HoustonChronicle.com - Pope calls for media to be responsibleWell it appears everyone one is TRYING to get on the same sheet of music where journalist are concerned... Earlier this week we had the NY Times (
here) saying they were NEEDED to improve their reporting - now a statement from the Pope. Will anything change?
VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict XVI said today that the media can spread peace but also foment violence, and he called on journalists to exercise responsibility to ensure objective reports that respect human dignity and the common good.
N.Korea blames U.S. for 'fuss' on nuclear testsWhat a shock - it is the United States' fault... Me I will really be shocked when a honest comment comes out of North Korea.
SEOUL (Reuters) - Reports it could soon conduct an underground nuclear weapons test were speculation cooked up by Washington, North Korea said on Tuesday, but the secretive state did not deny outright that one might be planned.
Media reports have said spy satellites show North Korea has apparently stepped up activity in its northeastern region of Kilju. The area has been suspected of being where the North would conduct a test, U.S. and South Korean officials have said.
ThisisLondon
Just a sad story -- I think some of those Londoners worried about US fanatics need to police their own.
An eight-year-old girl was tortured and was about to be killed after being accused of being a witch, the Old Bailey heard today.
The child had been placed in a laundry bag and was about to be thrown into a river to drown when one of her tormentors managed to stop the others, said Patricia May, prosecuting.
Her months of ill-treatment had started when another child told his mother that the girl had been using witchcraft against the family.
Marines mount offensive against Iraq insurgents
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. Marines said on Monday they had killed 75 guerrillas in the first 24 hours of an offensive against foreign fighters and insurgents in western Anbar province.
A U.S. military statement said coalition and Marine aircraft were taking part in the offensive.
As discussed in
Creating Hate, we have even more fake hate being created...
Girl Admits She Faked Gay-Bashing IncidentsA 17-year-old top female wrestler at a local high school faked a series of gay-bashing incidents that prompted a police investigation, authorities said.
The rash of gay-bashing incidents at Tamalpais High School, dating to November, was the work of a student who claimed she was the victim of hate crimes, said police Capt. James Wickham.
I would say the popularity of hate or "fake hate" crimes is a rousing success.
Times Panel Proposes Steps to Build Credibility - New York Times
I have said on many occasions that the time of trusting your local paper or a single "news god" to tell you the news is gone... With the internet and the infinite information available the biggest problem is discerning fact from fiction -- the internet has and will change campaigns and news going further. I want hold my breath for any immediate changes at the NY Times though -- this is just damage control, in my opinion.
As examples, the report cited limiting anonymous sources, reducing factual errors and making a clearer distinction between news and opinion. It also said The Times should make the paper's operations and decisions more transparent to readers through methods like making transcripts of interviews available on its Web site.
[...]
The report comes as the public's confidence in the media continues to wane. A recent study from the Pew Research Center found that 45 percent of Americans believe little or nothing of what they read in their daily newspapers...
[...]
One area of particular concern to Mr. Keller at the outset was the relentless public criticism of the paper, amplified by both the left and right on the Internet...
Calling Democrats' Bluff - New York TimesDavid Brooks has a good article on the Democrats hokum -- smoke screen in mirrors to hide their true agenda, simply oppose President Bush on anything and everything.
Over this time, Democrats have been hectoring President Bush in the manner of an overripe Fourth of July orator. The president should be summoning us to make shared sacrifices for the common good. The president should care for the poor, and stop favoring the rich. He should make the hard choices and impose a little fiscal discipline on government.
[...]
Over the past few weeks, the president has called their bluff.
[...]
The Democratic leadership has dropped all that shared sacrifice talk and started making demagogic appeals to people's narrow self-interest. Nancy Pelosi cries out that Bush's progressive indexing idea means "cutting the benefits of middle-class seniors." Representative Sander Levin protests it "would result in the biggest benefit cut in the history of Social Security." [Read more here]
CNN.com - U.S. military: Al-Zarqawi aide captured
Well what do you know - prisons do have information with they decided or are made to talk. The hit list continues!
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- An aide to terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had been captured by Iraqi security forces in Iraq, the U.S. military said Sunday.
