Saturday, September 1, 2007

Two Planes Collide During Acrobat Display at Air Show in Poland

As of this publishing, the fate of the pilots has not officially been released.
Video of the crash is available via TVN24.


wo small planes collided during an acrobatic display at an air show in central Poland on Saturday.


Footage shown on TVN24 television showed the two small red planes slamming into each other and bursting into fragments at the Radom Air Show



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Trial Program Allowing Mexicans To Freely Haul Cargo Anywhere In States To Go Forward

In what is certain to incite continued controversy, a federal appeals court gave Mexican trucking companies carte blance to roll on America's highways. Despite suits from the Sierra Club, the Teamsters Union and citizen worries about safety, the court supported the Bush administration's NAFTA venture.



Critics say that there's no way to really ensure that U.S. safety regulations or driver training regulations are met. Also of concern: the increased opportunity for drug trafficking and the smuggling in of illegal aliens as up to 100 Mexican companies roll from Mexico throughout the U.S.


The Bush administration can go ahead with a pilot program to allow as many as 100 Mexican trucking companies to freely haul their cargo anywhere within the U.S. for the next year, a federal appeals court ruled Friday.


The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied a request made by the Teamsters union, the Sierra Club and the nonprofit Public Citizen to halt the program.


The appeals court ruled the groups have not satisfied the legal requirements to immediately stop what the government is calling a "demonstration project," but can continue to argue their case.


The trucking program is scheduled to begin Thursday.





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95-Year-Old Blogger an International Hit

She may be the Grandma Moses of the internet. Just eight months ago, 95-year-old Maria Amelia Lopez was given a blog of her own.


Since then, this Spanish great-grandmother has gained an international following, gaining more than a third of a million hits on her blog. Think Granny's not net-capable? She'll cure you of that notion.

Lopez is against nursing homes and just sitting around waiting to die. She wonders why nursing homes don't provide internet access. And, she's not happy about companies that are slow to offer broadband access to the internet.

She puts a personal face on the Spanish Civil War, telling the story of how her 16-year-old brother went off to war and came back without one leg. A socialist, she's tough about politics and has political leaders among her fans.

Lopez is available via internet broadcasts, and her website contains translations into many languages. You can keep up with her travel experiences, too.

Es muy bien, Senora, es muy bien.





She is billed as the world's oldest blogger. At 95 years old and with a worldwide following that has seen more than 340,000 hits on her blog, Spaniard María Amelia López has achieved the kind of status that millions of younger internet chroniclers can only dream of.


López, who was introduced to the world of blogging by one of her grandchildren just eight months ago, has become such a global hit that she receives posts in languages as strange and impossible for her to understand as Russian, Japanese and Arabic.


"My name is Amelia and I was born in Muxía (A Coruña - Spain) on December the 23rd of 1911," she wrote as her first post on amis95.blogspot.com. "Today it's my birthday and my grandson, who is very stingy, gave me a blog."


With a mix of humour, warmth, optimism, nostalgia and feisty outbursts of leftwing polemic, she has won a regular readership of people keen to find out just what this Spanish great-grandmother is going to say or do next.



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Forbest Names The Most Expensive Blocks In The U.S.

Forbes Magazine maps the most expensive blocks of family housing in America. Dallas, New York City, Chicago, Miami, Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, and Washington, D.C. are featured in interactive maps that offer satellite views.



Their methodology may come under fire, as it heavily uses recent bursts of real estate buying and selling. Many "old guard" areas may go years without large-scale turnover.

In cities like Miami, Dallas, and Houston, "new money" often rules. In Boston, the old families and old money are king of the hill--or the Back Bay.


Each city has blocks that everyone knows; and not by their street address but by nicknames like "billionaire's row" or by the number of film and Wall Street stars that live there.


They often are the most expensive block in their respective city.


Usually the block orients around the city's defining feature. In New York, it's on Central Park; in San Francisco it has views of the bay; in Seattle it sits on Lake Washington; and in Miami it's on the water.



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50,900-square-foot Connecticut mega mansion among nation's largest

Yes, you read it right: almost 51,000 square feet of single-family home. That's not a home, that's a village--at least to most people.



The owner, Arnold Chase, refuses to allow photographs and threatened a news photographer with trespassing charges. Will he feel the same if Architectural Digest comes calling?


The enormity of the house Arnold Chase is building on Avon Mountain isn't fully apparent from the outside, where only 17,000 square feet of it lies in plain view.


It's the two-level, 33,500-square-foot basement complex, complete with a 103-seat movie theater, ticket booth, concession stand, game room and music annex, that will make it New England's largest occupied single-family home.


At nearly 50,900 square feet, the Chase home will be slightly larger than billionaire Bill Gates' home in Washington, about 4,000 square feet smaller than the White House and 20 times larger than the average-size home in America.



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Texas Woman Claims to Have Found Dead Chupacabra

The stuff of science fiction tales: woman claims to have found head of folklore-frightening blood-sucking chupacabra. The stuff of modern-day culture: woman sells t-shirts marking her find.


