Dark as a dungeon, dank as a tomb:

Trapped below ground by poisonous gases, the Sago miners realized that at least four of their air packs did not work. They shared the air as they desperately pounded away with a sledgehammer trying to get rescuers' attention, the sole survivor says.
Detroit Free Press 28.Apr.06
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Wilbur Ross is directly responsible for those air packs.
Ross told FOX News the week of the Sago disaster was "the worst week of my life."

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"This disaster was man-made. It was unnecessary and criminal."
Mike Ely at Counterpunch 07.Jan.06
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Six months after gambling on his hunch that the auto-parts industry is ripe for consolidation, U.S. billionaire investor Wilbur Ross says his acquisition spree has only just begun.

"We are still in the early stages here," the 68-year-old Ross, who plans to use his International Auto Components Group to create three global auto-parts makers, said in a telephone interview from Tokyo. "Almost every day, there is another supplier filing for bankruptcy. We are continuing to make acquisitions."

Bloomberg 30.Mar.06

Five men executed on Mexico drug war Pacific coast
Reuters
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Saving Mexico's forests by giving farmers alternatives to drug crops
NACLA

Bethlehem Bloggers silent since 07.Apr.06

a lot of lies, a lot of misinformation, and some truth
Enron Corp. founder Kenneth Lay testified Monday that the company's collapse has caused him more "enduring pain" than the loss of loved ones, and he again denied lying to investors about Enron's weak financial condition as it slid into bankruptcy.
[...]
As he took the witness stand in his own defense, Lay described as "ludicrous" a charge by federal prosecutors that he resumed his role as Enron chief executive officer in August 2001, six months after leaving the job, and immediately led a criminal conspiracy to commit fraud.
In a case in which conviction or acquittal could depend heavily on the impression Lay makes with jurors, he spoke fondly of his wife - coyly declining to tell her age to the jury - and talked of a deep moral conviction and religious faith.
"I've been very blessed throughout my life," he said.

CBS News
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Prior to his death last week[25.Jan.02], J. Clifford Baxter was for many a living embodiment of the American dream.
By the age of 43, he was a retired millionaire, with a mansion in an affluent suburb of Houston, a yacht and a young family.
His vast wealth had enabled him in May 2001 to leave behind a seemingly successful career at the energy giant Enron, where he was chief strategy officer and vice chairman.
Perhaps he would lived a life of moneyed leisure for years to come, had Enron not collapsed last December, dragging down the reputations of its top executives with it.
The ensuing controversy surrounding Enron's implosion appears to have turned Mr Baxter's charmed existence into a living nightmare.
After Enron's fall, Mr Baxter was named in a shareholder lawsuit, which alleged that 29 people had capitalised from selling Enron stock before the company collapsed.
Days before his suicide, he reportedly broke down in tears while talking on the telephone to former business associate about Enron.
He was also described by journalists that visited his home as dishevelled and unshaven.
Friends of Mr Baxter said he was depressed that he might have to testify about the role his colleagues had played in the collapse of Enron.
He was known as "ruthless" in the workplace, and even arrogant, and yet he seems to have suffered greatly from Enron's demise.
And the fact that he was named in a memo as one of the few executives who had in the past challenged Enron's questionable accounting practices adds to the mystery.

"Cliff Baxter complained mightily to Skilling and all who would listen about the inappropriateness of our transactions," wrote Sherron Watkins, another Enron employee.

BBCNews
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Sure, sometimes folks just up and die, but when powerful people die in a way that benefits other powerful people, it's worth asking a few questions. Apparently the police in Sugar Land, Texas (in the district of Enron bedmate Tom deLay) didn't see it that way at first. They were happy to send dead whistleblower Cliff right over to the funeral home as soon as possible, until somebody pointed out that he was about to testify before Congress about Enron and that he had spoken of the need to hire a bodyguard.

Mark Zepezauer
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The pain is overwhelming.

Blood for oil

we hear you calling

I've been a birdwatcher since I was about 4.

I'd never seen a sandhill crane before coming to Wisconsin. I'd never seen a whistling swan or a snowy oil or a prairie chicken. And each time I've seen them since coming here 23 years ago, it's been a thrill.

But there is something weird going on now.

A Baltimore oriole was seen in Appleton yesterday, two weeks early.

A ruby-throated hummingbird was seen in Milwaukee last week, three weeks early.