U.S. forces identified him Ammar al-Zubaydi, also known as Abu Abbas.
Al-Zubaydi was captured in Baghdad on Thursday, the military said. He is responsible for many recent suicide car bombings, the military said, and an attack on Abu Ghraib prison in April that wounded U.S. troops and detainees at the facility. (Full story)
Al-Zubaydi is not the same Abu Abbas who masterminded the terrorist hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro in 1985. That man, leader of the Palestinian Liberation Front, was captured in Iraq in the early days of the war and died in custody.
Another al-Zarqawi associate -- who was captured on April 26 -- helped U.S. and Iraqi forces kill six insurgents Sunday and capture another 54 in western Iraq near the Syrian border, the U.S. military said.
Clear skies end global dimming - Earth's air is cleaner, but this may worsen the greenhouse effect.
Give me a break - now that we have made progress improving pollution, quick someone tell AlGore, we are speeding up global warming... Does this not prove that the scientist making all these claims really and truly don't have a clue? Wasn't pollution the cause of global warming and had to be corrected - man I am so confused I can't keep up with the ever changing line.
Our planet's air has cleared up in the past decade or two, allowing more sunshine to reach the ground, say two studies in Science this week.
Reductions in industrial emissions in many countries, along with the use of particulate filters for car exhausts and smoke stacks, seem to have reduced the amount of dirt in the atmosphere and made the sky more transparent.
That sounds like very good news. But the researchers say that more solar energy arriving on the ground will also make the surface warmer, and this may add to the problems of global warming. More sunlight will also have knock-on effects on cloud cover, winds, rainfall and air temperature that are difficult to predict.
Lebanese anti-Syria leader Aoun returns from exile - Yahoo! News
Interesting story and my first reaction -- "more good news"!
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon's most prominent anti-Syria Christian leader returned to a hero's welcome in Beirut on Saturday, ending more than a decade in exile 11 days after the last Syrian soldier withdrew from the country.
"A black cloud oppressed Lebanon for 15 years. Today the sun of freedom is shining. I'm returning to look to the future and rebuild Lebanon together," he said, flanked by his daughters and grandchildren.
My Mother - the greatest of course... She was there for me when I needed comforting, she was there for me when I need guidance, she was there when I needed a nudge off a 'bad track', she was there when I needed support, and she has always been there to just give me her Motherly love. I say thank you and thank God she is still with me...
Happy Mother's day.
Growth casts doubt on 'soft patch'
Wonder if the "gloom and doom" naysayers will continue to dwell on the economy or if they will move on to something else that will end the world and our country as we know it - one only can wait and see.
A surge of 274,000 new jobs last month in health care, education, construction, finance and other service- and housing-related industries cast doubt on assertions the economy is going through a 'soft patch.'
The robust jobs report from the Labor Department yesterday offered estimates of job growth that were 93,000 higher in the past three months and brought the monthly average of new jobs to nearly a quarter million.
This is not just a zygote as I was told only a few days ago - again, having heard this callus description of a "human baby" before.
WorldNetDaily: Will justice be done for baby Rowan?This is Rowan. At 5 1/2 months, Rowan was born April 2, 2005, in Orlando, Fla., inside an abortion clinic. Rowan's mother, Angele, thought she wanted an abortion. She took the medication to begin the procedure according to the instructions provided by the clinic.
[...]
Angele delivered her baby alone into a toilet at the clinic. She had little more than a wet blanket and cold, blood-stained room to assist her.
Despite the calculated decision to end her son's life, he was born alive. Panic stricken, Angele instinctively cried for help as she cradled her son in her hands. No one came, and Rowan died.
Read previous WND report -
Abortion staff ignores baby boy born alive -- some excerpts:
A woman who was scheduled to have her 22-week-along pregnancy ended at a Florida abortion clinic instead delivered the baby alive in a restroom and says her pleading for help from medical staff went unheeded, even when an employee saw that the tiny boy was moving.
Newsday.com: Pastor Charged With Setting Church FireCreating hate crime is becoming popular.
SUMMERVILLE, S.C. -- A pastor and his wife have been charged with arson in a fire that gutted their church last week, authorities said Tuesday.