Phylis Canion lived in Africa for four years. She's been a hunter all her life and has the mounted heads of a zebra and other exotic animals in her house to prove it. But the roadkill she found last month outside her ranch was a new one even for her, worth putting in a freezer hidden from curious onlookers: Canion believes she may have the head of the mythical, bloodsucking chupacabra.


''It is one ugly creature,'' Canion said, holding the head of the mammal, which has big ears, large fanged teeth and grayish-blue, mostly hairless skin.



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Michigan Serial Killing Suspect Identified

While other charges are pending, multiple felony offender and parolee Matthew Macon of Lansing, Mich. was arrested on charges that included not reporting to his parole officer.Five women were killed in Lansing this summer within a few weeks.



Eerily, one of the victims was killed in a house where a woman was murdered in 2004. Officials are putting together further charges against Macon. The city has been in a state of fear following the savage murders.


A prison parolee and sex offender was identified as the man suspected of killing five women in the city in a little more than a month, and he could face charges in a sixth death from 2004, authorities said Friday.


Murder and assault charges were being pursued against Matthew Emmanuel Macon, 27, of Lansing, who was paroled from state prison June 26, said Police Chief Mark Alley.


Macon had been in prison off and on since 2001, returning twice for parole violations after serving more than a year and a half for larceny from a person, said state Corrections Department spokesman Russ Marlan.


Macon also had an extensive juvenile criminal history, including two criminal sexual conduct offenses, breaking and entering, larceny, and unlawfully driving away an automobile, Marlan said.



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Man Builds Upside Down House to Protest Poland's Communist Era & Today's Troubled Times

This upside down house is amazing. This is a short video clip of Daniel Czapiewski's protest architecture.


The house was created by Daniel Czapiewski to describe the former communist era and the present times in which we live. "It's just terrible here. I'm visiting for the second time and it's terrible!



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$330 Million Dollars Lottery Ticket Sold in Maryland

Somewhere, there's someone who's now instantly worth as much as $330 million. Mega Millions lottery officials report that a winning ticket was sold in Nottingham, Maryland.



Officials also noted that ticket purchases of the lucky number, if any, were not yet known for 11 other states.


A winning Mega Millions ticket worth an estimated $330 million was sold at a liquor store in Baltimore County, a lottery official said early Saturday.



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Friday, August 31, 2007

Health alert warns of tainted ground beef

This new alert, just issued, so far affects consumers in the Northwest and Alaska. Officials advise shoppers to check their freezer for older packages.


Federal and state officials are warning consumers to be on the lookout for ground beef that might be contaminated with E. coli, a potentially deadly bacterium that can cause bloody diarrhea and dehydration.


Eight confirmed cases of illness have been reported in the Pacific Northwest, and one suspected case is being investigated in Alaska, according to a public health alert from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the state Departments of Environmental Conservation and Health and Social Services.



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Giuliani FL event aide quits over sex, theft charges

Putting together a campaign, even on a local level, is hard work and requires many volunteers. Putting on a national-level campaign is leaving many presidential candidates at risk. Because volunteers are just that, organizers are often left accepting a pig in a poke, as the old saying goes.



This time, it's Rudy Giuliani's Florida race that winds up squealing.


n organizer for a Rudy Giuliani presidential event plans to step down amid revelations of his arrests for allegedly extorting an FSU student in a sex case and his conviction for dealing in stolen state computers.


Barry S. Edwards, 45, told The Miami Herald that the charges against him were ''old news'' --- and were 'unfounded' in the student sex case -- but he nevertheless thought it would be best to withdraw from the Pinellas County Republican Party fundraiser because ``I'm not relevant and I shouldn't be the story.''



Dance to the campaign beat with Obama Girl vs. Giulani Girl

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Moonshots: Russia, Miffed With U.S, Plans Own Lunar Base

The long, often-contentious space relationship between Russia and the U.S. takes another turn as Russia, saying that NASA spurned it, announces plans for its own moon program and moon base. Like a dysfunctional marriage, the joint space programs have creaked their way through several programs, including the current International Space Station.



The moon might be a busy place: China and Japan say they'll colonize as well. With the new American drive for the moon, will there be a resurgence of the space race and a resulting rise in interest in science and math--as well as an increase in jobs? The space race fueled education and economic prosperity in its early days in the U.S.


Russia plans to send a manned mission to the moon by 2025 and establish a permanent base shortly thereafter, the head of the Russian space agency Roskosmos said Friday.


"According to our estimates, we will be ready for a manned flight to the moon in 2025," Roskosmos chief Anatoly Perminov told state news agency RIA Novosti. A station that could be inhabited could be built there between 2027 and 2032, he said.



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African Nation Will Shoot Down Suspected Drug Planes

Experts say that one-third of the cocaine flowing into Europe comes through African hubs. The poor nation of Guinea-Bissau has announced it will shoot suspected drug planes down.


Suspected drug planes that enter Guinea-Bissau's airspace will be shot down in a bid to reduce rampant cocaine trafficking, the government says.


Prime Minister Martinho N'Dafa Cabi said he had personally issued the uncompromising order.