A scissor-tailed flycatcher showed up last summer way up north in Manitowish Waters.

These are like the robins in the Arctic Circle, where the Inuit people have no name for robin.

Or the rain on Christmas Eve up there.

Or the polar bears drowning because they can't swim the now vast distances between ice floes.

Matthew Rothschild/Progressive/commondreams 23.Apr.06

The Wheel of Law:
Kickin' that gong around

The woman who jumped out of the tightly-controlled crowd of journalists at the Hu-Bush press conference speech thing had been arrested 5 years earlier for doing the same thing to then-president Jiang Zemin in Malta.
She yelled at Hu Jintao, and Bush, and was able to continue yelling for two minutes and fifteen seconds without being interrupted by the Secret Service. When she was escorted from the scene, instead of being hustled out discreetly she was "taken away in front of the entire assembly, against White House and Secret Services regulations".
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Explaining the incident - the first disruption at the executive mansion in recent memory - White House and Secret Service officials said she was "a legitimate journalist" and that there was nothing suspicious in her background.In other words: Who knew?
Hu did. The Chinese had warned the White House to be careful about who was admitted to the ceremony. To no avail: They granted a one-day pass to Wang Wenyi of the Falun Gong publication Epoch Times. A quick Nexis search shows that in 2001, she slipped through a security cordon in Malta protecting Jiang (she had been denied media credentials) and got into an argument with him.
Dana Millbank/WaPo

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Li Hongzhi, the Reverend Moon of Falun Gong, says

"he can levitate and become invisible simply by thinking the phrase 'nobody can see me'. He can control people's movements by just thinking, he says, and can move himself anywhere by thought alone. He claims to have averted a global comet catastrophe and the Third World War and says that Nostradamus's prophecies are coming true today in China."
Independent UK
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Bush made a brief mention of civil liberties in China: "I'll continue to discuss with President Hu the importance of human rights, and freedoms of the Chinese people. China has become successful because the Chinese people have experienced the freedom to buy and to sell and to produce. China can be even more successful when the Chinese people have the freedom to assemble, to speak freely and to worship."
Hu followed President Bush's remarks, but was interrupted by a protester as he began his speech. The protester, Wenyi Wang, denounced the Chinese government's treatment of practitioners of the spiritual movement Falon Gong. Wang yelled: "President Bush, stop him from killing... Stop him from persecuting the Falun Gong." Wang was grabbed by Secret Service officers and led away. President Bush then encouraged Hu to proceed with his remarks, telling him "You're OK." An administration official later said the President Bush apologized to Hu for the protester's interruption. Although the incident made headlines around the world, it failed to reach a mass audience in China. According to CNN, the Chinese government censored the portion of its broadcast that showed the incident taking place.
DemocracyNow!

Blair savages critics over threat to civil liberties

Tony Blair launches an unprecedented assault today on the legal and political establishment, accusing it of being 'out of touch' with the people - and pledges new moves to 'hassle, harry and hound' suspected criminals from Britain.

Kucinich asks Bush about alleged US support for armed insurgency in Iran

Green China Overview | WorldChanging

Operation Northwoods

Native protesters repel police raid in Caledonia, Ontario

Just before 5 am on Thursday, Ontario Provincial Police officers armed with guns, tasers, tear gas, and pepper spray stormed the area that dozens of Six Nations protesters have occupied for the past 52 days.
"People were pepper sprayed...another man was shot in the back with a Taser and we were told more police officers would be coming back," said protester Hazel Hill.
"The police just completely swarmed the territory," said protester Mike Desroches, adding that the officers entered with guns drawn. No shots were fired.
"They swarmed every which way, I couldn't even hazard a guess how many cops," said another man, Clyde Powless. The protesters have been unarmed since the beginning of the occupation.
OPP Deputy Commissioner Maurice Pilon confirmed that 16 people were arrested before protesters called in reinforcements that caused police to retreat. A spokeswoman for the protesters, Janie Jamieson, made it clear that the confrontation was not over. "We're prepared ... for however long it takes," she said.

WikiNews 20.Apr.06

Berlusconi, friend of Israel and
U.S., narrowly loses Italian election

Hinky foreplay:

Two workers looking for tools set off a security situation at a Beaver County nuclear power plant that drew a response from police and federal investigators, WTAE Channel 4's Paul Van Osdol reported.
State police said the men drove up to the Beaver Valley Power Station in a tractor-trailer on Tuesday night to pick up two large containers of tools for a contractor for whom they worked.
Security guards stopped the men for a routine inspection, but they drove away, police said.
The guards became suspicious and called police, who pulled the truck over about a mile from the plant.
A state trooper got a warrant to search the vehicle and found a duffel bag, which he said contained $504,230 in mostly small bills.

