The Stars Hollow Gazette – Page 2136 – Two wrongs don't make a right, but three rights make a left

MISRATA, Libya (AFP) – A rebel official in Libya’s besieged city of Misrata desperately pleaded Tuesday for Britain and France to send in troops to help against the forces of strongman Moamer Kadhafi, saying “if they don’t, we will die.”

In what was the first request by any insurgents for boots on the ground, a senior member of Misrata’s governing council, Nuri Abdullah Abdullati, said they were asking for the troops on the basis of “humanitarian” principles.

Previously, he told journalists, “we did not accept any foreign soldiers in our country, but now, as we face these crimes of Kadhafi, we are asking on the basis of humanitarian and Islamic principles for someone to come and stop the killing.”

AFP

2 UN says granted ‘safe passage’ into besieged Libya city

by Marc Burleigh, AFP

Tue Apr 19, 4:47 am ET

MISRATA, Libya (AFP) – Libya’s government has granted “safe passage” for United Nations teams in Misrata, the UN said, even as Moamer Kadhafi’s forces pounded the besieged rebel city with rockets and shells.

The UN said it wanted to assess the humanitarian situation on the ground in Misrata, which loyalist troops have being trying to overrun for the past six weeks in heavy fighting which a doctor said had killed more than 1,000 people, mostly civilians.

With thousands clamouring to escape the port city, about 215 kilometres (130 miles) east of Tripoli, Britain said it will charter ships to pick up 5,000 migrant workers after a ferry rescued nearly 1,000 on Monday.

3 Scramble to rescue refugees from Libya’s Misrata

by Marc Burleigh, AFP

Mon Apr 18, 10:35 pm ET

MISRATA, Libya (AFP) – A ferry has rescued almost 1,000 people from Misrata and Britain said it plans to pick up 5,000 more, as UN officials said Moamer Kadhafi’s government has guaranteed “safe passage” for foreign aid workers and to let a UN mission into the besieged port city.

The safe passage was part of an accord on humanitarian access to the capital and other Libyan cities secured in Tripoli on Sunday by UN humanitarian chief Valerie Amos, said deputy UN spokesman Farhan Haq.

The Kadhafi government also agreed to let a UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs mission into Misrata, said UN humanitarian spokeswoman Stephanie Bunker.

4 Syria govt approves lifting emergency law

AFP

48 mins ago

DAMASCUS (AFP) – Syria’s government approved on Tuesday a bill to rescind a decades-old emergency law and agreed to abolish the state security court, after weeks of pro-democracy protests and hundreds of deaths.

The cabinet also approved a bill regulating demonstrations, the state news agency SANA reported, only hours after the interior minister imposed a total ban on political gatherings and after security forces fired on protesters in the city of Homs, killing four.

More than 2,000 people defied the authorities and protested against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad in the northern coastal city of Banias, witnesses said.

5 Syria forces fire on demo, vow to crush ‘armed revolt’

AFP

Tue Apr 19, 5:36 am ET

DAMASCUS (AFP) – Syrian security forces Tuesday fired on a mass protest of thousands in the city of Homs demanding the fall of the regime, hours after the authorities vowed to suppress an “armed revolt” in the country.

“The sit-in was dispersed with force. There was heavy gunfire,” an activist reached by telephone in Damascus told AFP, without being able to give details of possible casualties.

He said the security forces very early Tuesday swarmed into Al-Saa Square, where some 20,000 people were staging a mass sit-in, scattering protesters who had vowed not to leave until President Bashar al-Assad stepped down.

6 Syria vows to suppress ‘armed revolt’ as protesters dig in

AFP

Mon Apr 18, 7:34 pm ET

DAMASCUS (AFP) – Syria on Monday vowed to suppress an “armed revolt” undermining security in the country as protests spread and demonstrators clamoured for more democratic reforms.

The interior ministry issued the warning as thousands of protesters dug in at a main square in the central city of Homs, vowing to stay put until their demands are met.

“The latest incidents have shown that… armed Salafist groups, particularly in the cities of Homs and Banias, have openly called for armed revolt,” said a ministry statement carried by the official SANA news agency.

7 Deadly riots hit Nigeria after Jonathan’s vote win

by Aminu Abubakar, AFP

Tue Apr 19, 8:38 am ET

KANO, Nigeria (AFP) – A new outbreak of deadly post-poll riots hit northern Nigeria overnight as soldiers patrolled the streets on Tuesday after President Goodluck Jonathan and his defeated rival called for calm.

Authorities have not given a death toll for the rioting that began sporadically over the weekend over allegations of vote rigging and quickly spread to some 14 states on Monday.

An estimated 15,000 have been displaced and more than 360 wounded, according to the Red Cross. Police said dozens of people had been arrested.

8 Jonathan declared winner of Nigeria vote

by Ola Awoniyi, AFP

Mon Apr 18, 10:45 pm ET

ABUJA (AFP) – Nigeria’s Goodluck Jonathan has been declared winner of presidential elections in a landmark vote that exposed regional tensions and led to deadly rioting in the mainly Muslim north.

Jonathan, the incumbent and first president from the southern oil-producing Niger Delta region, won 57 percent of the vote in Africa’s most populous nation, easily beating his northern rival, ex-military ruler Muhammadu Buhari.

Final results declared Monday evening, which the opposition rejected, gave Jonathan 22.5 million votes, while Buhari scored 12.2 million votes for 31 percent.

9 Mekong nations at odds over controversial Laos dam

by Daniel Rook, AFP

Tue Apr 19, 10:18 am ET

BANGKOK (AFP) – Laos faced pressure from its neighbours on Tuesday to delay construction of a controversial dam on the Mekong River as they failed to agree on a project that has sparked deep environmental concerns.

Officials from Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam met in Vientiane to discuss the planned $3.8 billion Xayaburi dam in northern Laos, an impoverished Communist nation which sees hydropower as vital to its future.

Laos’s neighbours raised worries about insufficient environmental studies of the dam’s likely impact, according to a statement released after the meeting, while Laos said there was no need for further consultation.

10 Shanghai showcases auto world’s China hopes

by D’Arcy Doran, AFP

Tue Apr 19, 9:14 am ET

SHANGHAI (AFP) – Foreign and Chinese carmakers unveiled plans on Tuesday to ratchet up investment and introduce new models in China as Shanghai’s auto show opened with all eyes on the world’s largest car market.

World premieres at the show include Volkswagen’s new retro-styled Beetle, General Motors’ new Chevrolet Malibu, Buick Envision and its China-only Baojun 630, and France’s PSA Group introducing its Citroen DS5.

As the first auto show since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami disaster in Japan, source of a large number of auto components, Shanghai will allow industry analysts to gauge the impact of the catastrophe on the sector.

11 Taliban breaches Afghan defence HQ, kills two

by Sardar Ahmad, AFP

Mon Apr 18, 4:02 pm ET

KABUL (AFP) – A gunman in Afghan army uniform opened fire inside Kabul’s defence ministry Monday, killing two soldiers and wounding seven in an audacious strike at the heart of government claimed by the Taliban.

The attack, which the militants said was aimed at France’s visiting defence minister Gerard Longuet, was the third major assault on Afghan security targets in four days and one of the worst security breaches in years.

“A person in Afghan army uniform opened fire on his comrades, killed two soldiers, injured seven others, then was targeted himself and was brought down,” Afghan army spokesman General Mohammad Zahir Azimi told AFP.

12 Libya rebels say 10,000 killed, UN sends food aid

by Marc Burleigh, AFP

1 hr 22 mins ago

MISRATA, Libya (AFP) – The UN said Tuesday it has sent food for 50,000 people to west Libya as aid groups scrambled to reach trapped civilians and rebels put the death toll from two months of fighting at 10,000.

One month after NATO allies dropped their first bombs on Moamer Kadhafi’s forces, there appeared no end in sight to what experts are now warning will be a prolonged military stalemate in which civilians casualties will mount.

