Couldn't happen to a bigger asshole nicer guy...
To: All CNN Staff
From: Jon Klein
We have made some programming decisions which will impact our prime time schedule as well as our colleague Aaron Brown. Aaron will be leaving CNN and is very much looking forward to some well-deserved time off with his family. Standard excuse...
Aaron has made enormous contributions to CNN since his groundbreaking anchoring of Sept. 11th through the war in Iraq to the Tsunami to the recent hurricanes. Outside of the big stories, on a nightly basis, Aaron has provided our audiences with insight into the events of the United States and the world with eloquence and the highest journalist integrity.
Besides his stellar work as an anchor, Aaron stands as an absolutely brilliant writer, evident by the thoughtful perspective he injects into every story he touches.
Personally, I will miss Aaron and his wicked sense of humor. We cannot thank Aaron enough for the skills and professionalism he brought to CNN. Given his respect throughout the industry, there is no question that he will be missed. Either his ratings sucked or they're hiding something.
#2
Ratings win out: Ratings-wise, all the numbers are on Cooper's side. Clearly, he's got the Big Mo.
In October, the hours that Cooper anchored - 7, 10 and 11 p.m. - showed major increases from a year earlier, particularly among the 25- to 54-year-olds advertisers covet.
Let us count the ways.
At 7 p.m., Cooper's "360" averaged 811,000 total viewers, up 36 percent over October 2004, says Nielsen Media Research. (Still, he was far behind Fox News Channel's Shepard Smith.)
At 10 p.m., the Cooper-Brown "NewsNight" clocked 813,000 viewers - a 4 percent spike compared with Brown's solo performance a year before. And at 11, "NewsNight" averaged 570,000 viewers, up 27 percent.
Posted by: Steve ||
11/02/2005 16:25 Comments ||
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#3
My guess is that Brown's going to surface next as a Democratic speechwriter. Which really won't be much of a change.
Posted by: Matt ||
11/02/2005 16:30 Comments ||
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#9
Jon Stewart of The Daily Show on Comedy Central? The one whose best laugh lines nowadays are just the names of senior members of the Bush administration said with a comic strip double take? Not for me, thanks.
A New South Wales mid north coast dairy farmer is trying to come to terms with a lightning strike on his herd this week. There has been a regular pattern of wild electrical storms across the region in the past few days. In one of the most startling events lightning strikes killed 68 dairy cows on a farm about 10 kilometres west of Dorrigo, inland from Coffs Harbour. The cows were clustered together in a paddock about to be milked when they were struck by lightning during a violent electrical storm on Monday afternoon. The storm hit the area at Fernbrook on the Waterfall Way. Another 69 cows survived the lightning bolt. Work begins today to bury the dead animals.
The Dairy Farmers Board says it is almost impossible to protect livestock from being killed by electrical storms. The board's Terry Toohey says he was shocked to hear about the 68 cows. Mr Toohey says there is nothing that can be done. "Probably the only way would be to fence them away from trees and that's an impractical thing to do - it's just one of those nature things that we've got no real control over," he said.
Posted by: God Save The World AKA Oztralian ||
11/02/2005 00:00 ||
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#1
In the future he should have proper grounding on his milking equipment and non-conductive contacts for the milking attachments.
#3
The cows were clustered together in a paddock about to be milked
That's a legend and what the insurance agent was told. You see I knew these girls..they were all Kinky Kows, their udders were pierced.
Posted by: Red Bull ||
11/02/2005 2:22 Comments ||
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#4
The Dairy Farmers Board says it is almost impossible to protect livestock from being killed by electrical storms.
Nah. Just build more golf courses nearby. As tornado target mobile home parks, electrical storms tend to be attracted by people raising poles in the air.
#9
There has been a regular pattern of wild electrical storms along the New South Wales coast since the year dot. They are called Southerly Busters and they are hellacious electrical/hail storms. In 1778 one just about blew the brand new colony of Sydney into the harbour.
An example of the hail: A family friend has a terrace house in inner Sydney suburbia. During a hailstorm a few years ago a hailstone came thru his roof, then thru the kitchen ceiling and finally broke off the end of a 4 inch thick grnite workbench.
#11
Well, that makes me feel better about the golf-ball and marble sized hail that trashed my garden this last spring, and made my insurance company fork out for a new roof...
