Wednesday Bucket O’News

41 Comments

1. 

   CabinGirl on March 8, 2006 at 7:18 am

   In Idaho: Yahoo/Reuters

   Pregnant mothers caught using illegal drugs could go to prison for endangering their unborn children under a bill passed by the Idaho State Senate on Tuesday.

   “The first thing we’re after is a drug-free baby,” said State Sen. Denton Darrington, a Republican who said his eastern Idaho district is plagued by methamphetamine use. “Meth is a problem everywhere in the state of Idaho.”

   If the measure passes the Idaho House and receives the approval of Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne, a Republican, the measure would be the first in the United States specifically to make it a crime for a pregnant woman to use illegal drugs.

   Gee, how about treatment for the mother instead?  I guess that would eliminate the opportunity to shackle the incarcerated women while they give birth though…

   At least some people are using their brains:

   “If you want to hurt babies, you pass this law,” said Lynn Paltrow, the executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women. “Drug abuse is a health problem. Health care in prisons is hideous.”

   • 

     Second Nature on March 8, 2006 at 8:22 am

     If I was pregnant and using drugs I’d be much less likely to seek prenatal care if this law was in effect.

     • 

       CabinGirl on March 8, 2006 at 8:48 am

       All these laws they’re coming up with lately make pregnant women some sort of third-class citizen, don’t they?  Get pregnant, and you’re subject to prosecution for all sorts of “crimes” against the fetus.  What happens to drug users who don’t know they’re pregnant yet?  Do they go to jail too?

       Screwed up.

       • 

         Second Nature on March 8, 2006 at 9:02 am

         How about drinking coffee, or riding a bike, or driving above the speed limit, or smoking, or taking medications, or gaining too much weight, or eating tuna, or not taking prenatal vitamins, or…?

2. 

   CabinGirl on March 8, 2006 at 7:22 am

   in EU ends: Guardian

   EU veterinary experts agreed unanimously today to lift the union’s ban on British beef exports, imposed 10 years ago to prevent the spread of mad cow disease.

   The EU’s standing committee on the food chain and animal health said that the UK has fulfilled all the conditions for the ban to end.

   The European commission is now expected to back the lifting of the embargo on UK exports of live cattle, beef and beef products, in about six weeks. The closure of export markets has cost the British beef industry around £675m.

3. 

   AndiF on March 8, 2006 at 7:27 am

   Full Article

   As this article details, the research clearly shows that there is no reason for not filling Plan B prescriptions because it might be an abortifacient.

   Scientists and political activists have long assumed that the emergency contraceptive generally referred to as Plan B interferes with the implantation of a newly fertilized embryo. As a result, some pro-life pharmacists are refusing to fill prescriptions for Plan B, leaving distraught customers at risk of pregnancy.

   [snip]

   It appears that that assumption is unfounded.

   Recent studies justify the conclusion that Plan B does not produce a “hostile uterus.” Rather, it prevents conception by delaying ovulation.

   [snip]

   Because of this effect of the drug when used as a daily birth control pill, even the manufacturer of Plan B had conceded that it might work the same way when taken as an emergency contraceptive.

   Over the past few years, however, scientists have learned that this assumption is incorrect. When Plan B is taken as a one-day, emergency contraceptive, it impedes the hormone surge that releases a woman’s egg from her ovary.

   This conclusion arises from two independent lines of research:

   — The first consists of studies that have observed the changes in human female chemistry and reproductive anatomy when women take levonorgestrel. A thorough review of these studies by researchers from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden concluded that Plan B, taken as an emergency contraceptive, does not cause changes in the uterine lining but delays or blocks ovulation, probably by impeding the surge of a hormone that triggers it.

   In other words, it does not interfere with the implantation of a fertilized egg.

   — The second area of research measured implantation rates directly, which required experiments on animals, rather than humans. Researchers at the Catholic University of Chile specifically designed two studies, one on rats and a later one on monkeys, to detect whether Plan B disrupted implantation. Neither study found any evidence of any such disruption.

   Indeed, when Plan B was administered after fertilization, pregnancy rates were the same for the females given Plan B as for those given a placebo.

