Best-Selling U.S. Author Leon Uris Dies at the age of 78. May he rest in peace.

Castro apparently falls victim to Miami radio prank.

Excerpt:

Cuban leader Fidel Castro apparently fell victim to a prank by a Miami radio station, and used crude expletives against Miami talk show hosts who led him to believe he was on the phone with his Venezuelan counterpart Hugo Chavez.

The recording of the conversation was repeatedly aired since Tuesday by the Spanish-language radio station El Zol 95.7, which had already played a similar prank on Chavez in January, pretending Castro was on the line.

The make-believe Chavez sought help from Castro in tracking down a suitcase containing secret documents he said he lost during the leaders' recent trip to Argentina.

I've heard of similar pranks in the past. I'm surprised there isn't a better protocol between politicians to ensure they are speaking to the right person... I tried to surf the site of Elzol to try and find a clip, but couldn't really understand anything. If someone finds a clip, please give us the url in the comments. Thanks!

George Will has written some final words about David Brinkley, who died last Wednesday, one month before his 83rd birthday.

Brinkley was a great moderator. He had class, humor and a stateliness missing from the news airwaves these days.

This news item: Archaeologists Unearth Stonehenge Bodies was unexpected...

Beethoven's Ode to Joy, his 9th symphony sells for a lot of money!

Warren Buffet has some comments about dividend taxes.

Penn Station was Pandemonium today. I didn't see it mentioned in my usual news headlines page but pulling up NY1.com showed the story...

Excerpt:

A portion of Penn Station was evacuated for more than two hours Tuesday after police received reports of a suspicious package aboard an Amtrak train, but train service was restored after law enforcement officials removed the package.

Looks like a NY Times Columnist, Paul Krugman and Fox News commentator, Neil Cavuto are bickering publicly....

Yahoo reports: Only 10 Percent of Big Ocean Fish Left. Unfortunately, I'm not surprised. I've seen a few shows on how fishing is being done, 100 mile nets in the ocean, with lots of collateral damage of big fish that weren't the target. Killing 100 million sharks a year, much of which is simply for the fin. What population of species can handle those numbers year after year?

A man in western England had an "emergency" when his wife refused to cook dinner. So he Called the Police. He was quoted as saying:

"My wife's left me with two salmon sandwiches which was left over from last night, and I'm sat in the chair here and she's out there decorating. She won't put any food on or anything for anybody."

Denis Horgan has been shut down by the editor of The Hartford Courant. Blogs, journalists and the media are still working out some kinks in their relationships together...

Update, here's an article about the story:

Hartford Paper Tells Employee to Kill Blog.

The Ask Yahoo question of the day is: Do surgical masks really help prevent the spread of SARS?

Click on the link to get the long answer. The short answer is no.

The University of Chicago has put up a website cataloging the Lost Treasures From Iraq.

A reporter for the Boston Globe was caught with looted "souvenirs" from Iraq. The saddest part is the comment made by the reporter to a customs official:

''He didn't think it was a big deal,'' the official said of Crittenden. ''He said all the embedded reporters were doing it.''

kuro5hin.org discusses the World's largest oil reserve, Canada!!

Dr. Robert Atkins has died at 72 years of age, following injuries he sustained in a fall on an icy NY sidewalk on April 8th 2003.

I was surfing some more and ran into this news: Update on Dr. Atkins. It seems he fell on the sidewalk in front of his Atkins Center. He had a major blow to his head and after surgery to remove a clot from his brain, he has not yet recovered...

I surfed onto Lying Media Bastards where I read about this link...The Scotsman.com reports that the US gives Israel 3 years to quit occupied Arab land. If this is true, I think it is pretty big news.

This Back In Iraq 2.0 blog is very impressive so far. You really get to learn a lot more about what is going on in Iraq. I wish I had found it sooner...

OK, now I'm really confused. For my last entry, I checked out BLOGGER (a.k.a. Pyra), recently bought by Google. They have a section on the left, "BLOGS OF NOTE". On top of the list is HGHExperiment followed by Where is Raed. HGH looked interesting, so I clicked on it. I got a "not found" page.