The Monday arrests of The Rev. Harold Hunter and Patricia Hunter came just one day after the pastor gave a sermon in which he said he prayed for the 'sick, sadistic' person who burned down the church. No one was hurt in the blaze.
Hat tip:
La Shawn Barber -- see more examples of "Fake Hate" -
here,
here, and
here.
Newsday.com: Gun-Control Group, PAC Pay $12K FEC Fine
I found this very interesting.
WASHINGTON -- A gun-control group and its political action committee have paid a $12,000 fine to settle a campaign finance case from the 2000 election.
At issue were ads and endorsements by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and its Brady Voter Education Fund involving various Democratic candidates in 2000.
The American Conservative Union, in a complaint with the Federal Election Commission, accused the Brady organizations of making illegal corporate contributions to the Democrats' campaigns.
Top News Article | Reuters.com
Well liberals may not believe this is punishment, but none us of knows what it means for a General to be demoted... However, the liberals may not be happy about the punishment but they might be happy about the "bitter remarks" possibly coming from the now demoted General, which will be sad and demeaning for her, in my opinion.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A one-star Army Reserve general became the first high-level military officer punished in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal on Thursday when President Bush demoted her to the rank of colonel.
Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski was disciplined after Army leaders deemed her job performance 'seriously lacking' and accused her of concealing a past shoplifting arrest.
The Army said in a statement Karpinski had been reduced in rank to colonel, although an investigation by the Army inspector general's office 'determined that no action or lack of action on her part contributed specifically to the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib.'
Karpinski said last year she was being used as a "convenient scapegoat" for detainee abuse that was the fault of others.
CNN.com - Italy PM disputes U.S. Iraq report
Some highlights that I am sure just irritates the heck out of journalist, Giuliana Sgrena.
"We have no intention of establishing any connection between the assessment of the case in which our official lost his life and the role of our country in Iraq," the conservative premier said.
Notice the word
conservative thrown in there like a four letter adjective.
"We must insist in our commitment and assist the forces of a free and democratic new Iraq," Berlusconi told lawmakers.
Our friendship has overcome more difficult problems than this," he said.
[...]
But, the statement said, America and Italy "remain solid in their work in favor of the people and the Iraqi government, for the reconstruction of a stable, free and democratic Iraq."
CNN.com - Blasts at UK Consulate in NYC - May 5, 2005
If it was they failed "how to kill" 101 - a low-grade explosives device placed within concrete at the bustling hour of 3:35AM, I don't think so... Do I believe it is a coincidence that it happened when England began voting - no... Do I believe it was a "nut job" or a wannabe "terrorist" - yes, but not a Al-Queda operative.
NEW YORK (CNN) -- Two 'improvised explosive devices' made from 'novelty-type grenades' have exploded in front of the building that houses the British Consulate in New York City, police said.
The early Thursday morning blasts shattered windows but did not cause significant damage or any injuries, the New York Police Department said.
The devices, which contained black gunpowder and fuses, blew out a chunk of concrete in the flower box where they were planted outside the building.
Judge throws out Abu Ghraib guilty plea - Iraq's new chapter - MSNBC.com
Here is an interesting twist -- looks like we are in for another circus.
FORT HOOD, Texas - A military judge Wednesday threw out Pfc. Lynndie England's guilty plea to prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, saying that he was not convinced that she knew that her actions were wrong at the time.
[...]
The mistrial for England, a 22-year-old reservist who appeared in some of the most notorious photographs from the 2003 abuse scandal, means the case gets kicked back to the military equivalent of a grand-jury proceeding.
Army secret unwrapped
I remember when I was a kid I wanted TANG because the astronauts drank it... This might be successful.
Heard, understood, acknowledged: A toothsome U.S. Army secret is about to go civilian.
It's sweet. It crunches. It remains fresh for three years. And come June, the HooAH! nutrition bar arrives on store shelves nationwide for red-blooded Americans who fancy a special-forces snack.
Developed as a high-energy combat ration for Army Rangers and U.S. Marines almost a decade ago at the Army Soldier Systems Center in Massachusetts, the HooAH! name and formula officially have been licensed by a trio of California brothers who know a good thing when they see it.