And with thousands clamouring to escape the besieged rebel city of Misrata, Britain said it will charter ships to pick up 5,000 migrant workers after a ferry rescued nearly 1,000 on Monday.

13 Despite Gulf tragedy, more spills possible: Allen

by Karin Zeitvogel, AFP

Mon Apr 18, 5:54 pm ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The United States cannot rule out another oil disaster in its waters, the official who led the response to last year’s Gulf of Mexico spill told AFP, as the country marks one year since the tragedy.

“We’re never going to be able to prevent an event from happening out there,” said retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, who has worked on oil spills since the 1980s and led the government response to the disaster that began on April 20 last year, when an oil rig moored off the coast of Louisiana exploded.

Eleven men died and several others were injured as fire ripped through the platform, which two days later sank 5,000 feet (1,500 meters) to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, causing BP’s Macondo well to rupture and start spewing oil into the sea.

14 Leaders pledge aid to complete Chernobyl shelter

by Anna Malpas, AFP

Tue Apr 19, 6:28 am ET

KIEV (AFP) – International leaders pledged millions of dollars at a conference in Kiev on Tuesday to complete a permanent shelter to secure the ruins of Ukraine’s exploded Chernobyl power station.

“The catastrophe at Chernobyl power station left a deep wound that Ukraine will need to live with for many years ahead,” Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych said in his opening speech.

“We thank the international community for not leaving Ukraine alone with this problem.”

15 Pope’s shrink film stirs controversy in Italy

by Jean-Louis de la Vaissiere, AFP

Tue Apr 19, 12:59 am ET

VATICAN CITY (AFP) – A new film about a panic-prone pope who needs a psychoanalyst has divided Italy’s Catholics, with a call for its boycott coming from the pages of an influential bishops’ newspaper.

Writing in the Avvenire daily, Vatican expert Salvatore Izzo said Italian director Nanni Moretti’s film “Habemus Papam” was not respectful towards the head of the world’s Roman Catholics and would be “boring” for non-believers.

“We shouldn’t touch the pope — the rock on which Jesus founded his Church,” said Izzo, adding that “even priests” had absolved the film after its release on Friday “with the curious justification that Moretti could have been meaner.”

16 Burkina Faso gets new PM as mutiny spreads

by Romaric Ollo Hien, AFP

Mon Apr 18, 11:34 pm ET

OUAGADOUGOU (AFP) – Burkina Faso’s ambassador to France has been named the African country’s new prime minister as police joined soldiers on a rampage and students staged violent protests against President Blaise Compaore’s regime.

Soldiers and paramilitary police poured into the streets of the northern town of Kaya, firing shots into the air, torching the home of an army regiment chief and ransacking that of a regional officer, residents told AFP by telephone.

It was the first time police had taken part in the uprising that began in the capital Ouagadougou on Thursday. An official said they were demanding their wages and were to be paid Monday.

Reuters

17 Nasdaq and ICE firm up NYSE bid, hope for talks

By Phil Wahba and Paritosh Bansal, Reuters

2 hrs 32 mins ago

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Nasdaq OMX Group and Intercontinental Exchange Inc promised to pay a $350 million fee to NYSE Euronext if regulators knock down their takeover offer, in a bid to get NYSE to start deal talks.

Nasdaq and ICE also said they had committed financing from banks to back their $11.3 billion bid for NYSE, and expected U.S. antitrust regulators to start a review of their bid soon. A merged Nasdaq and NYSE would have a virtual stranglehold on U.S. stock listings.

The announcement was designed to address two key concerns raised by NYSE’s board: antitrust risk and strategic fit. NYSE had unanimously rejected Nasdaq and ICE’s bid in favor of a $10.2 billion deal with Germany’s Deutsche Boerse AG.

18 Goldman profit drops as trading revenue falls

By Lauren Tara LaCapra and Dan Wilchins, Reuters

1 hr 7 mins ago

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Goldman Sachs Group Inc posted a 72 percent decline in quarterly earnings as trading revenue dropped, and the bank cautioned that its businesses face headwinds.

The results were stronger than many analysts had expected, but with Goldman discussing risks to future earnings, the bank’s shares fell 1.4 percent to $151.61.

Goldman has long been viewed as an earnings machine, consistently posting some of the highest returns on Wall Street. Investors now wonder if U.S. financial reform will cut into trading revenue and force the bank to focus on investment banking businesses that have historically been less profitable, like stock underwriting and merger advisory.

19 With much at stake, Asia voices confidence in U.S. debt

By Kaori Kaneko and Tetsushi Kajimoto, Reuters

Tue Apr 19, 11:32 am ET

TOKYO (Reuters) – Some of the United States’ biggest creditors moved to shore up confidence in its sovereign debt Tuesday after Standard & Poor’s threatened to cut its credit rating on the world’s top economy, touching a nerve among big holders of Treasuries.

Asian nations have amassed trillions of dollars in U.S. government bonds through recycled export earnings, and have a vital interest in maintaining their value. So it was no surprise that officials were keen to play down the danger.

“The United States is tackling fiscal issues in various ways, so I still think U.S. Treasuries are basically an attractive product for us,” Japanese Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda told reporters after a cabinet meeting.

20 U.N. says 20 children killed in Misrata

By Alexander Dziadosz, Reuters

1 hr 14 mins ago

BENGHAZI, Libya (Reuters) – The United Nations appealed on Tuesday for a ceasefire in the Libyan city of Misrata, saying at least 20 children had been killed in attacks by besieging government forces on rebel-held parts of the city.

Libya’s third city, where hundreds are believed to have been killed by shelling and sniper fire by Muammar Gaddafi’s forces, is the main focus of efforts to protect civilians caught up in the Libyan leader’s bid to put down an armed rebellion.

At the same time Western powers are looking for ways to support the rebels’ efforts to topple Gaddafi, though NATO said there were limits to what air power could do to end the city’s siege.

21 U.N. says 20 children killed in Misrata

By Alexander Dziadosz, Reuters

1 hr 16 mins ago

At the same time Western powers are looking for ways to support the rebels’ efforts to topple Gaddafi, though NATO said there were limits to what air power could do to end the city’s siege.

22 UK to send military advisers to Libyan rebels

By Adrian Croft, Reuters

56 mins ago

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain said on Tuesday it would send military officers to advise Libyan rebels, worrying critics who fear the country is being dragged into a civil war.

London said it would send about a dozen officers to Libya to help insurgents improve their organization and communications, but would not arm the rebels or train them to fight.

With the Libyan conflict risking getting bogged down in a long stalemate, Western powers are searching for ways to bolster the rebels, whose fighting efforts have been disorganized.

23 Italy seeks ways to enable Libyan rebel oil sales

By James Mackenzie, Reuters

2 hrs 10 mins ago

ROME (Reuters) – A meeting of Western and Middle Eastern states in Rome next month will seek ways of enabling oil from Libyan rebel areas to be sold on world markets, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said on Tuesday.

The comments underline the uncertainty created by United Nations sanctions, which were intended to constrain Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi but have also prevented rebels from selling oil to raise funds themselves.

Speaking after talks with Mustafa Abdel Jalil, head of the main Libyan rebel council, Frattini said the Libya “Contact Group” of European and Middle Eastern countries, the United Nations, the African Union and the Arab League would meet in Rome in early May.

24 NATO says air power has limits in Misrata siege

By David Brunnstrom, Reuters

Tue Apr 19, 11:41 am ET

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – NATO said on Tuesday it had destroyed dozens of tanks and other armored vehicles besieging the Libyan city of Misrata, but conceded there were limits to what air power could do to end the siege.

“We have been watching the situation in Misrata, and over the past 10 days fighting has been intense,” Brigadier-General Mark Van Uhm, a member of NATO’s military staff, said.