So I tried to see if Google had any cache on it or some pages within that domain. They didn't have a cache, but they did have an archive index page. So I went there and it was kind of jumbled up, with a few links on it. Like a corrupt page. But I clicked on one of the links that pointed to a December 2002 archive page and it worked.

I was shocked to find a url that appeared to have the HGH Experiment front page content on it but it pointed to http://hghexperiment.blogspot.com/2002_12_01_dear_raed_archive.html, which looks like the url that an archive of Mr. Salam Pax would have, except it's on the HGH Experiment page. Weird.

A few minutes later, I tried the homepage of HGH Experiment again and this time it worked. It showed the same page as I had seen on that December archive page. So then I clicked on the december 2002 archive page again, and instead of the HGH Experiment front page, it showed the actual December archive of Salam Pax and still does.

Another thing, going back to that archive index page, it NOW shows the proper archive for HGH Experiment, instead of the link to http://hghexperiment.blogspot.com/2002_12_01_dear_raed_archive.html, aka Salam Pax page, which is what it showed before...

My guess is that there is some technical glitch and that during a server move or backup someone mistakenly moved some files into the wrong directory...but I am kind of wondering...

This murder case is amazing. That family must have gone through a lot...the relief they must feel after losing hope of seeing their daughter again and then have her show up out of the blue alive and well must be indescribable.

Wired news reported this story about a blogger who was simply copying stories from Stratfor. Amazing that it took so long for him to get caught. Also amazing how much traffic the technique got him.

Yahoo! News - Journalists Killed, Abducted in Iraq...

Oh no...

Life imitates art. They just had an internet movie short called 405 with the same plot.

A lot of journalists seem to be in harm's way in Iraq. I didn't know that there was a journalist, Stuart Hughes who had an active weblog from Northern Iraq. He was injured and will be losing a foot as a result. His colleague died. Get well soon Stuart.

Good to see politicians joining the world of blogging. As long as they actually pay attention to the interactive nature of this medium rather than simply letting their employees handle the whole thing, it may put them more in touch with the public.

Good news for me and reminders for you. For you, remember to Spring Forward and reset your clocks. For me I'm just glad that my microwave, alarm clock and answering machine will now have the correct time again ;)

ABC news tells a funny story: Tassie's Bagdad under friendly fire from e-mails. I say as long as the co-ordinates in the U.S. Bombers are alright they don't need to worry. Now if someone in a bomber mistyped Bagdad into the computer for the missile destination, then I would worry...

I don't know if anyone mentioned this before and I only now just noticed this, but Dear Raed is not just a blogger, he's also a Palindrome.

Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart always shows their correspondents reporting directly from the event, simply using a filmed backdrop like the weather people do...it turns out that a reporter was actually faking being in Iraq.

AP reports that NYSE Revokes Credentials for Al-Jazeera. Officials are saying it was for security reasons...

For those that need to hear the latest war news immediately, the best place on the web for that right now is The Command Post - A Warblog Collective.

Al Jazeera - is now in English.

Not that this is such a big deal, but The Smoking Gun has obtained the video that BBC had to apologize for...

Excerpt:

The British Broadcasting Corporation has apologized to the White House for its broadcast Wednesday night of a live Oval Office feed showing President George W. Bush preparing for his speech announcing the start of the Iraqi war. Administration officials are apparently steamed because Bush was seen having his hair primped and readied by a female stylist armed with a comb and hairspray. Below you'll find a screen grab from the BBC feed as well as a 10-second snippet from the unauthorized TV transmission.

Halliburton is in the news again.

So far, The Baghdad Blogger seems to be for real.

U.S. Scraps Turkey Troop Deployment. After all the negotiations, Turkey finally decided to allow US overflights right before moving in some troops into Iraq to protect their interests. However, they realized that giving the US overflight permission could endanger their ability to move in so they added restrictions. The U.S. decided to give up on the Northern front.

Maureen Dowd wrote an article in the NY Times: A Golden Couple Chasing Away a Black Cloud, that's being widely discussed on the net these days...

