- Signs of the Times Archive for Tue, 08 May 2007 -



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U.S. News
When We Forget To Remember

Sheila Samples
Information Clearing House
2007-05-08 17:34:00

Preceding generations had every reason to believe those following them would step into the breach and continue the vigil over this nation's Constitutional freedoms and, if necessary, fight to preserve them. They believed, like George Washington warned -- "Government is a "force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action." And they remembered, from generation to generation. Unfortunately, those following our generation will have no such luxury.

We blew it.

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Wal-Mart starts pilot program to test use of solar power


AP
2007-05-08 17:11:00

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. announced Monday that it has launched a program to test the use of solar power at some of its operations.

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The disappearance of America's war-broken soldiers

James Carroll
The Boston Globe
2007-05-08 16:25:00

For reasons of national security -- namely, to shore up popular support for war policy -- the Defense Department has longed underplayed the tragic consequences of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Returning corpses (soon to number 4,000) are shrouded in secrecy. The suffering of the wounded (more than 26,000) is kept out of the nation's awareness.

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Pentagon identifies 35,000 more troops for Iraq


Reuters
2007-05-08 13:49:00

The Pentagon said on Tuesday it told another 35,000 U.S. soldiers they were in line to go to Iraq, a move that gives commanders enough forces to maintain a security crackdown there through at least the end of the year.
©Reuters



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MySpace Photo Costs Teacher Education Degree

Emil Steiner
Washington Post
2007-05-01 14:54:00

Teacher Sues For Diploma And Damages

The ongoing debate over how much an educator's out-of-school behavior should affect his or her job has take a decidedly youthful turn.

Teacher in training Stacy Snyder was denied her education degree on the eve of graduation when Millersville University apparently found pictures on her MySpace page [allegedly] "promoting underage drinking." As a result, the 27-year-old mother of two had her teaching certificate withheld and was granted an English degree instead. In response, Snyder has filed a Federal lawsuit against the Pennsylvania university asking for her education diploma and certificate along with $75,000 in damages.



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Twister aid hampered by Iraq commitment


The Australian
2007-05-08 14:51:00

WASHINGTON: US President George W. Bush has vowed to deliver federal aid to rebuild a tornado-ravaged town in Kansas, but relief efforts are likely to be hampered because much of the equipment usually positioned around the state to respond to emergencies is now in Iraq.


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UK & Euro-Asian News
Russians braced for ruling elite to 'fiddle' parliamentary election

Tom Parfitt
Guardian
2007-05-08 14:56:00

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- Heavy crop losses were reported throughout the Southeast on Wednesday, confirming fears that some fruit farms were nearly wiped out by last weekend's frigid temperatures.

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India largest arms importer in developing world

Rajat Pandit
Times of India
2007-05-08 11:06:00

If "official" proof was needed to establish India as the largest arms importer in the developing world, it came on Thursday. The country spent as much as Rs 44,009 crore (around $10.5 billion) on import of military hardware and software in the past three years.


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Russian analysts warily optimistic over Sarkozy win


RIA Novosti
2007-05-08 02:15:00

MOSCOW - Nicolas Sarkozy's victory in France's presidential polls Sunday is unlikely to influence the country's traditionally amicable relations with Russia, but they may lack warmth, Russian analysts said in post-election comments.

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Bush, Gingrich and Wall Street Journal really love Sarkozy

Sylvie Lanteaume
AFP
2007-05-07 20:14:00

Washington is hopeful that relations with Paris, strained over the Iraq war, will rebound under France's incoming president Nicolas Sarkozy who has a worldview close to President George W. Bush's.

Bush was among the first to congratulate Sarkozy on his decisive victory in Sunday's election against rival Segolene Royal, and the US press gave the election front page treatment.



