The Nightowl Newswrap

by: BG & YD bring you the news

Tue Sep 21, 2010 at 23:15:00 PM CDT

Has there ever been an international sporting event that didn't cost the host country way more than it received in benefits? "Senior officials in Delhi have insisted that the Indian capital will be ready to host the Commonwealth Games. The comments come after the athletes' accommodation was criticised and branded as unfit for human habitation. International delegates have said the facilities are filthy and unhygienic, just days before athletes arrive. A senior official said Westerners had "different standards" of hygiene, but that the site was being thoroughly cleaned before the opening. Delegates who visited the tower blocks where athletes will live during the games had described them as filthy, with rubble lying in doorways, dogs inside the buildings, toilets not working and excrement "in places it shouldn't be"."

We could get behind the death penalty if only it were applied to people who really deserve it. Like Erik Prince of Blackwater. The Thieves of Wall Street. CIA torturers. War Profiteers. Mortgage Fraudsters. "The US Supreme Court has refused to halt the Virginia execution of Teresa Lewis, scheduled for Thursday. She is the first woman to face the death penalty in the US for five years. Teresa Lewis, who has learning difficulties, conspired with two men to kill her husband and stepson in 2002, leaving a door unlocked so the gunmen could enter the family home. Two of three women in the nine-judge court voted to halt the execution. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor voted against. but there was no other comment from the court. Virginia Governor Robert McDonnell has said he will not commute the death penalty, despite claims Lewis, who pleaded guilty, has learning disabilities."

New rule: All economy-related appointees must be approved by Elizabeth Warren. "President Barack Obama's top economics advisor, Larry Summers, is to leave the administration at the end of the year. Under Mr Summers, the council has been at the heart of the government's economic policy making. The president praised him for "brilliance, experience and judgement" at "a time of great peril" for the US. But the departure of Mr Summers, who is returning to a post at Harvard University, is the latest from the White House economy team."

Probably matched by violent right-wing freakazoid and white power groups right here at home. "The sharp growth in extremist websites is making recruitment much easier for al-Qaeda, according to Interpol head Ronald Noble. "The threat is global, it is virtual and it is on our doorsteps," he said. Mr Noble told a conference of police chiefs in Paris there were 12 sites in 1998 and 4,500 by 2006. He said tackling radicalisation had been made far harder by the internet because many of the activities involved were not criminal."

This was supposedly fixed 25 years ago. Looks like your basic criminal organization to us. "The head of the Vatican Bank, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, is under investigation as part of a money-laundering inquiry, police sources say. Prosecutors also seized 23m euros ($30m; £19m) from the bank's accounts with another smaller institution. The inquiry was launched after two suspicious transactions were reported to tax police in Rome. The Vatican said it was "perplexed and astonished", and expressed full confidence in Mr Tedeschi. The Vatican Bank, known officially as the Institute for Religious Works (IOR), was created during World War II to administer accounts held by religious orders, cardinals, bishops and priests."

Already, worst year for casualties yet. "Nine members of the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force have died in a helicopter crash in Zabul province, southern Afghanistan. All nine were US soldiers, it was announced later. A Nato soldier, an Afghan soldier and a US ivilian were also injured, Isaf said. The Taliban said it shot down the aircraft but Isaf said there had been no enemy fire in the area. At least 529 foreign troops have been killed so far this year in Afghanistan. With more than three months to go, 2010 is already the deadliest year since the US-led invasion in 2001, according to figures collated by the website iCasualties."

Let's hope it's like the others and just requires money. "French intelligence agents are looking into a claim by al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb to have kidnapped seven foreign workers at a uranium mine in Niger. A statement purportedly by the militant group said it would issue demands to the French government "shortly" and warned it against "anything stupid". France has sent troops to hunt for the hostages, five of whom are French. The others are from Togo and Madagascar."

Sounds like a fascinating account that should be taken with a large grain of salt. "Former Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt has written for the first time about her six-year ordeal of being held hostage by Farc rebels. In a book, Ms Betancourt recounts how she was repeatedly beaten, humiliated and threatened with death while being kept prisoner in Colombia's jungle. The book, Meme Le Silence A Une Fin (Even Silence Has An End), is released on Tuesday in several countries. It has caused a row in Colombia over what she wrote about fellow captives."

There's a science-fiction epic in here somewhere. "Scientists say they have uncovered firm evidence that Mars's biggest moon, Phobos, is made from rocks blasted off the Martian surface in a catastrophic event. The origin of Mars's satellites Phobos and Deimos is a long-standing puzzle. It has been suggested that both moons could be asteroids that formed in the main asteroid belt and were then "captured" by Mars's gravity. The latest evidence has been presented at a major conference in Rome. The new work supports other scenarios. Material blasted off Mars's surface by a colliding space rock could have clumped together to form the Phobos moon. Alternatively, Phobos could have been formed from the remnants of an earlier moon destroyed by Mars's gravitational forces. However, this moon might itself have originated from material thrown into orbit from the Martian surface."