Thanks to 2 Tigers Online: Tools for Nuclear and Radiation Emergencies by Two Tigers Radiological for the banner. If you ever want to know the warning status of our HomeLand Security, simply click on the permalink for this entry. Today the warning level is:

The internet answers all questions. Today's episode: What time is it?

Instapundit points to USA Today and Mitch Berg, who suggest George Will as a replacement for Stephanopoulos on This Week, which is tanking.

It was so obvious to everyone except for the lunatics who were behind the decision to put Steph there that it would fail. I never knew Brinkley's politics, but always looked forward to his witty little comment at the end of the show. He never made too much talk about his feelings on how the political game is played in Washington. His face said it all. The way he moved the show along as politician after politician would dodge questions like the pros they are and deliver their talking points despite Donaldson's tenacity, was poetic.

I'm not too sure that Will will ever take over, nor do I know if it would play to his strengths....

I remember reading years ago during speculation about Brinkley retiring one day, that Will would never consider taking over the hosting chair nor would ABC News let him due to his independent yet paid status on ABC News. Maybe someone can find the reference or knows how the hierarchy works at ABC News...

Although perhaps one day they will find someone who can make This Week successful again, it will never be the same. It will be like The Tonight with Jay Leno is Vs. what The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson was.

Jackson dangles child off balcony.

Unfortunately, Michael Jackson made the news again today. I hope what I will say doesn't come off the wrong way...

It's sad to see the direction he's taken... I do hope he gets some help, because it's clear that he is unbalanced.... I saw the video... I don't know what is considered to be dangerous to children but I don't think what he did was appropriate at all. It's easy to judge people when you don't have a camera on you 24/7, sometimes people do stupid things...but based on what I've seen lately, it does seem like he could use some counseling... if not for himself, then for his kids..

Adbusters is sponsoring the Buy Nothing Day...

To commemorate the 100th Anniversary of the West Wing, the White House is offering a Virtual Tour.

A sleuthing father tracked down his daughter's cello using deductive reasoning. BTW, if you live near South Bend, IN, and your jewelry is missing or stolen, you may want to contact the police there...they have some unidentified jewelry in custody...

This is a scary story: JS Online: Seeking a link in disappearances.

Miss Cleo hangs up her phones.

Stradivarius sold at Christies

A rare instrument by the world's most celebrated violin-maker Antonio Stradivari fetched nearly two-thirds of a million pounds at auction on Wednesday but failed to make its reserve price.

The violin, one of only 500 remaining, went to a private collector for $966,600.

It had been expected to sell for up to 850,000 pounds at the sale in London by auction house Christie's but was hampered by its lack of concert performance history.

As I've mentioned before on DT, a personal experience taught me to start questioning how news stories become news stories. In brief, a company I worked for had vaporware..nothing there at all and was not noticed at all either. Until they hired a PR firm and got some tremendous press at one of the premiere publications for business news, I guess it won't take you long to guess the name. Anyways, they covered this non-product in such detail that I was amazed, because it was completely fabricated.

So when instapundit pointed out that one newspaper was going open source, I was intrigued. The idea being that the media would explain where the story came from. ;)

P.S. this issue cuts across political boundaries and types of news, be it entertainment, business, politics or what have you...

A reader of Art Bell sent pictures of Al Qaeda prisoners being transported:

The pentagon is trying to find the source. I don't think they are very happy about it. For the rest of the pictures click here.

Haven't heard people talking about it much yet but I think we can expect more tomorrow...

Squirrel terrorises town

A squirrel is spreading terror in a Cheshire town where it keeps attacking people.

Its latest victim was a two-year-old girl, newspapers reported on Thursday.

Children have been attacked, grown men chased and residents of Knutsford are fearful of letting their kids out to play, the Times newspaper said.
The rogue squirrel's latest attack was on toddler Kelsi Morley who was bitten on the forehead.

I find this article confusing. They say Bubonic plague is not contagious but then the way they describe how it spreads sounds contagious to me...

I hope the couple turn out to be ok....

