Beijing - Shanghai and Beijing are becoming new lands of opportunity for recent American college graduates who face unemployment nearing double digits at home.

Even those with limited or no knowledge of Chinese are heeding the call. They are lured by China's surging economy, the lower cost of living and a chance to bypass some of the dues-paying that is common to first jobs in the United States.

"I've seen a surge of young people coming to work in China over the last few years," said Jack Perkowski, founder of Asimco Technologies, one of the largest automotive parts companies in China.

When it happened in 1994, researchers were quick to reassure us what a once-in-a-millenia event it was. One paper "estimated that the time interval between impacts of 0.3 km diameter comets on Jupiter is approximately 500 years, whereas the interval between the impact of 1.6 km comets is about 6000 years." How appropriate then that the Universe should mock us wonderfully by arranging for the return of a similar-sized impact event exactly 15 years later!

But why should anyone be surprised? Just how long has NASA known about the high risk of impacts? While the 40 anniversary of the moon landing was being celebrated this month we turned to Victor Clube for long forgotten information about the moon landings:

"The Apollo astronauts planted seismometers on the Moon, primarily to measure Moonquakes. But they got diverted from their business by the discovery that objects, which they didn't expect at least, were hitting the Moon. These seismometers regularly recorded large bodies hitting the Moon like the meteoroids which I've just been describing. And this diagram is an illustration of the record of the incidence of these meteoroids, integrated over a period of about seven years until NASA switched the machine off- in exasperation, apparently, because they didn't think it was telling us anything very interesting.

© Unknown
Schumacher-Levy approaching Jupiter 15 years ago

Nevertheless, for seven or eight years they accumulated this data, and what you see here is the integral result of the observations, per day, through the years, throughout the whole of this seven or eight year period. And, of course, it looks a little like the skyline of Oxford, where I come from, but never mind, the prominent thing is that you see one remarkable peak in the middle which is, in fact, centered on about the 30th June. And all that peak, in fact, coincides with the products of one year's observing. So in that one year, 1975, in fact, we had a flood of objects hitting the Moon, which actually were also hitting the Earth, and they all were present, apparently, in the same stream, as was responsible for the Tunguska object in 1908 which, as you recall, also arrived the end of June. In fact, this end of June is an interesting time. It's the time when we pass through the Taurid stream, going in one direction. And the other direction is, in fact, the beginning of November, and you can see some signs of that in this same diagram."

Animals are being killed and maimed by a "demented psychopath'' on the New South Wales central coast, sparking fears the crimes will escalate.

In the past two weeks three mutilated kangaroos, two beheaded parrots, several savaged rabbits and what is thought to be a decapitated dog or sheep have been found, The Sunday Telegraph reported.

The animals were dumped in water or at the water's edge at separate sites at Point Clare and Avoca Lagoon.

Concerned local police have assigned an officer to collate the incidents and investigate links.

One of the men who robbed and murdered Shirley van Rensburg and then dismembered her body before burying it in a warthog burrow was declared a dangerous psychopath 17 years ago.

Correctional Services authorities were warned against his release on parole after a Grahamstown High Court judge ruled that Wayne Nass, 34, needed therapy while in custody. The judge made the comments as he sent Nass to jail for 20 years for murder and robbery on February 14 1992.

He was released on parole in December 2004.

On Friday, the Johannesburg High Court found Nass and his co-accused Boyce Matya, 48, guilty of the murder of Van Rensburg eight months after Nass had been paroled - on August 20 2005.

California has over $17 billion on deposit in banks that have refused to honor its IOUs, forcing legislators to accept crippling budget cuts. These austerity measures are unnecessary. If the state were to deposit its money in its own state-owned bank, it could have enough credit to solve its budget crisis with funds to spare.

"We make money the old-fashioned way," said Art Rolnick, chief economist of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve. "We print it." That works for the federal government's central bank, but states are forbidden by the Constitution to issue "bills of credit," a term that has been interpreted to mean the state's own paper money. "Sacramento is not Washington," said California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in May. "We cannot print our own money." When legislators could not agree on how to solve the state's $26.3 billion budget deficit, the Governor therefore did the next best thing: he began paying the bills with IOUs ("I Owe You's," or promises to pay bearing interest).