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Hitler's Jewish Soldiers


University Press of Kansas
2007-05-07 19:17:00

On the murderous road to "racial purity" Hitler encountered unexpected detours, largely due to his own crazed views and inconsistent policies regarding Jewish identity. After centuries of Jewish assimilation and intermarriage in German society, he discovered that eliminating Jews from the rest of the population was more difficult than he'd anticipated. As Bryan Mark Rigg shows in this provocative new study, nowhere was that heinous process more fraught with contradiction and confusion than in the German military.

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Blair's ruinous legacy of beta children

Minette Marrin
The Sunday Times
2007-05-06 19:00:00

Legacy is a word that Tony Blair has made ridiculous, like many words that new Labour has robbed of meaning, such as choice or consultation. His legacy to this country's state school children, for all his bold promises, is not an education system that has been carefully enriched, but something that has been rashly squandered.

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Around the World
Hijackers inspired by impunity in U.S., Castro says


CBC News
2007-05-08 13:34:00

Cuban leader Fidel Castro has linked last week's airplane hijacking attempt with an American court's decision to free an anti-communist militant wanted in Cuba and Venezuela.

In his fifth editorial column since he disappeared from public view last year, Castro said the two Cuban army deserters were encouraged by impunity in the United States.

"The impunity and the material benefits that have been rewarded for nearly half a century for all violent action against Cuba stimulate such acts," he wrote in the editorial e-mailed to journalists Monday.

"It only takes the stunning liberation of a known terrorist and death again is visited upon our homes."

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Propaganda Alert! China, Russia Accused of Arming Sudan

ALEXA OLESEN
AP
2007-05-08 02:57:00

BEIJING - China and Russia are supplying arms to Sudan that are being used to fuel the violence in the Darfur region in violation of a U.N. arms embargo, a human rights group said in a report Tuesday. China and Russia quickly rejected the report and Sudan's government said it was "not justified."

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Flashback: Sudan conflict! Oil is behind struggle in Darfur

G. Dunkel
workers.org
2007-04-27 09:54:00

The mass media in the U.S., France and Britain are writing a great deal about the suffering in the Darfur region of western Sudan and the tensions between the Sudanese government and neighboring Chad. Not surprisingly, they write very little about the economic interests these three imperialist countries have in the oil recently discovered in this part of Africa.


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Venezuela criticizes DEA as 'new cartel'

Fabiola Sanchez
Associated Press
2007-05-08 07:39:00

CARACAS, Venezuela - Venezuela on Monday said it will not allow U.S. agents to carry out counter-drug operations in the country, accusing the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration of being a "new cartel" that aids traffickers.


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Update on Kenya Airways crash! Cameroon recovers plane crash bodies

Finbarr O'Reilly
Reuters
2007-05-08 02:43:00

MBANGA PONGO, Cameroon - Rescue workers in Cameroon pulled remains of victims from a fetid swamp on Monday two days after a Kenya Airways plane crashed, killing all 114 people on board.

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Big Brother

No new articles.


Axis of Evil
HOMELAND INSECURITY


Paul Levy
2007-05-08 16:03:00

If terrorists themselves had infiltrated our government and taken control of our country, they could not have done worse damage to our once great nation than George Bush and his regime have accomplished. Bush is just the latest incarnation - in amplified form - of self-serving, darker forces that have progressively insinuated themselves into our government over many administrations. Like his predecessors, Bush is a finger-puppet of the underlying financial-military-industrial crime syndicate that has animated and controlled our government for many years.

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George Tenet cashes in on Iraq, receives millions from arms industry

Tim Shorrock
Salon
2007-05-08 14:53:00

The former CIA chief is earning big money from corporations profiting off the war -- a fact not mentioned in his combative new book or heard on his publicity blitz.

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AIPAC on Trial - The lobby argues that good Americans spy for Israel

Justin Raimondo
The American Conservative
2007-05-07 14:02:00

Is there a First Amendment right to engage in espionage? Dorothy Rabinowitz seems to think so. Describing the actions of Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, two former top officials of AIPAC, the premier Israel lobbying group, who passed purloined intelligence to Israeli government officials, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist characterized them as "activities that go on every day in Washington, and that are clearly protected under the First Amendment." If what Rabinowitz says is true - if passing classified information to foreign officials is routine in the nation's capital - then we are all in big trouble.