A decision to call Christmas lights "Winter Lights" in south London has been condemned as showing a "total lack of respect" for Christians.
Advertisements for the switch-on of the lights in multi-cultural Lambeth have renamed them, apparently for fear of offending other faiths.
Tory councillor Bernard Gentry told the BBC: "Christmas appears to have been cancelled in our borough". A spokesman said it was an error by a junior official and not council policy.
In three of Lambeth's main town centres, the lights were referred to as "Winter Lights", while in a fourth they were called "Celebrity Lights".
The council spokeswoman said an official was concerned about people from other religions. She said: "It was a junior-level decision and it happened to go into print which was an error basically. I think it was certainly not a council policy that we should call the lights winter lights."
But it has led to a series of headlines such as "Christmas is banned" and "The PC [politically correct] lights show" and led some members of other faiths to call it "ridiculous".
And Mr Gentry, a conservative member of the joint Lib Dem-Tory controlled borough, told the BBC it went against efforts to promote respect for all faiths.
"It just seems totally against everything that we as members of the council have said, when officers try to airbrush out one of the main festivals of what is still the biggest religion in Lambeth."
"The idea that, in some way, the religious festival of Christmas is offensive to others is just daft - I have never heard a single person who's said that."
The advert appeared in Lambeth Life - a newspaper distributed by the council - and on posters.
I know I'll be having Winter lights on my Winter Tree this year...
Posted by: Howard UK ||
11/02/2005 08:42 ||
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#1
Apologies to one and all... page 3 please.. if worthy.
Posted by: Howard UK ||
11/02/2005 8:49 Comments ||
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#2
This kind of crap is enough to drive me back to church.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
11/02/2005 9:06 Comments ||
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#3
Just makes me seethe...
Posted by: Fred ||
11/02/2005 9:35 Comments ||
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#4
Wheres the C4 dammit?
Oh forgot - we're christians (and athiests...) we have more tolorence then others....
PC renaming of Christmas lights 'an error' A decision to remove the word "Christmas" from festive switch-ons in a council area was an "error" by an overzealous junior official, it was claimed today. The removal of the word Christmas in advertising material for the various switch-ons of lights over the festive season in the south London borough of Lambeth was not council policy, a spokeswoman said.
A spokeswoman for the council said today that the decision had been taken by a junior official who had been concerned about other faiths in the borough.
She said: "It is not a council decision or anything like that. "Actually, some of the councillors are pretty up in arms about this because they believe it should be called the Christmas lights and should not be changed to winter lights. "It was a junior-level decision and it happened to go into print which was an error basically.
"I think it was certainly not a council policy that we should call the lights winter lights."
The news of the ban prompted an avalanche of condemnation from various groups, including the Church of England, the Muslim Council of Britain and local politicians.
Yeah, we all know how overzealous those junior officials can be... Maybe we'll try and sneak it under the radar next year.
#9
I'm past sick of this shit, and I'm not even Christian.
Here's an idea: If moslems people of the "other religions" don't like Christmas, they can damn well work on Christmas day. Without overtime. Even if everyone else is out for the day.
But we all know that will never happen. They want to have their holiday and whine about it too. Or more likely, they don't work to begin with, so every day is a holiday.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but fuck them and the camels they rode in on.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
11/02/2005 20:58 Comments ||
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(CNSNews.com) - Sen. Harry Reid's decision to force the Senate into a secret session has infuriated Republicans, but it has rallied the party's liberal base. Democrat websites are making it easy for liberals to send thank-you notes to Senate Minority Leader Reid, who forced the Senate into closed session on Tuesday to discuss the alleged manipulation of pre-war intelligence on Iraq. The Democratic National Committee urged visitors to its website to "make a special donation" to the party - then "send a note of thanks to Harry Reid asking him to keep up the fight.""
Howard Dean sent me a e-mail praising Reid and urging me to send money. You'd think the whole thing was just a fundraising stunt. Oh, right...
Members of the online community DemocraticUnderground.com were asked to sign a letter to Sen. Reid, applauding his courage and offering "our heartfelt thanks and enthusiastic support" for his actions on the Senate floor. On Tuesday, the letter said, "the courage we activists have sought so desperately from the Democrats made itself thunderously evident" in Reid's actions. "For us, it feels like springtime after a long, cold, hard winter.""
