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5/14/2005

The Echoes of Ho Chi Minh in Iraq :.

"You can kill 10 of my men for every one I kill of yours, yet even at those odds, you will lose and I will win."

---Ho Chi Minh
More than 125 insurgents and nine U.S. Marines were killed in Operation Matador, a weeklong hunt for insurgents along the Syrian border that ended Saturday, the U.S. military said.


5/13/2005

Farmers Affected by High Cost of Fuel :.

The Central Valley of California has become a wasteland due to industrialized agriculture. The collapse of this form of deranged, toxic food production couldn't happen fast enough:

The farmers who grow many of the fresh fruit and vegetables for the nation's dinner tables say the rising cost of oil is making this one of their toughest planting seasons yet.

And some say the cost just might shove them out of business.

Drivers nationwide have had to pay more as political volatility and increased demand worldwide push up gas prices, said Ron Planting, an economist with the American Petroleum Institute. A barrel of crude oil sells for as much as $55, up from $35 this time last year.

But farmers are caught in a "three-way whammy," said Keith Nilmeier, who just finished harvesting his 185 acres of oranges outside Fresno. He cites the costs of the diesel that runs farming equipment, the fertilizer made by combining nitrogen with the hydrogen in natural gas, and the transportation of crops to the local supermarket.



U.S. Soldiers and Police Caught Smuggling Cocaine :.

Sixteen U.S. soldiers and law enforcement officers in Arizona agreed to plead guilty on Thursday to taking more than $220,000 in bribes to smuggle cocaine from Mexico to major cities such as Phoenix and Las Vegas.

The guilty pleas announced by federal prosecutors and the FBI came after a sting operation in which undercover FBI agents posed as drug dealers and solicited help from members of the Arizona Army National Guard, local police, prison guards and a border inspector.

Prosecutors said the defendants used government vehicles and used their authority to prevent police and border searches that could have threatened what they believed to be a major cocaine smuggling operation.

The defendants agreed to plead guilty to having transported more than 560 kilograms (1,200 pounds) of cocaine as part of an undercover FBI operation that began in 2001.

In August 2002, several defendants drove two Army Humvees to a secret desert airstrip and unloaded about 60 kilograms (130 pounds) of cocaine from a plane flown by undercover FBI agents.

They then drove the shipment to a resort hotel in Phoenix where they were paid off by another agent posing as a drug kingpin, prosecutors said.

In another instance, one of the defendants working as a border inspector in Nogales, Arizona, waved a truck he thought was carrying cocaine through the border without an inspection, prosecutors said.

The defendants, who have agreed to cooperate with investigators, were expected to enter their pleas in federal court in Tucson, Arizona, on Thursday afternoon.

Each faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.


5/12/2005

U.S. Army Offers Shorter Enlistment to Recruits :.

The U.S. Army will allow recruits to sign up for just 15 months of active-duty service, rather than the typical four-year enlistment, as it struggles to lure new soldiers amid the Iraq war, a general said on Thursday.

Maj. Gen. Michael Rochelle, U.S. Army Recruiting Command head, also said this was "the toughest recruiting climate ever faced by the all-volunteer Army," with the war causing concern among potential recruits and their families and the economy offering civilian job prospects.



Iraq: U.S. Marine Squad Wiped Out :.

In 96 hours of fighting and ambushes in far western Iraq, the squad had ceased to be.

Every member of the squad -- one of three that make up the 1st Platoon of Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 25th Regiment -- had been killed or wounded, Marines here said. All told, the 1st Platoon -- which Hurley commands -- had sustained 60 percent casualties, demolishing it as a fighting force.

"They used to call it Lucky Lima," said Maj. Steve Lawson, commander of the company. "That turned around and bit us."


5/10/2005

Real ID Passes U.S. Senate 100-0 :.

Write your Senator... Uh...



Up to 5% of Farmed Salmon Deformed :.

Just have a clone burger instead!