“Our forces have conducted numerous strikes in and around Misrata, and we have destroyed over 40 tanks and several armored fighting vehicles there,” he told a news conference.

25 Misrata shelled again, casualties seen

By Fredrik Dahl and Souhail Karam, Reuters

Tue Apr 19, 8:44 am ET

TUNIS/RABAT (Reuters) – Forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi renewed the bombardment of Misrata Tuesday, causing a number of casualties, an Amnesty International researcher in the besieged Libyan city said.

Libya’s third-largest city, the insurgents’ last major stronghold in the west of the country — has been under siege by government troops for more than seven weeks.

Rebels and residents say pro-Gaddafi forces have pounded Misrata heavily in recent days, firing rockets and mortars at insurgent positions and also hitting residential areas.

26 Analysis: Libya oil stuck in legal limbo as U.N. panel shunned

By Louis Charbonneau, Reuters

Tue Apr 19, 3:25 am ET

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – Western powers eager to help Libyan rebels sell oil from territories they control are ignoring the U.N. Security Council’s sanctions committee, leaving Libyan crude in legal limbo, envoys and analysts say.

Without definitive guidance on the legal status of Libyan oil from the politically divided U.N. sanctions committee, U.N. diplomats and traders say the oil could remain virtually untouchable as major trading players take care to avoid running afoul of the U.N. sanctions.

U.N. diplomats told Reuters that Security Council members eager to escalate the diplomatic pressure on Gaddafi’s government — above all France and Britain — rushed through the two packages of sanctions and may not have foreseen how difficult the U.N. measures would make it to aid the rebels.

27 Finnish PM-elect seeks to soothe EU bailout fears

By Jussi Rosendahl and Terhi Kinnunen, Reuters

Tue Apr 19, 12:09 pm ET

HELSINKI (Reuters) – Finland’s likely next prime minister ruled out proposing major changes to a bailout package for Portugal, seeking to soothe concerns that the Nordic country’s new government could block EU plans and upset markets.

But Jyrki Katainen, leader of the National Coalition party that won Sunday’s election, also acknowledged that talks to form a new government would take a long time because his party disagrees with anti-euro True Finns party over the bailout plan.

Finland’s parliament, unlike others in the euro zone, has the right to vote on the European Union’s requests for funds.

28 Japan eyes sales tax rise to pay for post-quake rebuild

By Linda Sieg and Kazunori Takada, Reuters

Tue Apr 19, 8:07 am ET

TOKYO (Reuters) – Japanese consumers may have to help foot the reconstruction bill after last month’s earthquake and tsunami caused $300 billion of damage, further burdening the hugely indebted economy, a newspaper said on Tuesday.

It would be the first increase since 1997, though a sales tax hike had been the subject of fierce political debate before the earthquake struck as one way for Japan to dig itself out of its massive debt.

The government is considering raising the tax by 3 percentage points to 8 percent when the new fiscal year starts next April, the Yomiuri newspaper reported.

29 Apple sues Samsung, says stop copying us

By Dan Levine and Miyoung Kim, Reuters

Tue Apr 19, 7:30 am ET

SAN FRANCISCO/SEOUL (Reuters)- Apple Inc sued Samsung Electronics claiming the South Korean firm’s Galaxy line of mobile phones and tablets “slavishly” copies the iPhone and iPad, according to court papers, a move analysts say is aimed at keeping its close rivals at bay.

Apple is one participant in a web of litigation among phone makers and software firms over who owns the patents used in smartphones, as rivals aggressively rush into the smartphone and tablet market which the U.S. firm jumpstarted with iPhone and iPad.

Nokia and Apple have sued each other in numerous courts and as recently as last month Nokia filed a complaint with the U.S. trade panel alleging that Apple infringes its patents in iPhones, iPads and other products.

30 With an eye to Japan, world pledges cash for Chernobyl

By Richard Balmforth, Reuters

Tue Apr 19, 11:23 am ET

KIEV (Reuters) – World powers, spurred by the nuclear crisis in Japan, on Tuesday pledged 550 million euros ($780 million) to help build a new containment shell at the site of the 1986 Chernobyl accident.

Ukraine had hoped for 740 million euros from governments and international organisations at a conference in Kiev, marking 25 years since the world’s worst nuclear accident.

Officials at the conference were optimistic more funds would still be found to make the Chernobyl site safe.

31 Citi profit sags as revenue shrinks, expenses grow

By Maria Aspan, Reuters

Mon Apr 18, 10:01 pm ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Citigroup Inc’s first-quarter profit fell 32 percent as shrinking loans and poor trading results pressured revenue while expenses surged.

The results highlighted how the third-largest U.S. bank, which teetered on the brink of collapse in the financial crisis, has stabilized but is still struggling to generate real growth.

The results were better than expected, which supported Citigroup’s stock on a day when the U.S. equity market was falling. But like other big banks, the company’s profit came mainly from dipping into money previously set aside to cover bad loans.

32 S&P threatens to cut U.S. credit rating on deficit

By Steven C. Johnson, Reuters

Mon Apr 18, 6:20 pm ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Standard & Poor’s threatened Monday to downgrade the United States’ prized AAA credit rating unless the Obama administration and Congress find a way to slash the yawning federal budget deficit within two years.

S&P, which assigns ratings to guide investors on the risks involved in buying debt instruments, slapped a negative outlook on the country’s top-notch credit rating and said there’s at least a one-in-three chance that it could eventually cut it.

A downgrade, which would leave Germany and France with a higher rating, would erode the status of the United States as the world’s most powerful economy and the dollar’s role as the dominant global currency.

33 Euro zone crisis escalates on Greek debt fears

By Matthias Sobolewski and George Georgiopoulos, Reuters

Mon Apr 18, 4:47 pm ET

BERLIN/ATHENS (Reuters) – Fresh fears that Greece will have to restructure its mountain of debt, possibly as early as this summer, sent the euro and some euro zone bond prices tumbling on Monday as the bloc’s debt crisis escalated.

German government sources told Reuters in Berlin that they did not believe Greece, which sealed a 110 billion euro ($158 billion) bailout from the EU and IMF a year ago, would make it through the summer without a restructuring.

Market confidence was also hit by a new threat to Portugal’s pending bailout from the rise of an anti-euro party in Finnish elections.

34 Britain to send military advisers to Libyan rebels

By KARIN LAUB, Associated Press

23 mins ago

TRIPOLI, Libya – Britain is sending up to 20 military advisers to help Libya’s ragtag rebel force break a military stalemate with Moammar Gadhafi’s army, even as NATO acknowledges that airstrikes alone cannot stop the daily shelling of the besieged opposition-held city of Misrata.

Gadhafi’s troops have been pounding Misrata indiscriminately with mortars and rockets, a NATO general said Tuesday, and residents reported more explosions and firefights in Libya’s third-largest city. Hospitals are overflowing and 120 patients need to be evacuated from the city that has been under siege for nearly two months, the World Health Organization said.

The plight of Misrata’s civilians and the battlefield deadlock are raising new questions about the international community’s strategy in Libya. The leaders of the U.S., Britain and France have said Gadhafi must go, but seem unwilling to commit to a more forceful military campaign. NATO’s mandate is restricted to protecting civilians.

35 Britain to send military advisers to Libyan rebels

By KARIN LAUB, Associated Press

1 hr 1 min ago

36 Yemeni police open fire on protesters, killing 3

By AHMED AL-HAJ, Associated Press

2 mins ago

SANAA, Yemen – Yemeni security forces opened fire on anti-government protesters Tuesday, killing at least three amid rising international concern over the strategically located nation.

The United Nations Security Council met late Tuesday to discuss the deteriorating situation in Yemen, where rights groups say two months of protests calling for the president to step down have claimed 120 lives.