We'll stick with the Sea of Reeds explanation. "The parting of the Red Sea, as described in the Bible, could have been a phenomenon caused by strong winds, according to new computer simulations. The account in the Book of Exodus describes how the waters of the sea parted, allowing the Israelites to flee their Egyptian pursuers. Simulations by US scientists show how the movement of wind could have opened up a land bridge at one location. This would have enabled people to walk across exposed mud flats to safety. The results are published in the open-access journal Plos One."

Former Bell, CA city officials arrested today after salary scandal "The Los Angeles Times is reporting that at least eight city officials from Bell, California, have been arrested today, with L.A. County District Attorney Steve Cooley set to announce criminal charges related to the officials inflating their salaries. ... Some City Council members in the working class California community were allegedly pulling in $96,000 a year for part-time elected positions, amounting to 20 times the national average for similar positions. Former City Manager Robert Rizzo, who was reportedly among those arrested, banked nearly $800,000 a year. The DA expanded the probe in July to include allegations of voter fraud and possible conflicts of interest involving city businesses."

We call them "concrete thinkers" "In the ranks of captured and confessed terrorists, engineers and engineering students are significantly overrepresented. Maybe that's a numerological accident. The sociologist Diego Gambetta and the political scientist Steffen Hertog don't think so. ... In a paper published last year in The European Journal of Sociology, Gambetta and Hertog argue that the engineer-terrorist connection is part of the answer: it is a new window onto what Gambetta calls the "hidden logic" of society. Though the difference in susceptibility is very small - "it's like saying the probability that you will be struck by lightning is one in a million," Gambetta says, "and the probability for an engineer to be struck by lightning is four in a million" - it is, they say, real. ... For their recent study, the two men collected records on 404 men who belonged to violent Islamist groups active over the past few decades (some in jail, some not). Had those groups reflected the working-age populations of their countries, engineers would have made up about 3.5 percent of the membership. Instead, nearly 20 percent of the militants had engineering degrees."

We take our cookstove for granted, and we bet you do, too But one-in-five people in the world are sickened by breathing the particulate matter given off by using inefficient and primitive cooking methods. That is why the State Department, the EPA, the DOE and Health and Human Services, along with the NIH and the CDC, have launched "100 x 20" - a program intent on converting 100 million househoulds around the world to effecient, cooking energy by 2020.

Someone's head needs to roll Someone who works for Saxby Chambiss in his Atlanta office left a comment on the awesome blog Joe. My. God. today, expressing the posters belief that "all faggots must die." Chambliss quickly admitted that the comment did come from his office, but the Senator has not accepted responsibility for his staffer nor has anyone been punished as yet.

Every time a Habeas claim is rejected, a piece of America's soul dies "A federal judge has rejected the habeas corpus petition of a Kuwaiti man who was designated during the Bush years for a war crimes trial here, raising the government's win-loss scorecard to 17-38 in Guantánamo unlawful detention challenges. ... Fayiz Kandari, 35, has long claimed he was in Afghanistan at the time of his capture as a charity worker -- not a terrorist. ... But the Pentagon alleges he trained with al Qaeda and around the time of the 9/11 attacks ``served as an advisor to Osama bin Laden'' and produced al Qaeda tapes that recruited men to jihad. ... U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly rejected Kandari's unlawful detention petition in a one-page order Sept. 15. Her full ruling was still classified Monday."

There is only one state capable of this level of dipshittery. When Texas get's it's ig'nant on, it's in a class unto itself. "Led by a conservative majority, the Texas Board of Education is stepping into the national media furor over a rising tide of anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States, gearing up to vote later this week on whether or not "pro-Islamic bias" should be banned from school books. ... Granted, there's not any previously existing "pro-Islamic bias" in Texas texts, nor are there any Muslims on the board of education, let alone in the state's government. ... "But the possibility that could happen is a concern for conservative activist Randy Rives. He ran unsuccessfully for State Board of Education this year," reporter Nathan Bernier explained in a recent audio segment for KUT, Austin's public radio station. ... "Rives wrote a resolution that was put on the State Board of Education agenda this week by some socially conservative members of the board. ... "'There's a lot of people that think that, and I think rightfully so, that the key to terrorism comes from this jihad philosophy,' Rives said. 'We want to make sure there's not something in our textbooks to influence our young people's minds that takes them toward a path we don't want them to go,' he said. When asked specifically whether he meant jihad, Rives answered, 'Yes.'""

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