Up to five percent of farmed Atlantic salmon in the world's top producer Norway suffer deformities perhaps linked to growing too fast or pollution, a scientist said on Tuesday.

Deformities -- often a curved spine because young farmed fishes' flesh can grow too fast for their skeletons -- also affect fish in other nations and other farmed species like rainbow trout or sea bream in pens from Norway to Chile.



Real Wages Fall at Fastest Rate in 14 Years :.

Real wages in the US are falling at their fastest rate in 14 years, according to data surveyed by the Financial Times.

Inflation rose 3.1 per cent in the year to March but salaries climbed just 2.4 per cent, according to the Employment Cost Index. In the final three months of 2004, real wages fell by 0.9 per cent.

The last time salaries fell this steeply was at the start of 1991, when real wages declined by 1.1 per cent.

Stingy pay rises mean many Americans will have to work longer hours to keep up with the cost of living, and they could ultimately undermine consumer spending and economic growth.

Many economists believe that in spite of the unexpectedly large rise in job creation of 274,000 in April, the uneven revival in the labour market since the 2001 recession has made it hard for workers to negotiate real improvements in living standards.



Six Bodies Found at Rural Ranch Home After 911 Call :.

I wonder if Jeff will do a write-up on this one... His recent essay, Babyland, might be worth keeping in mind as you read today's news.

The full text from the Los Angeles Times follows:

Six people were found shot to death today in rural Riverside County at the home of an investigator for the county's district attorney, authorities said.

A handgun was found near the body of David McGowan, police said. The five other victims, including three children, all members of his family, were found shot in the head in their beds.

"Mr. McGowan was found downstairs, along with the three juveniles," said Riverside County Sheriff Bob Doyle this afternoon.

"The two women were found upstairs. All but Mr. McGowan were found in their beds. Their beds were undisturbed. The house was undisturbed," Doyle said. "There did not appear to be any forced entry in the home. There were no signs of a struggle whatsoever."

Authorities did not identify the two dead women at a midafternoon press conference. Doyle said the three children were a boy, age 14, and two girls, ages 8 and 10.

"There was a handgun that was found in close proximity to Mr. McGowan," Doyle said.

McGowan had worked for the district attorney for five years.

McGowan and Karen McGowan are listed as the owners of the home, which is in Garner Valley near Lake Hemet.

Doyle refused to speculate on what had occurred, but he did assure residents that no one is being sought in connection with the deaths.

"It could be a homicide, or it could be a homicide-suicide," Doyle said. "For now, we are handling it as a homicide."

He said there was "nothing to indicate" that the slayings were retribution connected to McGowan's work as a deputy district attorney investigator for five years or to his stints as a policeman in Cathedral City and Desert Hot Springs.

"We are trying to find next of kin to validate this situation," Doyle said. "We want to interview anyone and everyone who knows this family to put the puzzle together. There's a lot to process with multiple deaths. We're going to be real methodical, and we don't want to miss anything."

Marianne Shumway, a neighbor who lives about a half mile away, said she is familiar with the McGowan family,

"She was a very busy person," Shumway said of Karen McGowan. "She had a lot to do with her horses and activities she was into."

"She was very work-oriented. They were a very private family."

Shumway said the family includes two McGowan teenagers who live with the family, and an older son in the military.

The county's top prosecutor, Dist. Atty. Grover Trask, canceled an appointment in San Diego to respond to the emergency, according to his office.

Investigators are exploring the possibility that the deaths were the result of gunfire connected to a domestic dispute, a source said.

The Riverside County Fire Department received an emergency call from someone at the ranch home, on Devil Ladder Road near Lake Hemet, at 4:43 a.m.

At nearby Lake Hemet Market, clerk Sasha John, 23, said, "We're all in shock. It's pretty bad. People have been coming all day, and we've been getting lots of calls."



Bilderberg on CNN :.

Why not?