A Yemeni government delegation also headed to nearby Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, for talks with the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council over a proposal for President Ali Abdullah Saleh to transfer power to his deputy to end the crisis. The opposition held similar talks in Saudi Arabia Sunday.

37 Syria lifts hated law, but protesters unimpressed

By ZEINA KARAM and ELIZABETH A. KENNEDY, Associated Press

26 mins ago

BEIRUT – Syria did away with 50 years of emergency rule Tuesday, but emboldened and defiant crowds accused President Bashar Assad of simply trying to buy time while he clings to power in one of the most repressive regimes in the Middle East.

Repealing the state of emergency, which gives authorities almost boundless powers of surveillance and arrest, was once the key demand of the monthlong uprising. But the protest movement has crossed a significant threshold, with increasing numbers now seeking nothing less than the downfall of the regime.

“They don’t want to admit there’s a Syrian revolution,” said one protester in the city of Banias, among thousands who took to the streets in several cities and towns across Syria. “The people are not interested in small changes here and there anymore,” he said, asking that his name not be published out fear for his personal safety.

38 Japan nuke plant starts pumping radioactive water

By MARI YAMAGUCHI and YURI KAGEYAMA, Associated Press

Tue Apr 19, 11:03 am ET

TOKYO – The operator of Japan’s crippled nuclear plant began pumping highly radioactive water from the basement of one of its buildings to a makeshift storage area Tuesday in a crucial step toward easing the nuclear crisis.

Removing the 25,000 metric tons (about 6.6 million gallons) of contaminated water that has collected in the basement of a turbine building at Unit 2 of the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant will help allow access for workers trying to restore vital cooling systems that were knocked out in the March 11 tsunami.

It is but one of many steps in a lengthy process to resolve the crisis. Tokyo Electric Power Co. projected in a road map released over the weekend that it would take up to nine months to reach a cold shutdown of the plant. But government officials acknowledge that setbacks could slow the timeline.

39 Feds OK building plan for Mass. ocean wind farm

By STEVE LeBLANC, Associated Press

Tue Apr 19, 2:53 pm ET

BOSTON – A federal agency approved a construction and operations plan for the Cape Wind project off the Massachusetts coast, clearing the way for work to begin on America’s first offshore wind farm as early as this fall, U.S. Interior Secretary Kenneth Salazar announced Tuesday.

Approval by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement was required before construction of the proposed 130-turbine wind farm in Nantucket Sound could get under way.

The secretary said the Cape Wind project, which has already received other state and federal permits, could create 600 to 1,000 jobs and that nationwide the wind power industry had the potential for tens of thousands of jobs.

40 Obama rips GOP plan, yet sees hope for a debt deal

By BEN FELLER, AP White House Correspondent

27 mins ago

WASHINGTON – With America’s global credit standing suddenly in question, President Barack Obama insisted Tuesday that Washington has the political will to slash the massive U.S. debt despite fierce, fundamental differences with Republicans about how to do it.

Obama spoke hopefully of compromise with GOP lawmakers, yet still used a campaign-style town hall event to accuse the Republicans of offering a bleak future for the poor, young and elderly with their proposals.

The president seemed intent on assuring financial markets and the watching world that U.S. leaders will get their act together to address a suffocating debt – while at the same time trying to convince voters that only his plan would share the pain fairly.

41 US aims at its deadliest drug problem: painkillers

By CURT ANDERSON, AP Legal Affairs Writer

25 mins ago

MIAMI – The White House drug czar wants doctors, states and law enforcement working harder to stop America’s deadliest drug-abuse problem: highly addictive prescription painkillers. They are killing more people than heroin and cocaine combined as they foster a slew of illegal “pill mill” clinics centered in Florida.

The federal government on Tuesday announced its first-ever comprehensive strategy to combat the abuse of oxycodone and other opioids, aiming to cut misuse by 15 percent in five years. That goal may sound modest, but it would represent a dramatic turnaround: Emergency room visits from prescription drug overdoses doubled from 2004 to 2009, when they topped 1.2 million, according to federal health officials.

“To say we are going to do away with the problem in five years, we cannot do that,” said Dr. Roland Gray, medical director of the Nashville-based Tennessee Medical Foundation and a Food and Drug Administration adviser on addiction issues. “I think they are headed in the right direction.”

42 Obama administration eases pain of Medicare cuts

By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR, Associated Press

29 mins ago

WASHINGTON – Millions of seniors in popular private insurance plans offered through Medicare will be getting a reprieve from some of the most controversial cuts in President Barack Obama’s health care law.

In a policy shift critics see as political, the Health and Human Services department has decided to award quality bonuses to hundreds of Medicare Advantage plans rated merely average.

The $6.7 billion infusion could head off service cuts that would have been a headache for Obama and Democrats in next year’s elections for the White House and Congress. More than half the roughly 11 million Medicare Advantage enrollees are in plans rated average.

43 Feds OK building plan for Mass. ocean wind farm

By STEVE LeBLANC, Associated Press

Tue Apr 19, 2:53 pm ET

Approval by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement was required before construction of the proposed 130-turbine wind farm in Nantucket Sound could get under way.

44 AP IMPACT: Porn company is amassing 1-800 numbers

By DAVID B. CARUSO, Associated Press

Tue Apr 19, 8:45 am ET

NEW YORK – For years, teenagers across the U.S. could call a toll-free hotline if they had embarrassing questions about AIDS and safe sex. Dial the same number now and you get a recording of giggling women offering to talk dirty to you.

“We both have big appetites for sex,” they purr. “Pinch us and poke us. Spank us and tease us. We love it all. … Enter your credit card number now.”

Those naughty misdials, and countless others like them, appear to be no accident.

45 Egypt: At least 846 killed in protests

By MAGGIE MICHAEL, Associated Press

Tue Apr 19, 1:27 pm ET

CAIRO – At least 846 Egyptians died in the nearly three-week-long popular uprising that toppled long-serving President Hosni Mubarak, electrifying the region, a government fact-finding mission announced Tuesday.

In their report, the panel of judges described police forces shooting protesters in the head and chest with live ammunition and presented a death toll more than twice that of previous official estimates.

“The fatal shots were due to firing bullets at the head and the chest,” the report read, adding that “a huge number of eye injures,” filled hospitals, and hundreds lost their sight.

46 Mobs leave charred corpses, fear in north Nigeria

By JON GAMBRELL, Associated Press

1 hr 26 mins ago

KADUNA, Nigeria – The mobs poured into the streets by the thousands in this dusty city separating Nigeria’s Muslim north and Christian south, armed with machetes and poison-tipped arrows to unleash their rage after the oil-rich nation’s presidential election.

Muslim rioters burned homes, churches and police stations in Kaduna after results showed Nigeria’s Christian leader beat his closest Muslim opponent in Saturday’s vote. Reprisal attacks by Christians began almost immediately, with one mob allegedly tearing a home apart to look for a Quran to prove the occupants were Muslims before setting the building ablaze.

The rioting in Kaduna and elsewhere across Nigeria’s north left charred bodies in the streets and showed the deep divisions in Africa’s most populous nation, as politics mesh with religious and ethnic identity in the country of 150 million people.

47 Chernobyl donors conference falls short of goal

By JIM HEINTZ, Associated Press

Tue Apr 19, 10:59 am ET

KIEV, Ukraine – A donors conference seeking euro740 million ($1.1 billion) to clean up the Chernobyl disaster site fell well short of its goal Tuesday, but officials remained optimistic that money will be found to make the world’s worst nuclear accident site environmentally safe.

Pledges from nations and organizations at the conference totaled about euro550 million ($785 million), along with euro29 million ($41 million) from Ukraine.

The money is being sought to complete the construction of a gargantuan long-term shelter to cover the nuclear reactor that exploded April 26, 1986, and to build a facility to store waste from the plant’s three other decommissioned reactors.