Posted by: Steve ||
11/02/2005 09:23 ||
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#1
The liberal base loves stunts. Die ins/chants/sign waving/not bathing...
#6
Symbolism over Substance - I know it's Rush's take on the libs, I can't take credit, but how accurate is it. Proof again that the state of the Democratic Party is in a tailspin. They don't have anything to offer but obstructionism. They've all gotten to office on the abortion vote - that's it. No ideas, but keeping abortion legal. If I were Reid I'd hide too. When exposed to light you've shown the Democratic party to be empty.
#7
After having surfed Atrios, Kos and Washington Mnothly last night, I can tell you that the DU isn't alone: moonbats throughout the far left blogosphere are enthusiastic about this. Nothing was accomplished, of course, which is partly why they're so happy.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/02/2005 15:38 Comments ||
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#8
The headline at Arianna Huffenpuff's. Democrats Take Charge...
Demand Answers On Pre-War Intelligence Failures...
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
11/02/2005 16:15 Comments ||
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#9
Well it ain't funny. These folks don't care about nothing other than getting back in power, and the easiest way to do that is to turn the American public against the war. It worked in the late 60s and their idea folks (yeah - believe it or not they do have idea folks) came of age during that time. So they'll pound home a theme 1)Iraq is its own separate war; 2) started only because of a made-up fear of WMD; 3) the war created millions of suicidal, drooling, deranged radicals out of peaceful sand farmers; 4)it's all the fault of W and his henchmen; and 5) the only solution is an apology, withdrawal, and meditation about our collective guilt. But don't misunderstand these folks, they do support our troops.
#11
I was talking to my dear old mother the other night (the one who spent the war in hiding from the Nazis, except when she was running messages for the Dutch Underground). She told me that nowadays she doesn't believe anything she reads or sees on the television or in the newspapers. Rather, she gets all her news from me, and I get it from Rantburg. And my parents used to read the local paper all week, and the New York Times on Sunday. Newspaper circulation figures are continuing to fall, and apparently as a result advertising prices are being renegotiated downwards. The journalists are talking to the mirror, their audience has left and they haven't noticed, poor loudmouthed darlings.
Schumerâs name only has two vowels in it, or 28%. Clearly, Schumer is a âvowel-o-phobeâ and should apologize to the american people before resigning from the senate.
Comment by BienHoaBaby â November 1, 2005 @ 9:39 am
There are about 20 NYT / WaPo hit pieces available describing their dream scenarios of a WH in crisis or characterizing Frist's anger at being sucker-punched by Reid as a tantrum - the usual recent general BS about Pub disarray and total BS regards who's having the meltdown. And then I saw this Bill Sammon piece - which is honest: After the storm, Bush is Back. Sucks to be the spinners. I love the smell of Dhimmidonk desperation.
President Bush, coming off one of the roughest weeks of his presidency, appears to have rebounded by holding on to his top political strategist and ending a conservative rebellion over the Supreme Court. "This has been a good week," a senior White House official said. "Everybody was shrieking about how terrible the president was doing and yet already, through the clouds, you begin to see the remedy take shape."
Just last week, Mr. Bush endured the indictment of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, and the withdrawal of Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers. But Mr. Libby, who has resigned, was an obscure figure outside of official Washington. By contrast, the widely known Karl Rove is the president's top strategist and was not indicted in the probe that ensnared Mr. Libby, contrary to Democratic expectations.
Moreover, the withdrawal of Miss Miers put an end to complaints from Mr. Bush's supporters about her thin conservative credentials. By replacing Miss Miers with the more demonstrably conservative Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. on Monday, the president rallied his base for a long-desired showdown with Democrats. "The upcoming days and weeks are going to unfold even better than you would have thought a mere week ago," conservative Rush Limbaugh said on his radio broadcast yesterday. Now we've got Alito, everybody ramping up for this fight that we know we're going to have in the Senate -- and we're going to win," said Mr. Limbaugh, who had been unenthusiastic about Miss Miers. "Here's Bush taking control, taking charge of the agenda, ramrodding the agenda through, and the Democrats do not know what hit them."
White House aides noted with satisfaction that Mr. Limbaugh's analysis was echoed by some members of the mainstream press. "Twenty-four hours into the Alito nomination, the right is unified," ABC News political editor Mark Halperin wrote on the network's Web site (abcnews.go.com). "The left hasn't come up with an overarching strategy to drive down Alito's poll numbers." Mr. Halperin asserted that, barring defections by key Republican senators, "it is only a matter of time before Alito joins the High Court."
