Author's posts

Apr 18 2011

Evening Edition

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

Now with 49 Top Stories.

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 Suicide car bombs kill five at Baghdad Green Zone

by Ammar Karim, AFP

Mon Apr 18, 12:34 pm ET

BAGHDAD (AFP) – Two suicide car bombings killed five people and wounded 15 on Monday at the entrance to Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone, where an Arab League summit is due to be held next month.

Officials said the bombings occurred at around 8:30 am (0530 GMT) at the western gate into the Green Zone, which houses the offices of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, Iraq’s parliament and the US and British embassies.

A queue of cars was waiting to enter the Green Zone when the vehicles exploded, a security official said.

Apr 18 2011

Monday Business Edition

Monday Business Edition is an Open Thread

Now with 46 Stories.

From Yahoo News Business

1 Portuguese bailout talks start under Finnish shadow

AFP

2 hrs 8 mins ago

LISBON (AFP) – European and IMF officials were to start tough talks with Portugal Monday on the scale and modalities of a bailout, as a Finnish anti-EU party’s election success cast doubt on its viability.

Negotiations on the sum and payback conditions in a deal expected to involve tens of billions of euros follow an evaluation mission last week to Lisbon by the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

The government of Prime Minister Jose Socrates government fell last month when parliament rejected an austerity plan, forcing Lisbon to bow to market pressure and seek an European Union-IMF bailout.

Apr 18 2011

DocuDharma Digest

Regular Features-

Featured Essays for April 17, 2011-

DocuDharma

Apr 17 2011

Shad Roe

anchovy
Shad Roe

Apr 17 2011

F1: Shanghai

About tire strategy

It was odd last night to watch pretty much everyone except McLaren and the one Red Bull left sit in the pits until there was only 2 minutes left in Q3 (time enough for one warm up and one hot lap).

They are very concerned about having enough Soft Pirellis and those are going off quickly, particularly if abused from the start which is, unfortunately, typical.

Tyre allocation has been reduced for 2011, with 11 rather than 14 sets of dry-weather tyres available to each driver per race weekend. Drivers will receive three sets (two prime, one option) to use in P1 and P2 and must return one set after each session. A further eight sets will then be at their disposal for the rest of the weekend, although one set of each specification must be handed back before qualifying.

So in total you have eight sets of Softs to get you through the final 2 practices (one before the Qualifying and ‘Warm Up Laps’ pre-race) and 3 rounds of Qualifying and then the race.  Some desperate soul sometime is going to make themselves famous by running an all Prime strategy but it hasn’t happened yet though some of the also rans have attemped it.

KERS you!

Mark Webber is pretty pissed off today.  In a car supposedly identical to pole sitter and Championship leader Sebastian Vettel’s, his KERS software is sucking power like a broken air conditioner at all the wrong places.

Speaking of Red Bull, Scuderia ‘I’ll have a cigarette with my espresso’ will start surprisingly strong.  Michael Schumacher once again under performs, his team mate Nico Rosberg is driving a contender.  Scuderia Marlboro UPC is over rated.  Paul di Resta impresses, Petrov couldn’t even put it back on the track.

It’s still very early in the season, this is only the third race of 19 and there are lots of points out there, but like The America’s Cup and Le Tour, Formula One tends to magnify advantages.  As a die hard McLaren fan I’m really satisfied with their performance this year, but Red Bull doesn’t seem to be suffering from their hardware failures.

Re-broadcast Monday at noon.

Pretty tables below.

Apr 17 2011

DocuDharma Digest

Regular Features-

Featured Essays for April 16, 2011-

DocuDharma

Apr 17 2011

Evening Edition

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

Now with 41 Top Stories.

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 Afghan suicide blast kills nine troops

by Samoon Miakhail, AFP

Sat Apr 16, 8:56 am ET

JALALABAD, Afghanistan (AFP) – A Taliban suicide bomber wearing an army uniform killed five foreign troops and four Afghan soldiers on Saturday in a brazen attack at the Afghan army’s eastern headquarters.

It was the deadliest single incident this year against foreign forces in war-torn Afghanistan and comes amid a wave of suicide attacks on security targets, three months before foreign forces start a limited pullback.

The latest strike was at an army base in the Gambiri desert area in Laghman province, near Jalalabad city, the de facto capital of Afghanistan’s east.

Apr 16 2011

F1: Shanghai Qualifying

Once again I have unfortunately skipped the meaningless except for gossip Practice so I have little to report except for the scurrilous rumor (as always impeccably sourced) that Hamilton is dissatisfied with the McLaren hardware which as far as I can see is ahead of last season’s Red Bull chase that he almost won except for software (brain fart) failures by McLaren race management.  If he’s really decided to be a diva he’s lost my allegiance, does he expect Red Bull to dump Webber?  Nobody else is close.

Vettel dominated as predicted.

So we don’t know anything we didn’t already and the Shanghai circuit is equally a mystery except that the sinking has evidently passed inspection.

Tomorrow’s race at 2:30 am will not be preceded by anything special and will not be repeated until noon on Monday so Richard will just have to wait until then to read though I’m sure Grandma’s nurse will call him long before that to spoil it anyway.

I’ll spare you my insights from Sepang since they haven’t changed much, nor do I expect many surprises but if there are any I’ll document them below.

Apr 16 2011

DocuDharma Digest

Regular Features-

Featured Essays for April 15, 2011-

DocuDharma

Apr 16 2011

Evening Edition

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

Now with 45 Top Stories.

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 Ex-Croatian generals jailed for war crimes

by Nicolas Delaunay, AFP

27 mins ago

THE HAGUE (AFP) – Judges sentenced two retired Croatian generals to lengthy jail terms Friday for war crimes committed in one of the bloodiest episodes of the 1991-95 Balkans conflict, angering supporters and the Zagreb government.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) gave Ante Gotovina 24 years and co-accused Mladen Markac 18 years for war crimes and crimes against humanity but acquitted third defendant Ivan Cermak.

The court infuriated Zagreb by backing the prosecution claim of a “joint criminal enterprise” with late Croatian president Franjo Tudjman, aimed at driving Croatian Serbs out of their “ancestral homelands” in the western Krajina region.

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