   • 

     Second Nature on March 8, 2006 at 8:25 am

     I switched to Kroger’s pharmacy after noticing a pamphet about Plan B displayed prominently on the counter during one of my routine shopping trips.

4. 

   CabinGirl on March 8, 2006 at 7:27 am

   Dead at 93: MSNBC

   Gordon Parks, who captured the struggles and triumphs of black America as a photographer for Life magazine and then became Hollywood’s first major black director with “The Learning Tree” and the hit “Shaft,” died Tuesday, his family said. He was 93…

   …”Nothing came easy,” Parks wrote in his autobiography. “I was just born with a need to explore every tool shop of my mind, and with long searching and hard work. I became devoted to my restlessness.”…

   But as a photographer, he was perhaps best known for his gritty photo essays on the grinding effects of poverty in the United States and abroad and on the spirit of the civil rights movement.

5. 

   CabinGirl on March 8, 2006 at 7:36 am

   of the coffee variety: Daily Mail

   Coffee drinkers who have more than three cups a day could be dramatically increasing their risk of a heart attack, say researchers.

   :::sobbing:::

   • 

     Second Nature on March 8, 2006 at 8:26 am

     There, there Cabin Girl.  The really awful part about it is that they most probably define a cup as 6 ozs. and if you’re like me you use a mug, which holds twice as much.  So 3 cups is really a mug and a warmup.

     • 

       AndiF on March 8, 2006 at 8:41 am

       I just don’t worry about these studies. Every time you get one of them, two weeks later there’s another one saying the first one was wrong.

       Here are some caffeine health benefits to cheer you up.

       • 

         CabinGirl on March 8, 2006 at 8:49 am

         I feel much better now…time for another cup.  🙂

         • 

           Knoxville Progressive on March 8, 2006 at 10:30 am

           Besides, the stress of worrying is also bad for your health.  So have the coffee, but be sure to enjoy chocolate and red wine to make up for it with their health benefits!  ;-D

       • 

         Second Nature on March 8, 2006 at 8:53 am

         Ah, redemption.  But did you notice they define a cup as 5 oz.?  That’s the size of one of those little bathroom dixie cups!

       • 

         Street Kid on March 8, 2006 at 9:59 pm

         Whoever invented decaf ought to be shot!  

     • 

       Street Kid on March 8, 2006 at 9:58 pm

       Also use a mug!  And don’t understand how anyone can get by on such a small cup of coffee!  I drink at least 2 pots of coffee a day.

   • 

     Street Kid on March 8, 2006 at 9:56 pm

     When my dad was in the hospital (after his first heart attack), he was so pissed that he couldn’t have coffee and had to drink Sanka.  The first thing he did when he came home was make himself a pot of coffee and had a few cups.  Still wearing his hospital id bracelet, I might add.  Anyway, he lived approx. 40 years after that, and still drank at least a pot of coffee a day.  So, don’t worry–enjoy!

6. 

   idredit on March 8, 2006 at 9:54 am

   Tid bits for the bucket. From the pathetic category.

   from Huffpo: “GOP to allow Bush to spy on Americans w/o warrant”

   If you want to revisit the pain, Glenn Greenwald has the meat on all the treasonous players in the One Party Rules

   [..]Sen. Specter is, of course, of the same rancid strain as Sens. Snowe and Hagel — the group that struts around self-lovingly preening as some sort of “independent Republicans” only invariably to fall in line, meekly and without exception, with White House commands. In fact, of all of the well-behaved good little boys and girls which the White House has assembled in the Senate, Sen. Specter, his ritualistic maverick pretenses notwithstanding, is one of the most easily controlled. Placing one’s hopes for Congressional oversight and integrity in Sen. Specter, of all people, is just an invitation to further disappointment.[..]

   And as “GOP Elect indicted Delay” Lawyer DeGuerin calls the movie “The Big Buy – How Tom Delay Stole Congress” a hatchet job. Oops !!!

    [Mr.] Schermbeck suggested the film could well prove to have bipartisan utility. “I’m sure Tom DeLay will use this for fund-raising,” he said. “Will it be a great fund-raising tool?

   Never one to miss an opportunity last evening results indicate it worked out well for Tom.