Administration officials hoped conservative enthusiasm for Judge Alito will reverse the president's slide in public approval surveys. Mr. Bush has been hovering at a low point of about 40 percent in recent weeks.
But Democrats continued to insist that Mr. Rove eventually could be brought down by a probe into whether a CIA operative's name was improperly leaked to the press. They maintained the president still has plenty of problems. "A cloud now hangs over this administration," Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, said on the Senate floor yesterday. "This cloud is further darkened by the administration's mistakes in the prisoner-abuse scandal, Hurricane Katrina and the cronyism and corruption in numerous agencies."
Other Democrats demanded a major staff shake-up at the White House and called on Mr. Bush to reflect upon the error of his ways.
"That's not going to happen," said a Republican strategist who ruled out a display of "hand wringing" by the president. Instead, Mr. Bush will redouble his prosecution of the war on terror and aggressively take charge of domestic policy, the strategist said.
To that end, the president yesterday gave a major speech on preparations for an avian-flu pandemic. He travels to South America tomorrow and Asia next week for events that will place him on the world stage, far removed from Washington intrigue. "The biggest political story is the inability of Democrats to take advantage of our temporarily weakened political position," the Republican strategist said. "It's like we're on the field with only five members of our 11-man defense and the Democrats still can't score or move the ball. And as days and weeks go by, more and more people will come back in," he said. "And the poll numbers will go up." Take a deep breath and lace up your hobnail boots, W, there's a lot of ass-stomping to be done.
#1
I just took a little walk over to the DU to see how the poor moonbats were handling the disappointment.
They want dhimmis to send thank you letter to Sen Reid for his courage (ie: he took a political hit for this, send him a thank you note.)
Senator Lott has now become their valued spokesperson [*priceless snicker*] in being the first one in the GOP to question Rove's position in the white house.
And they also have a summary of articles to defend the democrats from the accusations that they are "spineless democrats who do nothing".
Bwahhaaaaa. Poor dhimmis. Have another anti-chimp party and drink some more koolaid - then maybe it will seem like things are looking up.
The House is expected to vote today on a bill to protect free speech on the Internet.
The threat?
The campaign-finance-regulation lobby â which has used the courts to expand 2002's McCain-Feingold speech crackdown to cover the Internet. This means that bloggers and others engaging in political speech online are now in danger of being charged with making illegal campaign contributions, simply for having the audacity to open their Web browsers without permission from the speech police.
So Congress needs to act.
A bill being offered by Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), the Online Freedom of Speech Act â which is identical to a bill being offered in the Senate by Minority Leader Harry Reid â would provide the Internet with a blanket exemption from McCain-Feingold. Reid? Pre-meltdown.
It's a good start.
And, arguably, just what Congress intended to do when it first passed the law.
Simply put, the campaign-finance-regulation lobby is smearing this bill and its defenders. They claim it will reopen the soft-money spigot that McCain & Co. spent so much time shutting off, simply channeling the money onto the Internet.
While we are basically allergic to the entire concept of campaign-finance "reform" â it's a profound threat to the First Amendment â this bill would do no such thing.
It wouldn't repeal limits on unlimited corporate or individual giving. And it wouldn't do anything else to undermine existing campaign-finance laws, either.
All it would do is protect average citizens from government harassment as they go about expressing their views online â making it clear that blogs, Web magazines, Internet petitions and other forms of online speech won't be classified as campaign contributions, subject to regulation.
That this should bother the "reformers" so much is telling. While they claim to want to create a "level playing field," where ideas compete without regard to the amount of money behind them, they've come to view an unfettered Internet as the biggest threat to their schemes.
But why?
After all, when it comes to the Internet, money hardly translates into influence. Plenty of expensively produced Web sites are flops, while some of the most popular Web sites and blogs cost virtually nothing to run.
The real problem, it seems, is that the speech police don't like any speech that they don't get to . . . well, police. Heh
The Hensarling-Reid approach is the best way to head off an assault on the Internet â for now.
The next step is to start reconsidering whether regulating political speech is a good idea under any circumstances.