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Russia's return to arms market to boost Israeli exports

Amnon Barzilai
Globes Online
2007-05-08 11:04:00

The return of Russia to the international arms market as a leading player alongside the US will greatly boost arms sales and contribute to a further increase in Israeli arms exports, says Giza Singer Even analyst Joshua Yeres in a report on Israel's defense industry.

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Flashback: Arms Unto the Nations; In its largest export market, Israel plays by very different rules than in any other sector


Globes Online
2003-04-29 10:44:00

Israel manufactures and exports a great many weapons. The subject almost never arises in public debate, and when it does, people yawn, as if the Jewish people have always been arms manufacturers and merchants.

After all, a nation living under the threat of war naturally makes weapons, and a country that makes weapons naturally looks for foreign markets for them. How large is Israel's arms industry and how much does it export? Government ministries classify this information as privileged, but it is possible to learn about the extent of exports from foreign institutes and publications that monitor the international arms market.


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Bush muddles his dates in welcoming Queen

Suzanne Goldenberg
The Guardian
2007-05-08 01:53:00

"After all, you've dined with 10 US presidents. You helped our nation celebrate its bicentennial in 17 - in 1976."


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Middle East Madness
The Great Wall of Baghdad may be going up, but there's still carnage on the streets

Patrick Cockburn
The Independent
2007-05-06 15:47:00

"It is a little safer in my district," said Omar, a driver from al-Khadra, a Sunni district in west Baghdad. "There are fewer bodies in the streets." His problem is rather that he does not know if the soldiers at the single entrance and exit to al-Khadra are doubling up as death squads.

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Mission Accomplished: Child survival rate dropping faster in Iraq than anywhere else in world


Canadian Press
2007-05-08 14:59:00

The chance that an Iraqi child will live beyond age five has plummetted faster than anywhere else in the world since 1990, said a report released Tuesday, which placed the country last in its child survival rankings.

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Residents and fighters foiled Israeli infiltration into Jenin


IMEMC
2007-05-08 14:30:00

Palestinian sources in the Jenin refugee camp, in the northern West Bank city of Jenin, reported that residents and fighters managed to uncover, on Sunday, an infiltration of undercover forces into the camp.


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USS Nimitz in Persian Gulf


Press TV Iran
2007-05-08 12:40:00

The USS Nimitz aircraft carrier and strike group have arrived in the Persian Gulf to support ground troops operating in Afghanistan and Iraq.


The Nimitz will replace the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, which left the region on Friday after serving with the US Navy's Fifth fleet based in Bahrain, the US Navy said in a statement on Tuesday.


The US Fifth Fleet has its headquarters in the Bahraini capital Manama, and is responsible for an area of some 6.5 square kilometers.


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U.S. warns of heavier casualties in Iraq

Dean Yates and Aseel Kami
Reuters
2007-05-07 20:10:00

BAGHDAD - The United States said on Monday its military was expecting to suffer heavier casualties as it pushed into "tougher neighborhoods" in a bid to crush insurgency in Iraq.



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U.S. allows Shiite militia security role

Lauren Frayer
Associated Press
2007-05-07 20:05:00

BAGHDAD - The mosque of Imam Kadhim, the most revered Shiite shrine in Baghdad, is a tempting target for Sunni insurgents. To protect it, Iraqi and U.S. troops rely on the Mahdi Army, the same Shiite militia that Washington considers a threat to Iraq's stability.



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The Loan Gunmen
Frenzy of risky mortgages leaves path of destruction

Peter Henderson, Tim McLaughlin, Andy Sullivan and Al Yoon
Reuters
2007-05-08 13:59:00

On September 15, 2004, the clock was ticking on Lelon DeWitt's life and his subprime loan.