7. 

   Knoxville Progressive on March 8, 2006 at 10:33 am

   The World Bank is currently holding a meeting in Washington DC on global warming.  In technical discussions, capture and sequestration of carbon was a prominent item, while in another session meeting the energy needs of the world’s poorest nations and connecting them to the electricity grid was discussed.  The overall tone of the discussions were guardedly optimistic that technologies that exist today could make significant progress in addressing these problems, if brought to bear in a concerted manner.

   Writing in the UK scientific journal Biology Letters, researchers say cattle herds on farms with hedges and ungrazed land are less likely to become infected with tuberculosis, suggesting a more ecologically-friendly solution to managing the spread of the disease than the officially-proposed cull of badgers.

   Belief in your ability to retain a good memory helps make it happen, researchers have found.

   Archaeology Daily:  Long before Mount Vesuvius buried Pompeii in rock and ash, the volcano erupted in an even more powerful explosion that affected the area occupied by present-day Naples. It left the region a desert wasteland for centuries afterwards, a new study reports.  The so-called Avellino eruption occurred about 3,780 years ago during the Bronze Age and was at least twice as powerful as the one that smothered Pompeii and the nearby town of Herculaneum in 79 AD.  If a similar-sized eruption occurred today, it would destroy the entire Italian city of Naples and displace millions of people, experts say.

   Japanese ground controllers have regained contact with the problem-plagued Hayabusa spacecraft they lost control of in December 2005. But they still do not know whether the asteroid-probing mission will be able to return to Earth as planned.  They suspect the probe likely failed to collect samples on asteroid Itokawa as planned, but hope that some dust might have made its way into the sample chamber by chance and thus would be available for analysis.

   Do you have your own website or are you planning to create one?  If so, this story may be of interest.

   A team of American-led divers has discovered a new crustacean in the South Pacific that resembles a lobster and is covered with what looks like silky, blond fur, French researchers said Tuesday.  They have given the eyeless, 15 cm ( 6 inch) long creature the scientific name Kiwi hirsuta (bigger photo here)

   As the Bush administration allows NASA’s earth-monitoring capabilities to decline, Europe is picking up the slack.  Here is another example:  The Ocean FOCUS program, a joint venture between the UK, France, and Norway using a European Space Agency satellite to monitor ocean currents, began issuing forecasts on 16 February 2006 – just in time to warn oil production operators of a new warm eddy that has formed in the oil and gas-producing region of the Gulf of Mexico.  These eddies are like underwater hurricanes that can cause damaging force against and vibration in offshore platforms, resulting in downtime and damage to underwater components.  Advance warning will allow operators to prepare before the current arrives.

   The Gomer Pyle “Sur-prise, Sur-prise, Sur-prise!” Award goes to the magazine Environmental Science and Technology, published by the American Chemical Society, for uncovering that “Grassroots” environmental groups which have promoted pResident Bush’s “Healthy Forest” legislation and which are now calling for weakening the Endangered Species Act are actually industry-funded shills.  Follow the money, the timeline, and the pdf’s of documents at the link.

   Now this is what real “homeland defense” looks like, not aircraft carrier photo-ops:  The U.S. government, bracing for the possibility that migrating birds could carry a deadly strain of bird flu to North America, plans to test nearly eight times as many wild birds this year as have been tested in the past decade.

   This story is just juicy with irony – While China turns to cars, New York turns to modern rickshaws:  Bicycle taxis are weaving through the clogged streets of midtown Manhattan in a movement growing so rapidly that the city is proposing regulations before it spins out of control.  Known as pedicabs, these vehicles look like giant tricycles with a passenger carriage in the back. Some tourists and New Yorkers see them as an affordable, pollution-free way to see the city and sail through gridlock.

   Speaking of Peking, Wind turbines may one day replace hydropower as China’s second-largest source of electricity, if the country continues with a drive to boost renewable generation, a Chinese energy expert said on Tuesday.

   And if you can’t catch a pedicab, at least consider an alternatively fueled vehicle.  And Ford want to help you find a fuel pump for it:  With millions of flexible-fuel vehicles on US roads and more coming, major oil companies must install many more service station pumps to provide gasoline made mostly from ethanol to run them, a top Ford Motor Co. official told Congress on Tuesday.