Couple in NY Evaluated for Bubonic Plague Wed Nov 6,10:12 PM ET NEW YORK (Reuters) - A couple visiting from New Mexico are believed to have contracted bubonic plague and if confirmed this would constitute the first case of the illness in New York City in more than 100 years, health officials said on Wednesday.

The two are "being evaluated for plague," Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden told a news conference. The male patient, 53, is a presumptive positive for the illness and is in critical condition, he said. The female patient, 47, is in stable condition, officials said.

There is no risk to New Yorkers as bubonic plague is not contagious, Frieden said. Officials are "confident" the couple's exposure to the plague occurred in New Mexico, he said.
"All the epidemiological evidence suggests that these infections were naturally acquired in New Mexico," Frieden said. The source of the infection is "believed to be rodents or rodent fleas near their home," he said.

Plague is spread among people when an infected person has plague pneumonia and coughs droplets containing the plague bacteria into air that is breathed by a non-infected person.

Don't they know? We need a picture of the ring to go with the story.

Lt. Gov. Frank Brogan made sure - win or lose - that Election Night was going to be memorable.

As ballots were being counted in the governor's race, Brogan dropped to one knee, pulled out a diamond ring and asked Courtney Strickland to marry him.

My vote, Thumbs up!

Now we just need to wait for Diet-Caffeine-Free-Vanilla-Cherry-Coke-With-Lemon and the variety we always waited for will finally be upon us :)

Cynthia Nixon, a cast member of Sex and the City,

And here's a picture of a crack caused by the Alaskan Earthquake:

Here's a picture of that crash I was mentioning:

Nearly 200 cars collide in California.

Nearly 200 cars and big-rig trucks collided on a foggy stretch of Long Beach Freeway early Sunday, injuring dozens of people, nine critically, and closing the highway for hours.

Anchorage Daily News | Earthquake opens cracks in highways, topples fuel tanks

A major earthquake rocked a sparsely populated area of interior Alaska early Sunday afternoon, cracking highways and roads, knocking over fuel tanks and shaking rural homes. Bruce Turner of the West Coast and Alaska and Tsunami Warning Center in Palmer said the magnitude 7.9 quake hit at 1:13 p.m Alaska Standard Time and was centered 90 miles south of Fairbanks. "It shook for a good 30 seconds," he said. The quake was felt strongly in Anchorage about 270 miles south of the epicenter. The earthquake occurred on the Denali Fault and had a shallow depth, said John Lahr, geophysicist at the U.S. Geological Survey's National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colo. Shallow earthquakes generally are felt over a wider area. "We expected this would have surface rupture that geologists could see on the ground and study," he said.

Reuters AlertNet - Angolan brothers united after years of war. One of the brothers was kidnapped at the age of 15 by the UNITA rebel movement and beca,e a child soldier....

Wired News: Dear Saddam, How Can I Help?

Fascinating.

Yahoo! News - Red Flags on Muhammad Began Year Ago

Suspicion began swirling around John Muhammad about a year ago in this coastal town with rumors about his gun, a mysterious cash flow and his reputed desire to live near the Canadian border so he could quickly flee the country.

AP Photo

Local authorities also say they heard about how he wanted his rifle modified to fit a case, and how he talked of wanting a silencer so he could kill police officers.
They heard various people's concerns in October, November, December and June. And twice, investigators visited the homeless shelter where he lived to see about children in his care.

Reuters: Bin Laden's will, dated December 14, 2001, obtained.

A London-based magazine said on Friday it was publishing a will written by Osama bin Laden, the world's most wanted man, in which he complains of betrayal by fellow militants in Afghanistan.

The Arabic-language al-Majallah said the will, typed and signed by bin Laden and dated December 14, 2001, was obtained a week ago from a "very reliable" source in Afghanistan.
It said the will, typically packed with verses from the Muslim holy book the Koran, depicted a man who appeared desperate and on the verge of death.

"Reading it, you get the impression of a dying man. It may be that he was wounded and felt he was dying," Majallah Editor-in-Chief Hani Nakshabandi told Reuters of the will, which is due to be published on Saturday.