When the transmission repairman underwent open-heart surgery, he told his mortgage broker he didn't want a housing loan that was in the works.

"I didn't know if I was going to be dead or alive," DeWitt later recounted.

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The crash is coming and it could be soon

Will Hutton
The Observer
2007-05-06 13:45:00

It is crazy and it defies logic. The continuous rise in house prices over the last five years has become one of the facts of British life. It divides the generations: parents often sit on hundreds of thousand of pounds of equity propped up by their children's willingness, as first-time buyers, to incur mortgage debt on a scale never before dreamt of. It has made millionaires many times over of those who have plunged into the buy-to-let market. We are obsessed by house prices.

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25,000 Ford workers are gone; more still to leave


Bloomberg News
2007-05-08 11:57:00

Ford said 25,000 U.S. hourly workers have left the company since it offered buyouts and early retirements in September to shrink excess capacity and cut record losses.

As many as 12,000 more may leave by the end of the year, and new offers will be made to about 1,800 Ohio workers after the company said today it will close a casting factory and suspend work at an engine plant for about a year.

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Deutsche Bank Profit Rises 30% on Securities Unit

Elena Logutenkova and Aaron Kirchfeld
Bloomberg
2007-05-08 07:25:00

Deutsche Bank AG, Germany's biggest bank, said first-quarter profit jumped 30 percent on record earnings from its securities unit.

Net income rose to 2.12 billion euros ($2.89 billion), or 4.28 euros per share, from 1.64 billion euros, or 3.11 euros, a year earlier, the Frankfurt-based bank said today. Profit topped the highest estimate of 16 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.

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The Living Planet
Earthquake shakes Montana, felt in Idaho

JODY ZARKOS
Idaho Mountain Express
2007-05-08 13:47:00

An earthquake registering a magnitude of 4.6 struck Western Montana at 9:46 a.m. Tuesday morning and the shaking was felt as far away as Boise, Idaho, and Salt Lake City, Utah, according to data from the United States Geological Survey.



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Floods and drought: Lloyd's assesses climate change


Reuters
2007-05-07 11:53:00

Lloyd's of London, the world's oldest insurer, offered a gloomy forecast of floods, droughts and disastrous storms over the next 50 years in a recently published report on impending climate changes.

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Storm off South Carolina could become first named storm of season


Local6.com
2007-05-07 22:24:00

Tropical storm-like gusts of 50-plus mph winds were recorded with a rogue low-pressure system that could strengthen into the season's first named storm later this week.

Local 6 reported that a buoy off the Carolina coast recorded winds of 43 mph with gusts of 54 mph as it moved south to the Florida coast.



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Weekend freeze in Southeast U.S. damages crops

Katrina A. Goggins
AP
2007-05-07 22:18:00

Heavy crop losses were reported throughout the Southeast on Wednesday, confirming fears that some fruit farms were nearly wiped out by last weekend's frigid temperatures.

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Health & Wellness
Farmed fish fed contaminated material

Andrew Bridges
Associated Press
2007-05-08 15:30:00

Farmed fish have been fed meal spiked with the same chemical that has been linked to the pet food recall, but the contamination was probably too low to harm anyone who ate the fish, federal officials said Tuesday.

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Parents claim diet helps autism, doctors debunk

HAYLEY MICK
Globe and Mail
2007-05-08 16:47:00

TORONTO - Tina Szenasi's quest to cure her two autistic sons began with soy milk.

Ms. Szenasi switched to the milk substitute after reading testimonials from other parents who said their autistic children's symptoms had improved - even disappeared - when dairy and wheat were eliminated from their diet.

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Long wait for coeliac diagnosis


BBC News
2007-05-08 06:41:00

People with coeliac disease are waiting an average of 13 years to be diagnosed, a poll has revealed.

The gut disorder is caused by gluten intolerance, and can lead to bone problems, infertility or bowel cancer.