48 A year after spill, Gulf Coast is healing, hurting

By CAIN BURDEAU, Associated Press

22 mins ago

NEW ORLEANS – It was the catastrophe that seemed to crush a way of life, an oil rig exploding in the darkness and plunging the Gulf Coast and its people into months of chaos.

One year after the nation’s worst offshore oil spill began, solemn ceremonies will mark the disaster Wednesday and underscore the delicate healing that is only now taking shape. Oil still occasionally rolls up on beaches in the form of tar balls, and fishermen face an uncertain future.

But traffic jams on the narrow coastal roads of Alabama, crowded seafood restaurants in Florida and families vacationing along the Louisiana coast attest to the fact that familiar routines are returning, albeit slowly.

49 Victims’ families observe OKC bombing anniversary

By TIM TALLEY, Associated Press

Tue Apr 19, 3:03 pm ET

OKLAHOMA CITY – Antonio Cooper Sr. walked across a field of empty chairs that represent the victims of the Oklahoma City bombing, occasionally stopping to read names inscribed in glass panes as he searched for the one dedicated to his 6-month-old son, Antonio Cooper Jr.

“I feel it’s a necessity to be here,” Cooper said Tuesday as he strapped a colorful bouquet of spring flowers to the chair bearing his son’s name on the 16th anniversary of the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, the worst domestic terror attack in U.S. history and the deadliest on U.S. soil before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The boy’s grandmother, Wanda McNeely, wept softly as she placed a beige stuffed bear on the metal chair that stands on the federal building’s former site. McNeely said the death of her grandson still evokes strong emotions and observing the anniversary of the April 19, 1995, attack doesn’t get easier with the passing years.

50 A decade post-riot, Cincinnati’s image recovering

By DAN SEWELL, Associated Press

Tue Apr 19, 12:07 pm ET

CINCINNATI – Mayor Mark Mallory has shown he has some winning pitches for Cincinnati.

Sporting dreadlocks and picking up dead animals on city streets in the CBS reality show “Undercover Boss,” appearing with Justin Bieber on ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live” and going on national TV to join in the fun over his remarkably bad ceremonial first pitch at a Cincinnati Reds opener, Mallory has gotten plenty of air time.

All that, he says, has allowed him to promote Cincinnati and help draw in new business and events – such as an NAACP convention – that showcased the city’s progress in the decade since racial riots brought an unwelcome spotlight and led to a national boycott called by local civil rights activists to exert pressure on police and encourage economic improvements.

Apr 19 2011

Punting the Pundits

By arlethamaselli0

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”

Paul Greenberg: An Oyster on the Seder Plate?

Last night I put an oyster on my Seder plate.

While I didn’t particularly want to put something traif atop that most kosher of dishes, this Passover falls on the first anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon blowout in the Gulf of Mexico. And since BP, the leaseholder of the failed well, seems intent with its new television ads on making us forget about the spill, I felt that something drastic was in order to help us remember. Combining the memorial powers of the Seder plate with the canary-in-the-coal-mine nature of the oyster seemed a good way to keep the disaster – and BP’s promises to clean up its mess – in mind.

Joe Nocera: Letting the Banks Off the Hook

Judging by last week’s performance, it sure looks as though the country’s top bank regulator is back to its old tricks.

Though, to be honest, calling the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency a “regulator” is almost laughable. The Environmental Protection Agency is a regulator. The O.C.C. is a coddler, a protector, an outright enabler of the institutions it oversees.

David Swanson: If Cairo Came to Kabul

Before Tahrir Square happened almost nobody predicted that President Hosni Mubarak would be forced out of office by a movement that didn’t pick up a gun. Had President Barack Obama expected that outcome, he might have publicly backed Mubarak’s departure before, rather than after, Mubarak stepped down.

Obama can be seen as overcompensating for that performance in Libya, but there he is placing faith in weapons. Anybody can do that. Egypt still has a long way to go on its path to a just society. But the question of whether Tunisian-Egyptian movements will find success elsewhere is the question of whether people can take the far more challenging step of placing trust in nonviolence.

Chris Hedges: Throw Out the Money Changers

We stand today before the gates of one of our temples of finance. It is a temple where greed and profit are the highest good, where self-worth is determined by the ability to amass wealth and power at the expense of others, where laws are manipulated, rewritten and broken, where the endless treadmill of consumption defines human progress, where fraud and crimes are the tools of business.

The two most destructive forces of human nature-greed and envy-drive the financiers, the bankers, the corporate mandarins and the leaders of our two major political parties, all of whom profit from this system. They place themselves at the center of creation. They disdain or ignore the cries of those below them. They take from us our rights, our dignity and thwart our capacity for resistance. They seek to make us prisoners in our own land. They view human beings and the natural world as mere commodities to exploit until exhaustion or collapse. Human suffering, wars, climate change, poverty, it is all the price of business. Nothing is sacred. The Lord of Profit is the Lord of Death.

Lauren Unger-Geoffroy: Dispatches From Cairo: Keeping Up With Egypt

For God’s sake, American press! Hurry up! Get up to speed on the Egyptian revolution evolution! It is changing every day.

You journalists do deserve thanks for your international outcry about the abuse of power against citizens, notably women. Faces were red, small ignorant aggressive heads fell, the military boys are sorry and on best behavior and under the eye of officers (for now, and of course this is not static!). People are sitting on the tanks and sharing soft drinks with their soldier brothers again. They’ve turned the page, we’re on to the next chapter-this is EGYPT, my brothers. The people are forgiving, they do not hold a grudge: THE LOVE IS BACK.

John Niochols: Rand Paul’s Right About This: ‘The Military Budget is Going to Have to be Cut’

Americans need not agree with everything that Kentucky Senator Rand Paul says or does to recognize that he is one of the few members of Congress who is contributing anything more than hype and hypocrisy to the current budget debate.

Unlike House Budget Committee chair Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, and the other “deficit hawk” pretenders who back bank bailouts and every new war that a president proposes, Senator Paul keeps pushing his colleagues to get real about addressing the real bloat in the budget.

Apr 19 2011

Morons

By rustymancuso581

President Obama’s Real Proposal (And Why It’s Risky)

Robert Reich

Thursday, April 14, 2011

The betting in the White House is that by 2014 the recovery will be in full force, and the economy will have grown so much that the ratio of deficit to the GDP will be in the range of 3 to 5 percent anyway. That means any across-the-board cuts wouldn’t have to be very deep.

…

Yet what are the chances of a booming recovery? The economy is now growing at an annualized rate of only 1.5 percent. That’s pitiful. It’s not nearly enough to bring down the rate of unemployment, or remove the danger of a double dip. Real wages continue to drop. Housing prices continue to drop. Food and gas prices are rising. Consumer confidence is still in the basement.

…

The underlying problem isn’t the budget deficit. It’s that so much income and wealth are going to the top that most Americans don’t have the purchasing power to sustain a strong recovery.

Until steps are taken to alter this fundamental imbalance – for example, exempting the first $20K of income from payroll taxes while lifting the cap on income subject to payroll taxes, raising income and capital gains taxes on millionaires and using the revenues to expand the Earned Income Tax Credit up to incomes of $50,000, strengthening labor unions, and so on – a strong recovery may not be possible.

Apr 19 2011

Minnows.

By shaniswayne8

crossposted from The Wild Wild Left

The crunch of the sand seemed intrusive to the pre-dawn still of the morning, as she dragged the row boat off of its little wooden dolly that served as a trailer for the riding mower. “If the mower didn’t wake up the world, this surely won’t,” she thought.

The little electric motor was blessedly quiet as she slipped around the first sand bar and headed out of the cove into the lake proper. The sky was still silver, the water inky with the beginnings of the fingerlets of mist striving to break free from the confines of their fellow molecules in the lake. It was already warm, going to be a scorcher. The air smelled soft and thick as the birds started announcing the arrival of the first light.