Man, I remember, just a few years ago, I'd tell people about Bilderberg and some of them would say, "Bullsh*t! You're making it all up!"

* yawn *



New Mexico Plays Home To Terror Town, U.S.A. :.

I wonder if designated free speech zones are allowed?

With its pristine Spanish-style houses and flowering gardens, this remote town seems an unlikely place to be the most dangerous spot in the United States. But for the past six months it has been under siege by terrorists.

First, a man took some hostages and holed up inside No. 1 Mesquite St., threatening to blow up the place. A SWAT team had to shoot its way inside and take him out. Then came the discovery of a pipe-bomb factory in a neighbor's kitchen, and an explosion on a bus in which eight were killed or wounded. The attacks are simulations, part of a national training program for emergency personnel such as police, paramedics and border patrol officers. For the roughly 20 families who live in this government-contracted town and the several dozen others who live on the outskirts, however, the events are sometimes almost too real.

"It feels like I'm in war," said Trent Johnson, 17, who was born and raised here. Helicopters fly overhead in the middle of the night. Sometimes while he is going to school or running errands he and his parents must make their way past a maze of ambulances, fire engines and Humvees. "It's kind of freaky to see people in uniform walking down your street with M-4s."

Mercifully, evidence of the attacks does not last long. After each crisis, a cleanup crew arrives, quietly sweeping up shattered glass, replacing smashed doors, patching cracked walls. Their job is to rewind the clock, returning the town to the way it was before the attack, as if nothing had happened.


Next come a few quiet days, sometimes a few quiet weeks. Then the attacks begin all over again.



Internet Attack Called Broad and Long Lasting by Investigators :.

How this show is up at all is the major miracle... Not the fact that a teenager potentially ripped off the source code for the "big irons" that run the Internet:

The incident seemed alarming enough: a breach of a Cisco Systems network in which an intruder seized programming instructions for many of the computers that control the flow of the Internet.

Now federal officials and computer security investigators have acknowledged that the Cisco break-in last year was only part of a more extensive operation - involving a single intruder or a small band, apparently based in Europe - in which thousands of computer systems were similarly penetrated.

Investigators in the United States and Europe say they have spent almost a year pursuing the case involving attacks on computer systems serving the American military, NASA and research laboratories.

The break-ins exploited security holes on those systems that the authorities say have now been plugged, and beyond the Cisco theft, it is not clear how much data was taken or destroyed. Still, the case illustrates the ease with which Internet-connected computers - even those of sophisticated corporate and government networks - can be penetrated, and also the difficulty in tracing those responsible.


Related: Cisco Systems IOS Source Code Stolen

Research Credit: ME


5/9/2005

California to Ban Hunting Over Internet :.

But hunting Iraqis with the SWORDS terminator robot is just fine for the U.S. military:

Wildlife regulators took the first step Tuesday to bar hunters from using the Internet to shoot animals, responding to a Texas Web site that planned to let users fire at real game with the click of a mouse.



Off Topic: Make Your Own Pruno :.

This is dark, man, really dark... And funny in some unexplainable way. If you laugh during certain scenes in Apocalypse Now, or when you see President Bush giving a live press conference, you're the kind of person who will get a kick out of this:

By most accounts, pruno isn't something a normal human would want to drink, so potent that two gallons is said to be "a virtual liquor store," enough to get a dozen people mindblowingly wasted. And while it tastes so putrid that even hardened prisoners gulp it down while holding their noses, they'll go to incredible lengths to make it, whipping up batches from frosting, yams, raisins and damn near everything.

Research Credit: EG


5/8/2005

Computers Now Grading Students' Writing :.

Student essays always seem to be riddled with the same sorts of flaws. So sociology professor Ed Brent decided to hand the work off - to a computer.

Students in Brent's Introduction to Sociology course at the University of Missouri-Columbia now submit drafts through the SAGrader software he designed. It counts the number of points he wanted his students to include and analyzes how well concepts are explained.

And within seconds, students have a score.




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