#1
That the calendar is Christian oriented as in the Gregorian Calendar is not because of the Roman Catholic Church or any specific form of christianity, rather it is because Western Civilization exploded across the world in post 1600's to dominate trade, science, communications, technology, and the military. If the Chinese hadn't been so insular, xenophobic, and anti-mercantilist, Admiral Ho probably would have opened the sea routes to Europe before the locals got around to it, eliminating the causal factor for what we have in the world today. Another long rant playing the victimhood game when by the choices of their ancestors, they defaulted into the position they are today.
#2
Given that the months have Roman names -- either emperors (July, August), gods (January, March), or numerical positions (October, November) -- it seems more like a pagan conspiracy to me.
And, of course, various lunatic churchmen have tried to change the names of the days of the week. Norse gods and celestial objects, at least in English: Sun's Day, Moon's Day, Tyr's Day, Wodin's Day, Thor's Day, Freya's Day, and Saturn's Day.
If they're bitching about the choice of when to start counting years, well, just call it the "Common Era" and get over it.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
11/02/2005 9:23 Comments ||
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#4
Raptor - I'm unsure - when reading the comments I saw that someone had used the usual Photoshop excuse. I did try to republish the pics here on RB but Fred has a new swish tool to block this.
Do you think it looks more like Iran's answer to David Blaine performing some kind of magic display??
I would be keen to get to the bottom of this as, if true, I need to wave this in the faces of the supposed moderate muslims I talk to who cannot speak negatively about any facet of their religion. I'm sure they would try to justify this as well.
It isn't stretching the imagination
Posted by: Howard UK ||
11/02/2005 8:20 Comments ||
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#5
Photoshop job? Go back and look at photo number 3.
Did you read the excuse yesterday given by someone saying that this was a dog and pony show to raise money? My comment was that civilized people would stop a dog and pony show where a car is about to run over an 8 year old's arm. No one would stand around and throw coins out of sympathy. Don't try this at home in the Western world, boys and girls, unless you want to spend time in jail.
He also said that he knew that it wasn't a punishment because there was a soft cloth under the boy's arm. Unbelievable! That alone says so much about these barbarians that I can't even begin to start.
Look, I don't think those photoshopped because you can't photo shop terror and pain into an 8 year olds face that effectively. But even if they did turn out to be photoshopped - what difference does it make. Punishments like this occur to children and women on a regular basis. We just don't get the photos.
#6
I agree with 2b. The "street theater" story can't pass Occam's razor test (hell, it can't pass Occam's butter knife, IMO), and the sequence of photos seems much too detailed for a PhotoShop job. I'm afraid the face-value story is all too plausible.
#10
As to the girl that was murdered by the Magic Mullah who called himself a "judge"... Ateqeh Rajabi just before her execution.
I think the solution is to publish the picture of the person so-called judge who murdered the girl, a piece of pig manure named Haji Rezaie, who PERSONALLY put the rope around her neck. All the folks in the anti-Magic Mullah resistance who are fighting in that area, should have his photo, so when the revolution comes, he can suffer the same fate as the poor girl who he murdered. Only in his case, leave him hanging up there high so the crows and buzzards can have their fill.
Ray has at last finished this quarter's updating, re-estimation, and re-running of Fairmodel. Here are some rather striking predictions from this quarter's Forecast Memo:
Real Growth and the Unemployment Rate: The predicted growth rates for the next four quarters are 5.2, 2.9, 2.3, and 2.2 percent, respectively. The unemployment rate at the end of 2006 is 4.6 percent. The jobs variable, JF, is predicted to increase in the four quarters by 2.7, 2.8, 2.4, and 2.0 percent, respectively. The reason for the large change in 2005:4 is a large predicted increase in inventory investment. In the last two quarters real final sales have grown more rapidly than real output, and the model is predicting a positive inventory correction.
Inflation: Inflation as measured by the growth of the GDP deflator (GDPD) is predicted to be 4.6 percent in 2005:4 and then 4.4, 4.4, and 4.3 percent in the next three quarters. These predicted values are higher than the actual values in the past few years and probably higher than most others are predicting. If the model is right, inflation is going to be a problem in the next year.
Monetary Policy: The estimated interest rate rule...is predicting that the three month bill rate (RS) will rise to 4.4 percent by the end of 2006.