She cut the motor and drifted into the second sandbar at the point. She needed the stillness and to think. She slipped off the shirt and shorts covering her bathing suit and stepped off into the water. Water always felt like home. It brought the inner quiet that brought the clarity the city sounds always drove out. Out in the water, or in the woods; it was a different world, a world in which there was only you and the everything. It made one feel both infinitesimally small, and immeasurably connected.

There was no better place to be at the crossroads in your life.

Things were going well for her, financially stable at last. The fear that had been her constant companion for years had dissolved into distant memory like a yellowed photograph from a distant age.

She was doing better, but the world was doing much worse in so many ways. Like the fogies of old, the post-depression codgers who didn’t trust banks and hid money in their proverbial mattresses, most of her assets were cash. That too, was frightening in a world rapidly turning to shit.

That’s what brought her to the crossroads after all. How much is enough? To just settle into her bastion of security and improve the home she had, or to move on. Her child was about to graduate and they had talked long and deeply about what to do next.

The options lay all around her, she really could do anything now. All she knew is whatever it was, there would be water. Yummm.

The slap of a fish jumping up to feed in the now pink morning light brought her back to herself. The air thickened with humidity making her damp hair curl about her, so she twisted it up into a clip to stay cool.

“Mom, we could get your dream house up somewhere in the middle of nowhere, right on a lake. You could have your pontoon, your garden, your greenhouse,” he had suggested more than once. “We could even make it a few small cottages, and bring our friends to live there too.” A commune, dear God, she certainly had influenced his thinking through the years. But familiarity does breed contempt, and living cooperatively usually took more than most people were willing to offer. Still, what good paradise without people to share it with? Music, laughter, bonfires? Certainly, there was a place in the UP where some she knew already settled in, self-sufficient hunting and fishing.

She felt the wash of wander-lust come over her again. She had always dreamed of getting out. She didn’t want bigger houses, or fancier cars, she wanted less stuff to babysit. And clean, no less. It was all about the quality of life, the time spent more than the material world to her.

The leaves across the way now glistened emerald green as the sun breached the horizon. As the world-sounds got louder, she heard little but the vibration that underlay everything. The heartbeat of the Earth.

“What do I want?” She pondered, “Why is this not enough?” The dream had always included moving to somewhere with a Social Democracy, somewhere sane where her boy could have a future that didn’t include rape scanners, spying and there were actual jobs that didn’t pay slave labor. She wanted him to break away from the false reality that was American consumerism and Class War. Venezuela, perhaps, or Costa Rica. Costa Rica had elevation as well as gorgeous beaches and rivers. You could live like a king in a shack. They had visited more than once, and it never ceased to amaze her how much happier the people were, unstressed, and how the world seemed to not only provide food, but teemed with healthiness and balance.

But Michigan had its points too, and she felt an overwhelming sense of homesickness sitting there in the water. She had pushed off the spit, and just let the boat drift into the middle of the lake. The lull of the waves was hypnotizing. The seasons, the colors, the very rolly-polly greenness of it all. Its where her family of choice were.

It would be so nice to be able to walk out and step into the water without dragging around the block on a riding mower. This is where her family of choice lived. There certainly were enough houses for sale waterfront around now. But what future her child here? There was enough for college, and while they were now reasonably well off, they were far from rich, and the system was set to predatory now. Thats why the few investments she had made were all overseas, all in green companies that treated their workers well. Small returns, steady returns, safe returns without the risk of American Ponzi scheme investors.

This was home. “Hardwood floors, knotty pine paneling, maybe bust out a couple skylights…” She liked projects and could now make her little island pleasing to her senses. But the water called.

For not much more, she could have a stick house instead of the glorified trailer with all their inherent problems that a manufactured house was. And it could be on the lake.

But she was in the lake now? How much is enough, wherein does money become entitlement to the best real estate? How deep her own greed? What would that teach her son?

She dove back off into the lake, swimming as deeply as she could go into the cooler strata’s beneath the sun warmed surface. Cooler, clearer.

“Choosing not to decide IS a choice,” she reminded herself. She was getting older. She was already happy. But doing nothing seemed a cop-out, a capitulation to her dreams. There were simpler worlds. There were worlds in which the people cooperated, rather than competed. There were places that were not full of pollution and toxic waste. It was almost to the point she was afraid to fish this chain. It was getting over-fished anyway from the increasingly poor suburbanites depending on it for food.

She pulled the boat with solid strokes back to the shallows to be able to crawl back in with less effort. Yeah, she was getting older alright.

The sun was fully up now, bronzing her freckled shoulders. Her stomach rumbled as she finished the coffee she had brought along. She looked down into the water and saw the spawning bluegills guarding their shallow nests, saw the first swirls of minnows flashing by. And there it was. The answer came in a flash.

Home was wherever she was, after all. The world, every molecule of water had been everywhere else once. And it was all the same world. Here? North? Or far, far South, she would be okay.

She smiled and decided. This was no longer about her.

Let the boy decide his future. No matter what he decided, where ever it took them? She would create a home, a touch-base, a place he could come back to and feel home.

Its always the minnows that complete the chain.

1 comments

Apr 19 2011

On This Day In History April 19

By arlethamaselli0

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

April 19 is the 109th day of the year (110th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 256 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1775, the American Revolution beginsAt about 5 a.m., 700 British troops, on a mission to capture Patriot leaders and seize a Patriot arsenal, march into Lexington to find 77 armed minutemen under Captain John Parker waiting for them on the town’s common green. British Major John Pitcairn ordered the outnumbered Patriots to disperse, and after a moment’s hesitation the Americans began to drift off the green. Suddenly, the “shot heard around the world” was fired from an undetermined gun, and a cloud of musket smoke soon covered the green. When the brief Battle of Lexington ended, eight Americans lay dead or dying and 10 others were wounded. Only one British soldier was injured, but the American Revolution had begun.

First shot

Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his “Concord Hymn”, described the first shot fired by the Patriots at the North Bridge as the “shot heard “round the world.”

A British officer, probably Pitcairn, but accounts are uncertain, as it may also have been Lieutenant William Sutherland, then rode forward, waving his sword, and called out for the assembled throng to disperse, and may also have ordered them to “lay down your arms, you damned rebels!” Captain Parker told his men instead to disperse and go home, but, because of the confusion, the yelling all around, and due to the raspiness of Parker’s tubercular voice, some did not hear him, some left very slowly, and none laid down their arms. Both Parker and Pitcairn ordered their men to hold fire, but a shot was fired from an unknown source.

According to one member of Parker’s militia none of the Americans had discharged their muskets as they faced the oncoming British troops. The British did suffer one casualty, a slight wound, the particulars of which were corroborated by a deposition made by Corporal John Munroe. Munroe stated that:

“After the first fire of the regulars, I thought, and so stated to Ebenezer Munroe …who stood next to me on the left, that they had fired nothing but powder; but on the second firing, Munroe stated they had fired something more than powder, for he had received a wound in his arm; and now, said he, to use his own words, ‘I’ll give them the guts of my gun.’ We then both took aim at the main body of British troops the smoke preventing our seeing anything but the heads of some of their horses and discharged our pieces.”

Some witnesses among the regulars reported the first shot was fired by a colonial onlooker from behind a hedge or around the corner of a tavern. Some observers reported a mounted British officer firing first. Both sides generally agreed that the initial shot did not come from the men on the ground immediately facing each other. Speculation arose later in Lexington that a man named Solomon Brown fired the first shot from inside the tavern or from behind a wall, but this has been discredited. Some witnesses (on each side) claimed that someone on the other side fired first; however, many more witnesses claimed to not know. Yet another theory is that the first shot was one fired by the British, that killed Asahel Porter, their prisoner who was running away (he had been told to walk away and he would be let go, though he panicked and began to run). Historian David Hackett Fischer has proposed that there may actually have been multiple near-simultaneous shots. Historian Mark Urban claims the British surged forward with bayonets ready in an undisciplined way, provoking a few scattered shots from the militia. In response the British troops, without orders, fired a devastating volley. This lack of discipline among the British troops had a key role in the escalation of violence.