Ananova - Russian rocket explosion may have been deliberate

The head of Russia's space agency say an explosion which brought down a rocket just after launch may have been malicious.

One soldier died and a multi-million pound scientific satellite was lost during the incident earlier this month.

Yuri Koptev said the explosion was caused by an unidentified object in the fuel line.

He said investigators are considering "malicious intent" among other possibilities.

The Soyuz-U rocket blew up within seconds of liftoff October 15 from the northern Plesetsk launch pad.

The Smoking Gunhas found an audio tape of Muhammad requesting a name change in Pierce County District:

MUHAMMAD ON TAPE A jovial, laughing John Allen Muhammad can be heard on an official audio recording of the alleged sniper's appearance last year in Pierce County District Court to formally change his name. In April 2001, Muhammad made a brief appearance before Judge Molly Davis to request that his name be formally changed from John Allen Williams for "religion purposes" (he had converted to Islam years earlier). When Davis granted the name change after only a few perfunctory questions, Muhammad joked, "I feel cheated," since he was not called on to present witnesses or paperwork or approach the bench. "These are fairly routine," Davis said.

Congratulations Chuck!

Sky Witness

In the name of History something like this may turn out to be quite valuable and important. But somehow I cringe at the way it's done. Despite the lack of ads, it feels like 9/11 and big events are being memorialized in a bit of a crass and even commercial way...

Seems like something like this is happening almost every day now..

allAfrica.com: DRC Mission Ends

THE last batch of Zimbabwean soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo is expected home next week, after the Sadc allies agreed to withdraw all their forces by the end of this month.

Sadc allies announced at the end of a one-day meeting in Kinshasa on Thursday that the last of their troops, which have been helping the DRC repel a Rwandan and Ugandan-backed invasion, will pull out of the Congo next week.

President Mugabe joined President Joseph Kabila (DRC), President Eduardo dos Santos of Angola and President Sam Nujoma of Namibia at the Kinshasa meeting, to formalise the withdrawal of the allied forces from the Congo.

About two dozen buses from several states proceed around Washington's Capital Beltway after leaving the Silver Spring Metro Station as part of a funeral procession for sniper shooting victim Conrad Johnson Saturday, Oct. 26, 2002. Banners saying 'In honor of Conrad Johnson Montgomery County transit' are draped on several of the Ride On buses, carrying transit employees and other area residents to the funeral.

Instapundit points out that Overlawyered indeed has lots of interesting information and links relating to the hostage crisis that just ended in Moscow.

Algeria gunmen 'kill 21 family members'

This is just horrible:

The Algerian news agency says suspected Islamic extremists have killed 21 people from the same family, including a three-month-old baby.

Some analysis of the Sniper Letters.

Is Diet Coke bad for you?

Joi Ito points to a shocking link...I didn't know about this at all. Some highlights. Aspartame isn't even sweet. They add dextrose to make it seem sweet. Contains a neurochemical to fool your brain into thinking that foods you eat with it are sweet. Any food you have while you, say, drink a diet coke, will taste sweet. It's constituent ingredients are poison... Unbelievable!

67 Hostages & 34 Rebels Killed

Russian security forces ended the siege. On the positive side, hundreds of hostages were freed....

Senator Wellstone and family members killed in Minnesota plane crash

The sources said three staff members and two crew members also died in the crash.

The plane went down in a wooded area about 7 miles east of Eveleth-Virginia Municipal Airport. Officials said bad weather was reported in the area, and the last contact with the plane was at 10:20 a.m. CDT when the plane was about 2 miles from the Eveleth airport.

Choking back tears, a Senate colleague expressed his sympathy. "He was such a good man, and his wife too," said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont. "All of these people had families and they had friends and this is a horrible, horrible thing."

The plane, a twin-engine turboprop King Air manufactured by Raytheon Aircraft, took off from Flying Cloud Airport in Eden Prairie, a southwestern suburb of Minneapolis. He was scheduled to attend a funeral in the northeast, followed by a campaign stop in Duluth.

Wellstone, 58, won his Senate seat in 1990, the only challenger that year to unseat an incumbent.