The charity Coeliac UK says some of the 800 patients surveyed reported seeing their GP almost 30 times before being diagnosed.

But it says the condition can be easily detected by GPs using a quick and simple blood test.

People with coeliac disease can experience a range of symptoms, including as bloating, diarrhoea, chronic fatigue, breathlessness, depression and weight gain.


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Science & Technology
Archeologist finds tomb of King Herod, Hebrew University says


The Associated Press
2007-05-08 13:24:00

An Israeli archeologist has found the tomb of King Herod, the legendary builder of ancient Jerusalem and the Holy Land, Hebrew University said late Monday.

The tomb is at a site called Herodium, a flattened hilltop in the Judean Desert, clearly visible from southern Jerusalem. Herod built a palace on the hill, and researchers discovered his burial site there, the university said.

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Is this REALLY proof that man can see into the future?


This Is London
2007-05-08 10:53:00

Do some of us avoid tragedy by foreseeing it? Some scientists nowbelieve that the brain really CAN predict events before they happen

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Chandra sees brightest supernova ever


physorg.com
2007-05-08 02:57:00

The brightest stellar explosion ever recorded may be a long-sought new type of supernova, according to observations by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and ground-based optical telescopes. This discovery indicates that violent explosions of extremely massive stars were relatively common in the early universe, and that a similar explosion may be ready to go off in our own Galaxy.

©Credit: Illustration: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss; X-ray: NASA/CXC/UC Berkeley/N.Smith et al.; IR: Lick/UC Berkeley/J.Bloom & C.Hansen
The brightest stellar explosion ever recorded may be a long-sought new type of supernova, according to observations by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and ground-based optical telescopes. This discovery indicates that violent explosions of extremely massive stars were relatively common in the early universe, and that a similar explosion may be ready to go off in our own Galaxy.




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New Study! Fears over additives in children's food

Felicity Lawrence
The Guardian
2007-05-08 01:42:00

Food safety experts have advised parents to eliminate a series of additives from their children's diet while they await the publication of a new study that is understood to link these ingredients to behaviour problems in youngsters.

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Our Haunted Planet
Researchers Find Meteorite Fragments In Altai


Physorg
2007-05-08 10:50:00

A group of Russian researchers looking for a meteorite that fell in January in the Altai Territory in southern Siberia has found an extraterrestrial substance which could be meteorite fragments, a coordinator said Monday. "We have collected about 50 samples, and vitreous threads (traces of comet substance) were discovered in the first of them using a microscope," Vadim Chernobrov of Kosmopoisk (space search) said.


"We will reach the meteorite site in a few days, but rocks which are probably meteorite fragments have already been found," Chernobrov said.


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Possible sasquatch sighting - B.C. man sees 'the beast'


Edmonton Sun
2007-05-07 23:53:00

CRANBROOK, B.C. - A Cranbrook resident says he was just beginning his early-morning shift as a sand truck/snowplow driver for a highways maintenance contractor when he saw what he now calls "the beast".

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Don't Panic! Lighten Up!
Man takes driving test drunk, fails


Reuters
2007-05-08 12:52:00

A German man failed his driving test after attempting the examination while three times over the legal alcohol limit, police said Tuesday.


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'Cocaine' in a can pulled from shelves nationwide


AP
2007-05-07 12:24:00

A Las Vegas company has agreed to pull the energy drink Cocaine from stores nationwide amid concerns about the product's name, a partner in the company said Monday.

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Don't do it Malaysia, Don't do it!


Reuters
2007-05-08 11:48:00

Malaysian customs officials plan to send more than 196,000 cans of smuggled beer gurgling down the drain after confiscating them from a gang that specialised in reselling duty-free drinks to pubs and grocers.

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Spiders in my ear


AP
2007-05-07 18:31:00

A 9-year-old boy who complained of an earache was a little surprised when the doctor told him that a pair of spiders had tried to make a home out of him.

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