Nobody except the person responsible knew then, nor knows today with certainty, who fired the first shot of the American Revolution.

Witnesses at the scene described several intermittent shots fired from both sides before the lines of regulars began to fire volleys without receiving orders to do so. A few of the militiamen believed at first that the regulars were only firing powder with no ball, but when they realized the truth, few if any of the militia managed to load and return fire. The rest wisely ran for their lives.

65 – The freedman Milichus betrayed Piso’s plot to kill the Emperor Nero and the conspirators were all arrested.

1012 – Martyrdom of Alphege in Greenwich, London.

1529 – At the Second Diet of Speyer, a group of rulers (German: Furst) and independent cities (German: Reichsstadt) protests the reinstatement of the Edict of Worms.

1587 – Francis Drake’s expedition sinks the Spanish fleet in Cadiz harbor.

1713 – With no living male heirs, Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor, issues the Pragmatic Sanction of 1713 to ensure that Habsburg lands and the Austrian throne would be inherited by his daughter, Maria Theresa of Austria (not actually born until 1717).

1770 – Captain James Cook sights the eastern coast of Australia.

1770 – Marie Antoinette marries Louis XVI in a proxy wedding.

1775 – American Revolutionary War: The war begins with the battles of Lexington and Concord.

1782 – John Adams secures the Dutch Republic’s recognition of the United States as an independent government. The house which he had purchased in The Hague, Netherlands becomes the first American embassy.

1809 – An Austrian corps is defeated by the forces of the Duchy of Warsaw in the Battle of Raszyn, part of the struggles of the Fifth Coalition. On the same day the Austrian main army is defeated by a First French Empire Corps led by Louis-Nicolas Davout at the Battle of Teugen-Hausen in Bavaria, part of a four day campaign which ended in a French victory.

1810 – Venezuela achieves home rule: Vicente Emparan, Governor of the Captaincy General is removed by the people of Caracas and a Junta is installed.

1839 – The Treaty of London establishes Belgium as a kingdom.

1855 – Visit of Napoleon III to Guildhall, London

1861 – American Civil War: Baltimore riot of 1861, a pro-Secession mob in Baltimore, Maryland, attacks United States Army troops marching through the city.

1892 – Charles Duryea claims to have driven the first automobile in the United States, in Springfield, Massachusetts.

1919 – Leslie Irvin of the United States makes the first successful voluntary free-fall parachute jump using a new kind of self-contained parachute.

1927 – Mae West is sentenced to 10 days in jail for obscenity for her play Sex.

1928 – The 125th and final fascicle of the Oxford English Dictionary is published.

1942 – World War II: In Poland, the Majdan-Tatarski ghetto is established, situated between the Lublin Ghetto and a Majdanek subcamp.

1943 – World War II: In Poland, German troops enter the Warsaw ghetto to round up the remaining Jews, beginning the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

1943 – Bicycle Day – Swiss chemist Dr. Albert Hofmann deliberately takes LSD for the first time.

1945 – Diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and Guatemala are established.

1948 – Burma (now Myanmar) joins the United Nations.

1950 – Argentina becomes a signatory to the Buenos Aires copyright treaty.

1951 – General Douglas MacArthur retires from the military.

1954 – Constituent Assembly of Pakistan decides Urdu and Bengali to be national languages of Pakistan.

1955 – The German automaker Volkswagen, after six years of selling cars in the United States, founds Volkswagen of America in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey to standardize its dealer and service network.

1956 – Actress Grace Kelly marries Prince Rainier of Monaco.

1960 – Students in South Korea hold a nationwide pro-democracy protest against their president Syngman Rhee, eventually forcing him to resign.

1961 – The Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba ends in success for the defenders.

1971 – Sierra Leone becomes a republic, and Siaka Stevens the president.

1971 – Vietnam War: Vietnam Veterans Against the War begin a five-day demonstration in Washington, D.C..

1971 – Launch of Salyut 1, the first space station.

1971 – Charles Manson is sentenced to death for the Sharon Tate murders.

1975 – India’s first satellite Aryabhata is launched.

1984 – Advance Australia Fair is proclaimed as Australia’s national anthem, and green and gold as the national colours.

1985 – FBI siege on the compound of The Covenant, The Sword, and the Arm of the Lord (CSAL) in Arkansas

1985 – U.S.S.R performs nuclear test at Eastern Kazakhstan/Semipalatinsk.

1987 – The Simpsons premieres as a short cartoon on The Tracey Ullman Show

1989 – A gun turret explodes on the USS Iowa, killing 47 sailors.

1993 – The 51-day siege of the Branch Davidian building outside Waco, Texas, USA, ends when a fire breaks out. Eighty-one people die.

1993 – South Dakota governor George Mickelson and seven others are killed when a state-owned aircraft crashes in Iowa.

1995 – Oklahoma City bombing: The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA, is bombed, killing 168. That same day convicted murderer Richard Wayne Snell, who had ties to one of the bombers, Timothy McVeigh, is executed in Arkansas.

1997 – The Red River Flood of 1997 overwhelms the city of Grand Forks, North Dakota. Fire breaks out and spreads in downtown Grand Forks, but high water levels hamper efforts to reach the fire, leading to the destruction of 11 buildings.

1999 – The German Bundestag returns to Berlin, the first German parliamentary body to meet there since the Reichstag was dissolved in 1945.

Holidays and observances

* Beginning of the Independence Movement (Venezuela)

* Bicycle Day

* Christian Feast Day:

Ælfheah of Canterbury

Emma of Lesum

Expeditus

George of Antioch

Pope Leo IX

April 19 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)

* Dutch-American Friendship Day (United States)

* Earliest day on which First Day of Summer or Sumardagurinn fyrsti can fall, while April 25 is the latest; celebrated on the first Thursday after April 18. (Iceland)

* King Mswati III’s birthday (Swaziland)

* Landing of the 33 (Uruguay)

* National Health Day (Kiribati)

* Patriots’ Day (Traditional) (Massachusetts, Maine, and Wisconsin)

* Primrose Day (United Kingdom)

Apr 19 2011

Six In The Morning

By masum4049

Secret memos expose link between oil firms and invasion of Iraq

By Paul Bignell Tuesday, 19 April 2011

Plans to exploit Iraq’s oil reserves were discussed by government ministers and the world’s largest oil companies the year before Britain took a leading role in invading Iraq, government documents show.

Iraq’s burgeoning oil industry: Click HERE to view graphic (160k)

The papers, revealed here for the first time, raise new questions over Britain’s involvement in the war, which had divided Tony Blair’s cabinet and was voted through only after his claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of

Cuban party congress to outline radical economic and leadership change

Raúl Castro to give details of new party leadership and proposals that ‘guarantee the continuity of socialism in Cuba’

Associated Press

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 19 April 2011

Cubans are hoping to get further details of apparently sweeping economic changes and of a newly elected Communist party leadership – both sparsely reported in Cuban media – in a speech by Raúl Castro in Havana.

Widely expected to take over from his brother Fidel as the party’s first secretary, all eyes will be on the selection of his new No 2, which could signal a possible favoured successor.

Delegates approved about 300 economic proposals in an unanimous vote on Monday, including a measure that apparently recommends the legalisation of the buying and selling of private property.

Nigeria election: Thousand flee after riots

Thousands of people have fled their homes in northern Nigeria after riots prompted by the election of incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan.

The BBC 19 April 2011

In some towns residents slept in police stations for safety. The Red Cross says there have been significant numbers of casualties.

Mr Jonathan appealed for an end to the violence and imposed a 24-hour curfew.