Other Variables: The federal government budget deficit is predicted to be around $310 billion in the next four quarters (on a NIPA basis)...By the end of 2009 it is predicted to be $395.7 billion.
The U.S. current account deficit...is forecast to be around $790 billion in the next four quarters (on a NIPA basis), which is large by historical standards.
Whoa! Can you say -- in a deep dramatic voice -- BOOM!!!!!
EFL: M. King Hubbert, a geologist working for Shell Oil in Houston, is responsible for the concept of "peak production." In 1956, Hubbert produced a graph that looked like a normal "bell curve." The idea was that oil production worldwide would increase until it reached a peak, followed by a decline to zero, the point where we run out of oil.
Also known as "Hubbert's Peak," the graph was inherent in the very concept of oil as a fossil fuel. In other words, if oil comes from decaying ancient forests and dead dinosaurs, then inevitably we must run out of oil. After all, there only were a finite number of ancient trees and dinosaurs, so the oil resulting from them must be finite as well.
Craig Smith and I wrote "Black Gold Stranglehold: The Myth of Scarcity and the Politics of Oil" to take exception with the Fossil-Fuel Theory. We argue the science of oil as an abiotic, natural product that the Earth generates on a constant basis. The abiotic oil theory has been central to Soviet science since the end of World War II. Looking deep within the Earth for oil, Russian has advanced from being a relatively oil-poor country in the 1950s, to being today the world's second largest exporter of oil, contending strongly for first position with Saudi Arabia.
Hubbert's graph predicted that oil production would "peak" in 1970, and that it would taper off from there until 2050, when we would have used up all the oil that ever was. Unfortunately for Hubbert, these predictions were flat wrong. Today, the Energy Information Administration of the U.S. Department of Energy estimates that we have 1.28 trillion barrels of proven oil reserves worldwide, more than ever before in human history, despite decades of increased usage. More...
#1
Yep, makes perfect sense in a steady state universe. The good news is what's happening on the anti-earth, geysers of anti-oil are exploding in anti-front yards where the anti=car is. The gasoline bounty is +$5.99 galllon.
Kenneth Deffeyes, a professor emeritus at Princeton University, and a 1950's Shell Oil colleague of M. King Hubbert, has given us excellent insight into how Hubbert came up with his famous "peak curve." According to Deffeyes, it turns out that Hubbert's famous peak was basically a "back of the envelope drawing," a pre-conceived intuition into which Hubbert jammed the available data. In writing his book, "Hubbert's Peak: The Impending World Oil Shortage," Deffeyes admits on Page 135 that Hubbert first reached his conclusion and then searched for raw data and methods to support his conclusion
Same scientific methodology used for 'Global Warming caused by humans'. First establish the conclusion and then jam any data into to it to justify it.
#6
Hubert's Peak Oil is false although not for the reasons stated. Hubert's error was to assume that hydrocarbons were divided into 'oil' and not oil. In reality there is a continium from highly volatile (natural gas) to solid (anthracite). Known hydrocarbon reserves will last many hundreds of years. We just have to start exploiting the reserves away from the sweet spot of traditional oil that will flow to the surface moreorless unaided, such as the tar sands and oil shales.
GENEVA (AP) - Two U.N. land mine clearers were killed and two Sudanese soldiers wounded in an ambush in southern Sudan, the head of their agency said Tuesday. A convoy carrying the mine clearers was attacked as it was returning to base camp, said Henri Leu, president of the Swiss Foundation for Mine Action. The assailants have not been identified.
Leu said the area was not considered particularly dangerous. The group had been working there since Aug. 1, and the trip was routine, he said. Leu said the foundation was suspending its work pending an investigation. It was the first time the foundation lost any employees since it was founded in 1997, he said. The U.N.'s top envoy for Sudan, Jan Pronk, said it was a ``cowardly attack.''
Agreed. What are you going to do about it?
The Swiss government, which contributes up to 10 percent of the foundation's budget, said the ambush ``puts into doubt the assistance of the international community as a whole and therefore endangers the reconstruction in South Sudan.''
U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack also deplored the killings. ``Certainly it is a tragedy when those trying to help people in distress lose their lives,'' he said.