The son of Russian immigrants, Wellstone was raised in Arlington, Virginia, and was a champion wrestler at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, where he earned both a bachelor's degree and a doctorate.

The charismatic Wellstone, who had multiple sclerosis but was not incapacitated by it, was a champion of health care coverage expansion, veterans affairs and environmental concerns, and was considered by many to be one of the Senate's most liberal members.

His death leaves a void in the state's election for the Senate.

Under Minnesota law, if a nominee in a Senate race dies during a campaign, his or her political party can select a replacement candidate no later than four days before the general election. Election Day this year is November 5.

The Republican National Committee had shown a strong interest in defeating Wellstone.

When the senator broke his promise to serve only two terms, Republicans took it as a challenge to ensure his defeat.

Thieves pose as officers.

I always thought this was the weakness about our police system... You can't just trust people because they flash a badge at you. There should be some well-known procedure for police entering a home. For example, real officers should not knock on a door and ask to be let in, unless they have a police car as well. If there is no police car out front, the standard procedure should be that the owner be asked to call the precinct and confirm the identity. This procedure should be made public knowledge so that bold crimes such as this cannot happen.

Let's hope this is it....

Members of the sniper task force arrested an ex-soldier and his stepson early Thursday at a freeway rest stop. Sources told CNN the two were considered suspects in the shootings that have killed 10 and wounded three in the Washington area. Sources identified the two as John Allen Muhammad, 42 -- a Gulf War veteran named in a federal arrest warrant for firearms violations who was being sought as a material witness in the sniper case -- and his 17-year-old stepson John Lee Malvo, a Jamaican citizen.

Men take Moscow theater audience hostage

The story is lacking some details as to why...

Everything recovered except for Diamond Chain.

New Jersey Nets point guard Chris Childs could have used an assist yesterday when four men robbed him at gunpoint in a Chelsea parking lot of about $30,000 worth of cash and jewelry, police said.

His problems were compounded later in the day when the Nets suspended him indefinitely for failure to be in playing condition.

Police caught all four suspects after a long chase through various downtown train tunnels. All Childs' property was recovered, except for a diamond chain one of the men tugged from his neck, police said.

Now this is one big shoe:

Gary Barnett, former Diamond Broker, sees gem in Enron tower.

Former diamond broker Gary Barnett may be relatively unknown in the Houston real estate community, but his days of anonymity are numbered.

Last month, the head of New York-based Intell Management and Investment Co. agreed to pay $102 million to buy downtown's most notorious landmark.

Although politics don't interest me too much, Taegan Goddard's Political Wire is a great resource for anyone who is interested. You can really get state by state information.

Let's hope the landing on Mars will go well this time.

Joi Ito Talks about ECD today. Very interesting stuff:

Stan Ovshinsky founded the company in 1960, he set out to solve the world's problems by creating technologies that solved the energy problems with renewable energy. End the dependence on fossil fuels and take carbon out of the energy process. People are finally talking about the "hydrogen economy" today. I saw a photo of Stan in 1960 with a picture on the board of photons from the Sun splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen and the hydrogen being the storage method to transport the energy. The energy was converted later into electrons. Photons->Hydrogen->Electrons... The basic elements of the universe. In the photo, he has a canister of hydrogen and is demonstrating how this will work! Finally people are talking about the relationship of information and energy. Stan was talking about this in 1960 and in 1981, he minted these commemorative coins with information on one side and energy on the other. By pioneering the field of amorphous and disordered materials and thin films, Stan was able to pioneer the field of NiMH batteries, the first TFT displays, fuel cells, the first EEPROM (Intel was the foundry for the project back in 1970 when he build the first devices), amorphous photovoltaics, optical disks, and many more technologies in both energy and information using the basic principles of creating new materials to convert and energy, information just being a form of energy...

What can I say? Not a moment too soon.

