Category: In The News

‘It’s hard to believe it’s spring’

RGJ.com: 'It's hard to believe it's spring'-Alpine Meadows records most snow in 35 years
An unending series of March snowstorms pasted the Sierra in white, with one Lake Tahoe ski resort reporting more snowfall than during any other month over the last 35 years.At Alpine Meadows, the resort received more than 16 feet of snow at its base lodge since March 1. At Fallen Leaf Lake near South Lake Tahoe, for example, the snowpack went from 39 percent of average on March 1 to 166 percent on Wednesday, Barbato said.

Forecasts: Northeast Due for Big Hurricane

BREITBART.COM – Forecasts: Northeast Due for Big Hurricane
Meteorologists say conditions _ including warmer temperatures in the Atlantic Basin and cooler temperatures in the Pacific Ocean _ are ripe for the Northeast coast to be hit by a whopper of a hurricane this season.

Head of Arab League Pushes Nuke Programs

Head of Arab League Pushes Nuke Programs – Yahoo! News
KHARTOUM, Sudan – The head of the Arab League called on Arab states Tuesday to work toward “entering the nuclear club” by developing atomic energy

BERLIN (AFP) – Saudi Arabia is working secretly on a nuclear programme, with help from Pakistani experts, a German magazine reports in its latest edition, citing Western security sources.

This atavistic love of blood and death and, indeed, self-immolation in the name of God may not be new–medieval Europe had an abundance of millennial Christian sects–but until now it has never had the means to carry out its apocalyptic ends….If nothing is done, we face not proliferation but hyperproliferation.

Henry Kissinger said yesterday “ “We live in a period in which most of what we know from history is inapplicable or applicable in limited ways.”

Then he says, Asia today is like 19th C. Europe and the Middle East is like the 17th C. Then there’s globalization which both integrates economically and fragments politically. And somehow we need to synthesize this all in a way the public can understand.

NEW DELHI – Village elders ordered a Muslim man in eastern India to leave his wife after he accidentally divorced her in his sleep, a news report said Tuesday.

In the wake of the cartoon jihad and mosque-on-mosque violence in Iraq, most Americans now think Islam has more violent believers than any other faith. Yet many still view it as a “peaceful religion.”

Psychologists might call this cognitive dissonance — a state of mind where rational people essentially lie to themselves. But in this case, it’s understandable. In our politically correct culture, criticizing any religion, even one that plots our destruction, is still taboo. And no one wants to suggest the terrorists are driven by their holy text. Is Islam the only religion with a doctrine, theology and legal system that mandates warfare against unbelievers?

Chanting “God is Greatest” after the 71-to-36 vote, Hamas lawmakers hugged and kissed Ismail Haniyeh, their teary-eyed prime minister-designate who vowed to not to abandon the fight against Israel.

“The Koran is our constitution, Jihad is our way, and death for the sake of God is our highest aspiration,” Hamas lawmaker Hamed Bitawi said.”

To bolster its campaign, the Iranian government has one of the most extensive and sophisticated operations to censor and filter internet content of any country in the world — second only to China, Hopkins said.

It also is one of a growing number of Middle Eastern countries that rely on U.S. commercial software to do the filtering, according to a 2004 study by a group called the OpenNet Initiative

Bird Flu Defies Control Efforts

Los Angeles Times: Bird Flu Defies Control Efforts
The spread of avian influenza to at least 29 new countries in the last seven weeks — one of the biggest outbreaks of the virus since it emerged nine years ago — is prompting a sobering reassessment of the strategy that has guided efforts to contain the disease.

The speed of its migration, and the vast area it has infected, has forced scientists to concede there is little that can be done to stop its spread across the globe.

"We expected it to move, but not any of us thought it would move quite like this," said Dr. David Nabarro, the United Nations' coordinator on bird flu efforts.

U.S. Makes Seized Iraqi Documents Public

HoustonChronicle.com – U.S. Makes Seized Iraqi Documents Public
— The federal government is making public a huge trove of documents seized during the invasion of Iraq, posting them on the Internet in a step that is at once a nod to the Web's power and an admission that U.S. intelligence resources are overloaded.
The Web surfers have begun posting translations and comments, digging through the documents with gusto. The idea of the government turning over a massive database to volunteers is revolutionary _ and not only to them.

Terrorist 007, Exposed

Terrorist 007, Exposed
For almost two years, intelligence services around the world tried to uncover the identity of an Internet hacker who had become a key conduit for al-Qaeda. The savvy, English-speaking, presumably young webmaster taunted his pursuers, calling himself Irhabi — Terrorist — 007. He hacked into American university computers, propagandized for the Iraq insurgents led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and taught other online jihadists how to wield their computers for the cause.

Who owns the Internet? We have a map that shows you. |

CIO Blogs – Who owns the Internet? We have a map that shows you. |

What is this ball of colors? It is the North American Internet, or more specifically a map of just about every router on the North American backbone, (there are 134,855 of them for those who are counting). The colors represent who each router is registered to. Red is Verizon; blue AT&T; yellow Qwest; green is major backbone players like Level 3 and Sprint Nextel; black is the entire cable industry put together; and gray is everyone else

Advance and Retreat

TIME Europe Magazine: Advance and Retreat — Mar. 27, 2006

The headline last Friday in the French business newspaper Les Echos: “Is France ungovernable?” In countries where democracy is a recent innovation, street protests and the ballot box coexist as rival sources of legitimacy: People vote, but also demand the right to reverse the outcome later if they change their minds. Thailand and the Philippines both have been wracked by protests in recent weeks by people demanding that the leaders they elected go.

France is hardly a novice at democracy. But, forged by the Revolution of 1789 and their national myths, the French still embrace rebellion as a favorite political tool — even when, as is currently the case, the aim is to resist, not promote, change. Street protesters in France won’t bring down an elected president — as protestors in Manila did in 2001 and are seeking to do again now. But they can make or break a wannabe.

“Disorder, that is the disease of the French,” said Charles de Gaulle, who tried to keep the malady in check with the establishment in 1958 of the quasi-monarchical presidential system that is still in place. “I don’t believe we will ever manage to cure it.”