Leu said he could not confirm reports that the rebel Lord's Resistance Army was behind the attack. ``It could also have been an attack by highway bandits who wanted to rob our team, but it also could have been aimed at interrupting our work,'' he said
The organization had been clearing 400 miles of roads in the Juba area so that the World Food Program could deliver its relief supplies safely, he said.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/02/2005 00:34 ||
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PESHAWAR: The Seismological Network of Pakistan, which is a part of the Meteorological Department, on Tuesday, recorded an earthquake of mild intensity. According to a preliminary analysis by the meteorological station at Peshawar, the earthquake originated at 12:03 PST and its epicentre lay about 200 kilometers North East of Peshawar in Hazara Division. The magnitude of the earthquake on the Richter scale was 4.7. Tremors were felt in Islamabad and Hazara Division.
It's not gonna stop until you start hanging mullahs...
Posted by: Fred ||
11/02/2005 00:00 ||
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At least one United Nations relief agency, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, is considering packing up and leaving if it doesn't get the $30 million needed to manage relief camps in November. "The organisation is operating on borrowed money from other relief agencies," UNHCR Communications Manager Vivan Tan told Daily Times. She said UNHCR had utilised $15 million of the borrowed money and had received only $4 million out of the $30 million required. "We will try and pull through as long as possible, another two to three weeks, but after that we will have no other choice," she added.
UNHCR is looking after the most vital area of relief, camp management, in earthquake-affected areas. "We see more and more people coming down from the hills for help but there is little we can offer them at the moment," said the spokesperson. The UN has asked for around 600,000 tents to accommodate earthquake survivors but has received only 140,000 tents, with 200,000 more in the pipeline.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/02/2005 00:00 ||
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#2
Take whatever you need out of the operating funds for the UN Secretariat, the ICJ, General Assembly, and UNSC. They aren't doing anything constructive with the money. Kofi will be happy to take a hit personally, I'm sure, right Mr SecGen?
#3
All those first class tickets, five star hotels, first line vehicle transportation, just start to add up after a while. Considering a grunt on the ground [no air in the hootch or in the vehicle - no hot showers or meals everyday - no opportunity to leave when they feel like it] in Iraq is actually doing more for the future of the ME than these self-important possers, yes please get the hell out of Dodge cause there are people actually capable of doing the job. By the way, how many air cargo craft does the UN own? What's the tonnage of sea shipping does the secretariat command? Isn't the UNHCR just one major level of bureaucracy that is in the end dependent upon others to do the work anyway? Give another organization an opportunity to fill your abandoned position and demonstrate it can do it cheaper, faster, and more effectively and you'll be out of business. Faster, faster.
A Pakistan Army team rescued a man after 21 days from under the rubble of a collapsed house in remote area of district Battagram, an official of Ayub Teaching Hospital said on Monday. On October 29 the army team dug out a man from the debris in Gangwal village of teshil Allai in Battagram district. The lucky survivor, Said Rehman, was unconscious because of dehydration and hunger, but his life was out of danger, hospital officials say.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/02/2005 00:00 ||
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#1
Has the poor man started displaying the symptoms of lockjaw yet?
BANA: Plans have been put in place to evacuate 100,000 people from Allai, the army has said. Since the catastrophic earthquake of October 8, the mountains in the region have been tipped by a cloud of blue smoke, which local people say they have never seen before. The reports from Allai, a community of some 150,000 people in the NWFP's Battagram district, are being taken seriously. The military ordered a seismic survey of the area a few days ago, and while the team has reported that volcanic activity is 'unlikely', the evacuation is still going ahead as a precaution. Locals believe that the mysterious smoke and a series of unexplained, loud blasts heard frequently in the area, sometimes at intervals of only a few hours, are the result of volcanic activity deep within the mountains.
Or somebody is very quietly dropping very large deep penetration bombs on a target?
Brigadier Khalid Mahmood Ahmed, in charge of the military base set up by the Pakistan Army at Battagram, has confirmed to journalists - after flying over the area in a helicopter to check the reports - that he too has seen the blue smoke, saying: "I can say it is definitely coming from the mountains, as are the sounds of the blasts."
We're going to keep this up until they're all Unitarians, you know...
Posted by: Fred ||
11/02/2005 00:00 ||
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#1
I think it might be volcanic activity. A new volcano in the middle of Pakland would be interesting portent.
#3
Settle down Khalid old boy, that "blue smoke" and loud whopping blasts were from that tired ole MI-8T at your 1200, carrying Kritijan Amanpur and the CNN crew. The Paki-Allais are good-to-go. Now fly on up and take another look or two for Osama.