   How did this get by the Administration sensors?  The Voice of America [!] has a story titled “Growing Population Makes Sustainable Development a Bigger Challenge”  And David Ignatius has an op-ed in the Washington Post today titled “The Planet Can’t Wait:  Climate Change is Real and Must be Addressed Now”.  Could it be morning in America?

   • 

     Knoxville Progressive on March 8, 2006 at 1:27 pm

     Forgot to mention that I won’t have computer access tomorrow or Friday mornings, so I’ll have to give y’all a mega-load on Monday…

     BTW, are these postings too much or not enough?  Do I need to add something in or leave something out?

     • 

       Man Eegee on March 8, 2006 at 2:58 pm

       just right.  If you have the energy to keep them up, then please do it, I love the science headlines.  (and how else are we supposed to reach the top of the Google search list for “vanilla-scented cow shit”)   😀

     • 

       AndiF on March 8, 2006 at 3:18 pm

       I don’t always get through them all but I’d rather miss a few here and there because I don’t have the time than because I didn’t know about them.

     • 

       CabinGirl on March 8, 2006 at 3:23 pm

       I like them the way they are!  Don’t stop…  🙂

     • 

       olivia on March 8, 2006 at 6:30 pm

       …just the way they are. (And you too KP — you rock. 🙂

8. 

   olivia on March 8, 2006 at 10:41 am

   US soldier’s rape sentence cut due to Iraq stress (Via Raw Story)

   Did any one see this story? I didn’t get a chance to check the news bucket yesterday.

   ROME (Reuters) – A U.S. soldier who raped a Nigerian woman in Italy was given a lighter sentence because the court deemed his tour of duty in Iraq had made him less sensitive to the suffering of others.

   (…)

   Brown beat and handcuffed the woman, a Nigerian resident in the town of Vicenza. He raped her vaginally and anally and left her to wander the streets naked in search of help. emphasis mine

   • 

     CabinGirl on March 8, 2006 at 12:53 pm

     I didn’t see that…thanks for posting it, Olivia.

     So, does this mean that people who have served in Iraq are less bound by the law than those who have not?  Does his mean that we should expect more “insensitive” behavior from returning military?  Why don’t we get just get the hell out of Iraq, and provide care to the soldiers who have PTSD from being there?

     • 

       Cali Scribe on March 8, 2006 at 6:39 pm

       Now, when the woman is brought up on charges of cutting off the judge’s Little Guillermo, she can use the defense of the trauma suffered as a result of the rape…

9. 

   Cali Scribe on March 8, 2006 at 11:36 am

   But of course we already knew that.

   From NYT:

   Technical Problems Cause Errors in SAT Test Scores

   About 4,000 students who took the SAT last October received test scores that were lower than they should have been — some by as much as 100 points — because of technical problems in the scoring process, the College Board said yesterday.

   The College Board, which administers the SAT, said it had begun to notify college admissions offices, high school counselors and affected students this week in letters and in e-mail messages, and expected to complete the process by Thursday. It also said that it planned to return registration fees and charges for sending test scores to colleges to the students whose scores were in error.

   The disclosure came at the height of the college admissions season, at a time when many colleges have already made many of their decisions about which students to accept, reject or defer.

   “We ask that you do everything you can to ensure that students are in no way penalized for a matter that was beyond their control,” Jim Montoya, a vice president of the College Board, wrote in a letter to deans and admissions directors dated March 6.

   Wonder what kind of safeguards there are in grading all these exit exams and other tests under Bush’s No Child’s Behind Left…

10. 

    Cali Scribe on March 8, 2006 at 11:49 am

    courtesy of MacNewsDaily:

    Apple adds Comedy Central’s ‘The Daily Show,’ ‘The Colbert Report’ to iTunes with Multi-Pass option

    Apple has added Comedy Central’s ‘The Daily Show with Jon Stewart’ and ‘The Colbert Report’ TV shows to their iTunes Store with a new “Multi-Pass” purchasing option.

