| If we were presenting climate targets that please the coal industry we'd be ashamed to show up in person, too. "The US will announce a target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions before next month's UN climate summit, according to a White House official. The target is expected to be in line with figures contained in legislation before the Senate - a reduction of about 17-20% from 2005 levels by 2020. The absence of a US target has widely been seen as the single biggest obstacle to agreement at the summit. President Barack Obama has not yet decided whether to attend the talks. At the weekend, the hosts of the Copenhagen conference announced that more than 60 heads of state and government had pledged to take part in the two-week negotiating session."
Are we still here? Hello? Is this thing on? "Engineers operating the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have smashed together proton beams in the machine for the very first time. The step was described as a "great achievement" for those working on the huge physics experiment. The low-energy collisions came after researchers circulated two beams simultaneously in the LHC's 27km-long tunnel earlier on Monday. The LHC will smash together beams of protons to shed light on the cosmos. Operated by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern), the LHC is the world's largest machine and will create similar conditions to those present moments after the Big Bang."
Before anybody screams "Terry Schiavo!", re-read the "brains scans revealed" part. "A Belgian man who doctors thought was in a coma for 23 years was conscious all along, it has been revealed. Medical staff believed Rom Houben had sunk irretrievably into a coma after he was injured in a car crash in 1983. The University of Liege doctor who discovered in 2006 that, although Mr Houben was paralysed, his brain was working, said the case was not unique .... It was only in 2006 that a scan revealed that Mr Houben's brain was in fact almost entirely functioning."
Sounds like somebody fell behind in his kickback payments. "Two Afghan cabinet ministers are under investigation for alleged corruption, the attorney general's office has said. Deputy attorney general Fazel Ahmad Faqiryar told the BBC he could not name names but said a further 15 former ministers were also being investigated. The Afghan government has been under intense Western pressure in recent weeks to do more to tackle corruption. President Hamid Karzai promised at last week's inauguration to do more to end what he called a culture of impunity."
Shouldn't we concentrate first on the terrorists who are coming here, rather than the ones who are leaving? "Prosecutors have announced charges against eight people as part of an investigation into young men leaving the United States to fight in Somalia. Those charged are accused of giving financial support to recruits, and of training and fighting with Somali Islamist militants. Up to 20 people are thought to have left Minnesota to fight with Somali militants in the last two years. All but one of the men are of Somali descent, officials say."
If revolution doesn't work out for you, try extortion. "A French court has jailed Tamil Tiger militants convicted of extorting millions of dollars from the Tamil community in France. Twenty-one people were found guilty, including the leader of the Tamil Tigers in France, Nadaraja Matinthiran, AFP news agency reported. He received the longest sentence - seven years in jail. The prosecution said the Tigers imposed what was described as a "revolutionary tax" on Tamil immigrants to France. Many of the immigrants were political refugees living in Paris and neighbouring areas."
Porn for astronomy geeks. "Nasa has released the latest raw images of Saturn's moon Enceladus, from the Cassini spacecraft's extended mission to the planet and its satellites. The images show the moon's rippling terrain in remarkable clarity. Cassini started transmitting uncalibrated temperature data and images during a flyby on 21 November. The data will help scientists create a highly detailed mosaic image of the southern part of the moon's Saturn-facing hemisphere, and a thermal map. This thermal map will help researchers to study the long fractures in the south polar region of the moon's surface, which have been dubbed "tiger stripes" and are warmer than the rest of the surface."
You couldn't wait a year, spend a little now to goose the economy? "For the first time in 10 years, the national credit card delinquency rate fell from the second to the third quarter, more evidence that Americans are trying to pay down their debt as the recession continues to claim jobs."
Does Mark still think she was worth it? "The S.C. Ethics Commission has charged S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford with 37 counts of breaking state ethics laws. The commission filed its charges last week but only released them Monday. Those charges allege that, in 18 instances, Sanford authorized, approved or allowed the purchase of business-class airfare so that he could travel to and within the continents of Europe, Asia and South America. Four of the flights cited involved a 2008 state Commerce Department trip to Brazil that Sanford extended to Argentina so that the married, two-term Republican governor could see his Argentine lover. State law bars the use of high-priced airfare by state officials."
No, Jack, slavering over executions doesn't make you a big man, either. "Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway, a U.S. Senate candidate, wants Gov. Steve Beshear to set executive dates for three men on Death Row. If Beshear sets execution dates for the three, it will double the number of executions in the state since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. The last to be executed was Marco Allen Chapman, executed via lethal injection in 2008."
Rising sea levels threaten coastal assets A rise in sea level of a half-meter would threaten $28 trillion in coastal assets according to a report prepared by the insurance industry. The report, released today, concludes that the world's diverse regions and ecosystems are close to temperature thresholds -- or "tipping points," and that the impacts of passing "Tipping Points" on the livelihoods of people and economic assets have been underestimated.
The way the hate breaks The annual FBI report on hate crimes is out, and it reveals a slight uptick in total hate-based attacks in 2008 from 2007, with over half of all hate-crimes racially motivated. Three-quarters of the racially-motivated attacks were against blacks.
Army tells Palin she can come but she can't showboat You may have heard that the VP candidate from last years losing ticket is on a book tour. One of her scheduled stops is Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, where the base exchange is reporting weak sales of the book so far. The Army will let her appear, but they have asked her not to make a speech, pose for photos or personalize the inscriptions she writes in the books. The Army is concerned about her insane rhetoric and political grandstanding against the Commander in Chief.
Overkill A teenager who died in a confrontation with police in New York City over the weekend had eleven bullet holes in his torso, neck and extremities according to a spokesperson for the medical examiners office. Dashawn Vasconcellos, 18, leaving a city park in Queens at about 11:30 p.m. Saturday by four officers in an unmarked car. He ran and was pursued by three officers who say he turned and pointed a gun at them, then failed to comply when he was ordered to drop it. The police fired a total of 14 shots, hitting him 11 times.
Klan outnumbered by protesters at Ole Miss A handful of KKK members gathered at Ole Miss to protest the decision to stop playing the song "From Dixie With Love" during football games but their demonstration lasted less than fifteen minutes and was dwarfed by hundreds of students who want nothing to do with the Klan and turned out to make this known.
Claims that the President is losing Independents have been greatly exagerated Or maybe it is just wishful thinking? "Support for Obama has not plummeted among independents, and that needs to be clarified before it becomes erroneous conventional wisdom. It especially makes no sense to compare independent support in January with independent support now, and conclude there has been a collapse of support. The pattern this fall, since Sept 1, has been quite stable among independents. Depending on which polls you use, a shade up or a shade down, but overall, not a huge trend either way over the past 3 months."
We think this is a great idea! Please, Republicans, go for it! Put a purity test in place that will withhold financial support and the party imprimatur from candidates who don't pass ideological muster. We wish to encourage this quest for purity among our republican brethren.
How low can they go? Low enough to mock and jeer a woman whose daughter-in-law and grandchild both died, because the young woman had no medical insurance and wasn't receiving regular prenatal care, and when she got sick she didn't get help, she just got sicker and sicker until she was admitted to an ICU via the ER with pneumonia and later died of sepsis.
That's unpossible! According to Faux Noise, the support for Palin, Romney and Huckabee comes to a staggering 193%. With numbers like that, either we're screwed or they are mathematically illiterate. We're going with a little bit from column a and a little bit from column b...
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Best New SoapBlox - 2008