The FNV and CNV trade unions are to escalate the dispute with Shell on Wednesday when workers at the oil giant's NAM plants in The Hague and Emmen will begin cutting production. A spokesperson for CNV Bedrijvenbond said production at the two NAM petroleum plants would be reduced by half. The industrial action at NAM will not have any impact on the public at this stage. Workers at Shell's Pernis refinery in Rotterdam and the Moerdijk petrochemical plant in North Brabant began shutting down production on Monday evening. Pernis produces 418,000 barrels per day and is Europe's largest refinery. For safety reasons, the plants can not be shut down immediately. The gradual process will take two weeks.
The dispute involves changes to the pension schemes for about 9,000 Shell employees and 1,800 workers at NAM. Shell's reforms would have employees paying pension contributions - something they have not done for years. The company also wants to increase the retirement age. The FNV argued last week that the Shell pension fund is financially sound and there is no reason for what the union describes as "cost-cutting measures". Shell rejected this description and said the plan relates to "future cost management". Giving in to the union demands would add 9 percent to the company's annual wage costs, Shell claimed.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
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Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
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Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
A New South Wales mid north coast dairy farmer is trying to come to terms with a lightning strike on his herd this week. There has been a regular pattern of wild electrical storms across the region in the past few days. In one of the most startling events lightning strikes killed 68 dairy cows on a farm about 10 kilometres west of Dorrigo, inland from Coffs Harbour. The cows were clustered together in a paddock about to be milked when they were struck by lightning during a violent electrical storm on Monday afternoon. The storm hit the area at Fernbrook on the Waterfall Way. Another 69 cows survived the lightning bolt. Work begins today to bury the dead animals.
A decision to call Christmas lights "Winter Lights" in south London has been condemned as showing a "total lack of respect" for Christians. 
GENEVA (AP) - Two U.N. land mine clearers were killed and two Sudanese soldiers wounded in an ambush in southern Sudan, the head of their agency said Tuesday. A convoy carrying the mine clearers was attacked as it was returning to base camp, said Henri Leu, president of the Swiss Foundation for Mine Action. The assailants have not been identified.
PESHAWAR: The Seismological Network of Pakistan, which is a part of the Meteorological Department, on Tuesday, recorded an earthquake of mild intensity. According to a preliminary analysis by the meteorological station at Peshawar, the earthquake originated at 12:03 PST and its epicentre lay about 200 kilometers North East of Peshawar in Hazara Division. The magnitude of the earthquake on the Richter scale was 4.7. Tremors were felt in Islamabad and Hazara Division. 
At least one United Nations relief agency, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, is considering packing up and leaving if it doesn't get the $30 million needed to manage relief camps in November. "The organisation is operating on borrowed money from other relief agencies," UNHCR Communications Manager Vivan Tan told Daily Times. She said UNHCR had utilised $15 million of the borrowed money and had received only $4 million out of the $30 million required. "We will try and pull through as long as possible, another two to three weeks, but after that we will have no other choice," she added. 
BANA: Plans have been put in place to evacuate 100,000 people from Allai, the army has said. Since the catastrophic earthquake of October 8, the mountains in the region have been tipped by a cloud of blue smoke, which local people say they have never seen before. The reports from Allai, a community of some 150,000 people in the NWFP's Battagram district, are being taken seriously. The military ordered a seismic survey of the area a few days ago, and while the team has reported that volcanic activity is 'unlikely', the evacuation is still going ahead as a precaution. Locals believe that the mysterious smoke and a series of unexplained, loud blasts heard frequently in the area, sometimes at intervals of only a few hours, are the result of volcanic activity deep within the mountains. 
The FNV and CNV trade unions are to escalate the dispute with Shell on Wednesday when workers at the oil giant's NAM plants in The Hague and Emmen will begin cutting production. A spokesperson for CNV Bedrijvenbond said production at the two NAM petroleum plants would be reduced by half. The industrial action at NAM will not have any impact on the public at this stage. Workers at Shell's Pernis refinery in Rotterdam and the Moerdijk petrochemical plant in North Brabant began shutting down production on Monday evening. Pernis produces 418,000 barrels per day and is Europe's largest refinery. For safety reasons, the plants can not be shut down immediately. The gradual process will take two weeks.