PittsburghChannel 19.Apr.06
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link rigorous intuition

Computer glitch hits climate prediction project

A software error has hit one of the world's most sophisticated climate simulations. Participants in the BBC-sponsored project, which uses spare time on home computers to predict Britain's climate in 2080, will have to wait longer than expected to see their work on television.
The results, due to be presented as part of the BBC's "Climate Chaos" television season, will be delayed by about two months as experts at climateprediction.net, the research project based at the University of Oxford, reset the software.
Some 200,000 volunteers had pledged their computers to the effort, making it possibly the largest mass-participation climate experiment ever. The model aims to simulate the British climate from 1920 to 2080. But users found that the program was mysteriously crashing at 2013.
What's more, the models were predicting far greater global warming up to that point than experts expected.

MichaelHopkin/news@nature 19.Apr.06

Yet more numinous recension.

Dubious Comfort Dept.:

A new study by Swedish researchers has found no evidence relating to increased risk for women who have undergone breast enlargement surgery.
The findings appear in the April 19 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
The study said that said smoking habits, weight and giving birth had a greater impact. Excess weight, childlessness and older age at first birth all raise the risk of breast cancer, not necessarily the silicone implants.
The research team, led by Joseph McLaughlin, president of the International Epidemiology Institute in Rockville, Md., analysed government data from 3,486 Swedish women who first received implants for cosmetic reasons between 1965 and 1993. On average, women were followed for about 18.4 years.
The research found women with the devices had an increased risk of lung cancer and a decreased rate of breast cancer compared with the general population, but neither result could be linked to the implants.
"Women with silicone breast implants should feel reassured," McLaughlin conluded.
The safety of silicone breast implants has long been a subject for debate. The United States banned silicone breast implants in 1992 for cosmetic purposes amid concerns that silicone leakage could cause a variety of diseases, ranging from immune system disorders, arthritis, lupus to cancer.
Dow Corning Corporation, once the world's largest maker of silicone gel breast implants, funded the study.
In 1999, the company filed for bankruptcy and spent $3.2 billion (1.8 billion pounds) to settle lawsuits from thousands of patients who alleged silicone implants made them sick.

One expert questioned the connection.

Yang Li/Xinhua 19.Apr.06
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Studies Find No Ill Effects From Mercury in Fillings

Critics, however, charged that the studies were not designed to detect problems that might manifest themselves in adulthood, as has been observed with some other metals, such as lead.
"The question of subtle effects remains open," wrote Dr. Herbert Needleman of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in an editorial in the same journal.
[...]
"During the period when the children are growing and developing, we didn't see any effect," DeRouen said. "This is the only objective evidence we have at this point…. Everything else is anecdotal."

Thomas H. Maugh II/LATimes 19.Apr.06

The United States emitted more greenhouse gases in 2004 than at any time in history, confirming its status as the world's biggest polluter. Latest figures on the US contribution to global warming show that its carbon emissions have risen sharply despite international concerns over climate change.
The figures, which were quietly released on Easter Monday, reveal that net greenhouse gas emissions during 2004 increased by 1.7 per cent on the previous year, equivalent to a rise of 110 million tons of carbon dioxide.

SteveConnor/IndependentUK 19.Apr.06

FT: If Roman Abramovich were to give you a very big donation for your Green Cross fund, would you accept it?

MSG: We would have to discuss it. We cannot be indifferent to the source of sponsorship, to the source of donations. At the present time I understand that he is buying his third yacht, and a second soccer team, and then he will buy up all of London. Fifty per cent of the people of Russia live in poverty. At the same time the number of billionaires in Russia is second only to the United States. That is ridiculous.

Mikhail Gorbachev, interview in Financial Times 17.Apr.06

. . . - - - . . .

One of the two owners of the DC9 (tail number N900SA) busted at an airport in Ciudad del Carmen in the state of Campeche, Mexico last week freighted 5.5 tons of cocaine had been appointed in 2003 to the Business Advisory Council of the National Republican Congressional Committee by then-Congressional Majority Leader Tom Delay...

MadCowMorningNews
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link rigorous intuition