This follows the army's seizure of a truckload of jet fuel in a forest outside the city of Buba on Thursday.


International drugs experts fear the poor, unstable country surrounded by islands could become a "narco-state"



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Thursday, August 30, 2007

Controvery Simmers Over Israel's Temple Mount Dig

The complexity of protecting antiquities claimed as sacred by warring religions is demonstrated by these reports about a dig at Temple Mount in Israel. The Jerusalem Post article, cited below, reports archaeologists' claims that a Muslim dig is damaging a sacred Jewish site.


However, at Breitbart, the story is presented as a discovery of the Second Temple on the Mount. "Remains of the Jewish second temple may have been found during work to lay pipes at the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in east Jerusalem, Israeli television reported Thursday.


Israeli television broadcast footage of a mechanical digger at the site which Israeli archaeologists visited on Thursday."


Analyzing the stories side by side doesn't help make it clear if the exact same area is the focus of the reports. By comparing the accounts of mechanical diggers and visits from Jewish archaeologists, the inference is that this is the same dig.



Which account is most accurate? Most importantly, why are these stories reported so differently?



"The Israeli Government is lending a hand to the destruction of one of the most important archaeological sites in the world," said Bar-Ilan University archaeologist Dr. Gabriel Barkai at a Jerusalem press conference.


Barkai said the dig, which involves tractors and other heavy construction equipment, has created a 400-meter-long and 1.5-meter-deep trench on the site, destroying layers of ancient remains.


Among the antiquities that have been damaged are a 7-meter-wide wall that apparently dates back to Second-Temple times and was likely part of the Temple courts, according to Israeli archaeologists from the nonpartisan Committee Against the Destruction of Antiquities on the Temple Mount."



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WWE suspends 10 wrestling stars for violating steroids, drug policy

Following wrestling star Chris Benoit's murder of his wife and son and his suicide, the investigations into steroid use are apparently bearing some fruit. Among the reported problems: ordering prescription steroids via the internet or through telephone sales.


World Wrestling Entertainment is putting the smackdown on 10 of its top wrestlers after they tested positive for drugs.


In a statement on its Web site Thursday, WWE said 10 performers were suspended for violating the company's wellness policy, which prohibits the use of "performance-enhancing drugs" such as steroids.



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Wednesday, August 29, 2007

NASA: Our Astronauts Don't Fly Drunk


NASA Administrator Mike Griffin today denied allegations that astronauts were drunk before or during space liftoffs. . Griffin said that there was "absolutely no evidence" to support the anonymous reports. In addition, NASA flight surgeons are prepared to sign documents stating this finding.

The flap over "drunken astronauts in space" is shown to be what it always seemed like to insiders: gossip. The original report of pre-flight intoxication was based on anonymous comments from within a tiny group of astronaut corps members or their families.

Heading up the investigation: astronaut Bryan O'Connor, known for his fact-based, no nonsense attitude. O'Connor, a former Navy test pilot, has flown two Space Shuttle missions among his more than 5,000 hours in more than 40 types of aircraft.

An expert in flight safety, O'Connor headed up key portions of the Challenger accident investigation. The current NASA investigation into the allegations of heavy drinking at Kennedy Space Center in Florida and the Russian launch base in Kazakhstan is part of what some call NASA's "mental health check."

NASA has beeen hit hard recently with allegations about mental health issues in the astronaut corps. Fodder for comedians, former astronaut Lisa Nowak Lisa Nowak's arrest and upcoming trial for allegedly stalking and planning to harm love rival USAF Capt. Colleen Shipman was a major blow to NASA's "right stuff" image.

Further complicating things: the love triangle between the two women and Bill Oefelein , former astronaut Bill Oefelein. Olefelein's affairs with both women raised not only eyebrows, but also discussion of potential charges within the Military Code of Justice.

The anonymous allegations of drunken astronauts put NASA on a firing range, from hero agency to buffoon. Today, officials said that the alleged drinking never took place, and referred to urban legends about poisoned Halloween candy, saying that false stories are known to spread wildly.

The stresses of spaceflight and working in the highly-dangerous space busines are well known. Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon with Neil Armstrong during the 1969 Apollo 11 mission, wrote about his bout with depression following that mission. Throughout the history of the space program, the high-flying demands have taken their toll on families as well as the astronauts themselves.

In one of the sadder stories from space, Blue Angels veteran and former astronaut Chuck Brady committed suicide in July 2006. Brady, who flew on the longest space shuttle mission, had left NASA and reportedly was suffering from rheumatoid arthritis, a crippling immune system disorder.

However the majority of astronauts, such as Sen. John Glenn (R-Ohio) go on to have successful careers after spaceflight, either in NASA management or other fields. With NASA's remaining Space Shuttle flights and the drive to return to the moon, the agency is being extra-cautious in examining the overall health of its astronauts.

So far, no response from Russian officials about activities at their base has been reported.

The NASA news conference about the drinking investigation can be watched via NASA TV starting at 1:30 p.m. EDT.



As reported at The News is Now Public.