There has been a lot of talk about Blood Diamonds. This article discusses charges from an organization about cellphones. Although I think part of the reason for the Blood Diamonds debate is that people are very concerned about the symbolic value of their diamond and don't want it to be tainted by blood. A cellphone is a bit different. But with globalization, anything you buy may be "tainted". A couple of years back there was a great story on 20/20 about clothing manufactured in "America", even though it was built by worse than a sweatshop, basically by slaves in US Pacific Islands. They were lured onto the island by having their family save up to pay for one of their kids to come to the freedom of America only to wind up in an American island as a prisoner making cloths. And most of the major clothing manufacturers bought some of their clothes there. I recall Ralph Lauren. Liz Claibourne, The Gap & others implicated..

In a shocking victory, Saddam Hussein won 100% of vote. He was the only candidate.

The Onion reports that the FAA considers Passengers to be the number one threat to safety. They are testing no-passenger flights to determine if this would improve the situation.

I found this article rather interesting.

With all the shooting going on lately, here's an article discussing how to be a good witness. Some of the tips:

Facial shape: Is it square, oval or round? Is the person plump? Thin? What's the eye color? Note the presence or absence of facial hair, jewelry, scars or piercings.

Investigators suggest immediately writing down what you remember.

There's a French saying I'll try not to misspell here. Tu change pas une equipe qui gagne!

Glenn Reynolds linked to a fascinating story today about the tense situation in DC these days. The post to read is at 6:25 am.

Truck abandoned. Let's hope this will lead to some clues that will help find the killers.

In a weird development surrounding the RIAA & Kazaa battle, a movie studio, Lion's Gate is working with Kazaa in the promotion of their new film.

A shopper at a flea-market buys a $4 framed painting and finds an original copy of the declaration of independence in it. Eventually it sells to Norman Lear, creator of All in the Family, in a Sotheby's online auction for 8.1 million dollars. I found his words very well spoken:

"It occurred to me that I was looking at the United States of America as it had been written for the first time."

In 1999, she returned the favor. Now she rides to his memory. Like too many lately, this is a very sad and touching story. Too many people are wearing rings in a chain on their neck instead of where it belongs.

Rev. Falwell made some remarks on 60 minutes that made headlines. A protest was planned and Riots in India ensued. 5 killed, 47 injured.

Unfortunately, here's another one.

President Jimmy Carter has now won the Nobel Peace Prize. Some interesting blurbs from the story:

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for his peace mediation efforts and promotion of human rights in what the awards committee said was a criticism of current U.S. policy and "a kick in the leg" to those following the same line.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee cited the 78-year-old Carter's "decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development."
The award worth 10 million Swedish kronor (US$1 million) singled out Carter's "vital contribution" to the Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt and his efforts in conflict resolution on several continents and the promotion of human rights after his presidency.

"When I was at the White House I was a fairly young man and I realized I would have maybe 25 more years of active life," Carter told the Cable News Network.

The secretive, five-member committee made its decision last week after months of deliberations as it sought the right message for a world still dazed by the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks

while Sadat and Begin shared the 1978 Peace Prize for their efforts, the Nobel committee said Carter was left out due to a technicality — he was not nominated in time.

Funny, I had always remembered it as Carter having shared the prize with Begin and Sadat, but I guess I remembered it incorrectly.

Update

"OSLO, Norway (AP) - In a rare show of discord, members of the Nobel Peace Prize committee criticized their chairman for using the award Friday to former President Jimmy Carter to speak out against the Bush administration's threats of war against Iraq."

Congress Passes Iraq Resolution (washingtonpost.com)

The House and Senate voted overwhelmingly to grant President Bush the power to attack Iraq unilaterally, remove Saddam Hussein from power and abolish that country's nuclear, chemical and biological weaponry.
Moving the nation closer to a possible second war with Iraq, 77 of 100 senators and 296 of 435 House members voted to authorize the president to "use the armed forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq."

The Washington Post reports: Man Shot Dead at Va. Gas Station. Hopefully they will find the perpetrators soon.

FWIW, Castro is interviewed by Barbara Walters and he claims that Krushchev Lied to JFK on Missiles in Cuba.

Jim Henly, over at Unqualified Offerings has a Sniper Roundup with the latest info and speculation on this story.