His main rival Gen Muhammadu Buhari, a northerner, told the BBC the violence was sad, unwarranted and criminal.

Some of the rioters have been alleging ballot-rigging, but the former military leader said he wanted to disassociated himself and his party from the clashes.

Nato ‘may intensify’ Libya effort

irishtimes.com – Last Updated: Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Nato may have to intensify attacks on government forces to break the military stalemate in Libya, while the United Nations pushes for a humanitarian presence to help civilians trapped in the conflict.

Both approaches, aimed at carrying out a UN Security Council mandate to protect Libyan civilians from attack by president Muammar Gadafy’s troops, will focus on the western city of Misrata, the only west Libyan city still in rebel hands.

Hundreds of people are thought to have been killed in the seven-week siege of the port city, where thousands of foreign migrant workers are stranded. A rebel spokesman said at least 31 people were killed in Misrata on Sunday and yesterday by government shellfire and snipers.

NIMBY Protests Threaten Germany’s Energy Revolution

Electrical Resistance

By Michael Fröhlingsdorf

The black stork, ciconia nigra, is very shy, especially during the spring. Nobody can say with certainty whether it will return to the same place, safe and sound, after wintering in Africa. For example, it is impossible to tell whether it will build its nest in a particular tree in Germany’s Münden Nature Park in the state of Lower Saxony, near the town of Laubach. Neither can it be predicted whether a female will be there, nor whether there will be offspring as during the previous year.

Forester Jörg Behling would rather not even go and check. The precise location of the stork’s nest remains his secret anyway.

Letter from wife of heroic cop who gave his life on March 11

By TAKAYUKI KIHARA Staff Writer

Among the countless thousands who lost their lives on March 11 in the Great East Japan Earthquake was a dedicated police officer in his late-30s who was working for the Iwate prefectural police department.

This officer was expecting a promotion to section chief in the department’s criminal affairs division on March 15. The Asahi Shimbun received a letter from his wife. With her permission, her heartfelt and touching message appears below:

“As time passes on, our life is gradually regaining some semblance of normalcy, although things are still unstable. Yet, sharing my story about my husband is still a bit of a challenge because part of me still does not want to accept his death.

Six In The Morning

Apr 19 2011

DocuDharma Digest

By rustymancuso581

Regular Features-

Late Night Karaoke by mishima
Muse in the Morning by Robyn
Six In The Morning by mishima
Gha! by RiaD

Featured Essays for April 18, 2011-

On Dealing With The Debt & Fixing The Economy by Edger
US is Tax Free for B of A by TP_Alexander
On Fighting To Win, Or, A Tale Of Two Kinds Of Democrats by fake consultant
Sunday Train: HSR, Express and Locals Done Right by BruceMcF
The People Ignored or Ignore? by Betsy L. Angert
Grampy is not home by Lasthorseman

DocuDharma

Apr 19 2011

Whither America?

By latoshablacklock

(10 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

The other day, on April 15, veteran journalist, war correspondent and truthdig.com columnist Chris Hedges was interviewed on RT News about the state of American society, repeating his oft stated warnings about the long corporate assault on and takeover of politics, the seeming death of reason and critical thinking in public discourse, and the development of a feudalistic “totalitarian democracy” in which the vast majority of the population is reduced through a media manufactured state of ignorance, inability to think clearly, and entertainment dazed complacence to a state of serfdom as a renewable ‘resource’ for a capitalism defined by American and multinational big business, and critiquing from this perspective the US budget developments of the past few days.

The budget is closing American schools and libraries across the country while firing teachers and taking away collective bargaining rights, Hedges notes, while banks and the largest corporations are not paying any taxes, including Bank of America, Exxon Mobil, and GE. Protesters gathered on Saturday April 17 at New York City’s Union Square for the Sound of Resistance protests, part of the US Uncut tax weekend protests challenging the banks, most notably Bank of America, for avoiding paying taxes.

usuncut.org’s about page states that:

US Uncut is a grassroots movement taking direct action against corporate tax cheats and unnecessary and unfair public service cuts across the U.S. Washington’s proposed budget for the coming year sends a clear message: The wrath of budget cuts will fall upon the shoulders of hard-working Americans. That’s unacceptable.

Obama seeks to trim $1.1 trillion from the budget in the next ten years by cutting or eliminating over 200 federal programs, many dedicated to social services and education. For instance, it cuts in half funding to subsidize heating for low-income Americans; limits an expansion of the Pell grant program for students; and decreases Environmental Protection Agency funding by over 12%.

Meanwhile, Republicans are using their new House majority to slash spending even more brutally. The GOP has made it clear that they are bent on raiding funds for Social Security, Medicare, education; determined to kill health care reform; and gut needed investments in infrastructure, climate change and job creation, at a time when America needs it most.

These cuts will come on top of very painful austerity measures made at the state-level across our nation–worth hundreds of billions–since the recession began.

In short, budget cuts demonstrate that Washington has abandoned ordinary Americans.

What is making the situation worse is the ignorance of politicians and others leaping around he fringes. Hedges also reminds that the US is the only industrialized nation in the world that argues over the existence of evolution. Magical thinking, combined with a military superpower, is frightening, he says. “We invest emotional energy on the ridiculous and the sublime… the liberal class has been decimated… what used to be unconstitutional is now legal“, he says, pointing to illegal searches under the Patriot Act and corporate bailouts under the health care legislation. The rights and needs of citizens are being ignored in favor of corporations.

Whither America?

While all across the blogosphere and in mainstream media I watch people argue about which faction of the ‘corporatist party’ to elect in 2012, I’m reminded strongly here of something Chris Floyd wrote nearly four years ago, in September 2007:

Tomorrow is here. The game is over. The crisis has passed – and the patient is dead. Whatever dream you had about what America is, it isn’t that anymore. It’s gone. And not just in some abstract sense, some metaphorical or mythological sense, but down in the nitty-gritty, in the concrete realities of institutional structures and legal frameworks, of policy and process, even down to the physical nature of the landscape and the way that people live.

The Republic you wanted – and at one time might have had the power to take back – is finished. You no longer have the power to keep it; it’s not there.

[snip]

It won’t come with jackboots and book burnings, with mass rallies and fevered harangues. It won’t come with “black helicopters” or tanks on the street. It won’t come like a storm – but like a break in the weather, that sudden change of season you might feel when the wind shifts on an October evening: everything is the same, but everything has changed. Something has gone, departed from the world, and a new reality has taken its place.

As in Rome, all the old forms will still be there: legislatures, elections, campaigns – plenty of bread and circuses for the folks. But the “consent of the governed” will no longer apply; actual control of the state will have passed to a small group of nobles who rule largely for the benefit of their wealthy peers and corporate patrons.

To be sure, there will be factional conflicts among this elite, and a degree of free debate will be permitted, within limits; but no one outside the privileged circle will be allowed to govern or influence state policy. Dissidents will be marginalized – usually by “the people” themselves. Deprived of historical knowledge by an impoverished educational system designed to produce complacent consumers, not thoughtful citizens, and left ignorant of current events by a media devoted solely to profit, many will internalize the force-fed values of the ruling elite, and act accordingly. There will be little need for overt methods of control.

“Civil disobedience is the only tool we have left” Hedges says in the RT interview. It is a process of years and years and it is unclear what triggers a massive reaction, such as the demonstrations in Egypt. “The tinder is here but what triggers it will probably be fairly innocuous” he predicts…

“My fear is that if those of us who care about an open society and care about protecting democracy don’t begin to carry out acts of civil disobedience, this rage could be hijacked – or it already is being hijacked – by these proto-fascist movements gathered around the Tea Party that speak in the language of violence and bigotry; that celebrate the gun culture; that demonize Muslims, undocumented workers, homosexuals – Look, I’ve watched these kinds of movements grow in the breakdown of Yugoslavia and I don’t take this rhetoric lightly.”

Watch…