If you are looking for some good bedtime reading full of juicy tales of crime and corruption, cliff-hanging episodes, fiendish villains, damsels in distress, besieged heroes, complex threads of action and more, you don't have to look any farther than the recently published Conyers Report: Reining In the Imperial Presidency - Lessons and Recommendations Relating to the Presidency of George W. Bush. It took me a few days (what with doing other things) to get through its over 400 pages (including appendices, references and notes), and I can tell you that it is some seriously page-turning stuff. This is especially interesting considering that it could have been a very dry document, being put together by the House Committee on the Judiciary.

But it isn't dry. Just reciting the plain facts (with notes and references) of the presidency of George W. Bush lays bare the pathology of American politics in a way that no amount of dramatic writing could improve upon. I highly recommend reading it in full!

Actually, I was going to try to condense it for the site here but there was just SO much great, turgid prose that could NOT be left out that, by the time I was done "condensing," I still had over 200 pages of the main text! I kid you not, you will NOT believe some of the stuff that is in this document!

Of course, it's not like we didn't know this stuff already - it's sure been gone over thoroughly on the alternative press (and somewhat, in the mainstream press) for the past 8 years - but the fact that it now exists as an official document produced by the U.S. House of Representatives turns all that "alternative news" into a different kind of data. It's official now. I mean, really REAL.

Reading this report does give one a bit of hope that there ARE individuals in the murky halls of government who can actually see what is going on, have normal human reactions to it (like being appalled, disgusted, shocked, etc) and declare that such behavior is absolutely unacceptable in any way, shape, form or fashion. The problem is, as I mused while reading it, exactly what effect can it possibly have in a conclave of pathological types where the inmates have taken over the asylum? Probably not much.

A close confidante of Government scientist Dr David Kelly has demanded a new investigation into his death.

Mai Pederson, a US Air Force linguist who served in Iraq with Dr Kelly's weapons inspection team, has called on Attorney General Baroness Scotland to carry out a 'formal, independent and complete review' into the 'suspicious circumstances' of his death.

Ms Pederson's intervention comes a week after The Mail on Sunday disclosed that a team of doctors are mounting a legal challenge to the Hutton Inquiry's conclusion that he committed suicide.

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi said yesterday that Iran should be left to pursue a peaceful nuclear energy programme, and that his own nation was close to making an atomic weapon before it voluntarily shut down its secret project in 2003.

Gaddafi's comments were made in an address at the Non-Aligned Movement summit in Egypt. Libya and Iran are members of the 118- nation organisation.

He said the UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, should judge whether Iran is trying to acquire nuclear weapons , as the US, other Western countries and Israel claim. Iran denies the charges and insists its nuclear programme is for power generation.

"I have to say that I am highly driven, and I am looking for that special someone that has the same qualities. ... I am also looking for a woman to be a leader and take the initiative and make things happen for herself, and not blaming others for incidentals that might happen along the way during the pathway of life. ... If you want to be my copilot on the magic carpet ride it's carry on only, that means no stop signs, no stop lights, and throttle up." -- from Jeffrey Marsalis' Match.com profile

He called himself "Dr. Jeff." His profile on Match.com said he was a trauma surgeon. In one online photograph, he wore hospital scrubs, with a stethoscope. In another, he wore Navy whites and held a sword. There was one of him in an astronaut's suit. One sitting in a cockpit.

The death of Government scientist David Kelly returned to haunt Labour today as a group of doctors announced that they were mounting a legal challenge to overturn the finding of suicide.

Dr Kelly's body was found six years ago this week in woods close to his Oxfordshire home, shortly after he was exposed as the source of a BBC news report questioning the grounds for war in Iraq.

Unusually, no coroner's inquest was held into his death. The only official verdict has come from the Hutton Inquiry, commissioned by Tony Blair, which concluded that Dr Kelly, 59, died from loss of blood after cutting his wrist with a blunt gardening knife.