of the oldest discoveries of its kind in the country, the Kyodo news agency said on Saturday.
New Portrait Made of Pluto and its Moons
New images of Pluto and its moons are among the sharpest ever made, astronomers announced today. EnvironmentGore's Nobel win should boost alternative energy
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The winning of the Nobel Peace Prize by Al Gore and the U.N. climate panel on Friday should give a push to alternative energy technologies that are already enjoying their best year ever, experts said. The prize could spur change in the energy industry that coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear power dominate.
Despite Gore's Nobel Climate Not Top Issue
Al Gore has brought a lot of attention to global climate change, but in the public's mind, it still lags far behind such issues as the war in Iraq and health care in importance.
This is one of the right-wing talking points. Climate change can’t be important because not enough people list it as a top issue. But, of course, those same right wingers have spent decades convincing people not to be concerned about climate change. Quite a tautology, that.—Caro
Report urges U.S. to pursue space-based solar power
A Pentagon-chartered report urges the United States to take the lead in developing space platforms capable of capturing sunlight and beaming electrical power to Earth.
Even as economy lags, corporate 'green' push may advance
New York - US companies from General Electric to Wal-Mart have spent the past several years announcing initiatives on everything from efficient buildings to alternative energy to leading-edge technologies to combat global warming. Now, with the economy slowing, some of those projects look iffy.
A slowing economy could be the best reason for corporations to push their green agendas. They’d be helping to stimulate the economy in a whole new arena, which will help their own businesses in the long term.—Caro For more headlines, visit MakeThemAccountable.com. |
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