    Both shows’ “Multi-Pass” options include the “most recent episode (if one is available) and the next 15 episodes” for US$9.99. Apple explains that, for Multi-Pass buyers, “the most recent episode (if available) will download immediately and future episodes will download as they become available.”

    Individual episodes are the usual $1.99 that’s charged for videos…but if you get the Multi-pass, it averages out to about 62 cents an episode, if I did the math right. You can keep them and play them over and over and over. And you don’t need an iPod to watch; it plays right on your computer. 🙂

    Already got last night’s episodes…now I feel like I can keep up with the rest of the cool kids… 🙂

    • 

      Knoxville Progressive on March 8, 2006 at 1:30 pm

      That’s really cool.  It also reminds me that I haven’t downloaded any podcasts since New Years so I’m sure I have a backlog to listen to…

11. 

    Arcturus on March 8, 2006 at 2:28 pm

    Ok, these are from Monday & Tuesday:

    At least 8,000 members of the all-volunteer U.S. military have deserted since the Iraq war began, Pentagon records show, although the overall desertion rate has plunged since the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001.   {snip}

    Some lawyers who represent deserters say the war in Iraq is driving more soldiers to question their service and that the Pentagon is cracking down on deserters.

    “The last thing they want is for people to think … that this is like Vietnam,” says Tod Ensign, head of Citizen Soldier, an anti-war group that offers legal aid to deserters.    {snip}

     The desertion rate was much higher during the Vietnam era. The Army saw a high of 33,094 deserters in 1971 – 3.4% of the Army force. But there was a draft and the active-duty force was 2.7 million.

    Desertions in 2005 represent 0.24% of the 1.4 million U.S. forces.   link

    and then this:

    Thirty years after the war ended, hundreds of Vietnam-era deserters are still on the loose. Conti’s attorneys, Louis Font and Tod Ensign, say the Pentagon, and the Marine Corps in particular, are cracking down on long-term cases in an effort to warn current-day troops in Iraq against deserting.

    “My view is that the Marines are trying to send a message to people in the ranks today that they, too, will be required to participate in a war, whether they think it’s illegal or immoral,” Font says.   {snip}

    Chief Warrant Officer James Averhart, who has commanded the Marine Corps Absentee Collection Center since September 2004, told the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times that he had ordered cold cases reopened and that his squad had caught 27 deserters in his first 11 months on the job, a rate he suggested was higher than those of his predecessors. The Corps last month updated that number to 33 cases.

    “I have a different leadership style than the guys who have had this job. My job is to catch deserters. And that’s what I do,” Averhart told the newspaper.   {snip}

    Conti, 65, says he was surprised. “I thought they couldn’t possibly be looking for me anymore. I would think they would have stopped looking for anybody who had been gone as long as I had.”

    Conti was held for five months – four in solitary confinement – then given an other-than-honorable discharge in January. If he had been court-martialed and convicted, he could have faced three years in the brig and a dishonorable discharge.   {snip}

    Another long-term Marine deserter, Ernest “Buck” McQueen, was arrested in Fort Worth in January. McQueen was Ernest Johnson Jr. when he left Camp Lejeune, N.C., in November 1969 because of concerns about going to Vietnam. McQueen, 55, also was discharged without disciplinary action.   {snip}

    McQueen says he had been in the Marines for nearly two years when he learned of the My Lai massacre in 1968, when hundreds of Vietnamese civilians were killed by U.S. soldiers. “I saw photos of guys with ears on their chains. I lost my desire to be a part of it.”

    Conti says his decision to desert was a combination of lingering emotional scars from a childhood lived in foster homes and concerns about stories he also was hearing about Vietnam.   {snip}

    . . . Conti says he was told his file was reopened and his fingerprints were run through a national database. He was in the database because he had been convicted of fraud and theft in 1998. He was on probation and paying restitution when the Marines caught up with him.

    McQueen, a carpenter, says his former brother-in-law was called by Marine investigators, and he told them where to find him. “This kind of … put me in a financial bind,” says McQueen, who had been doing carpentry for a church when he was seized.   link

12. 

    Knoxville Progressive on March 8, 2006 at 3:46 pm

    Since I won’t be here tomorrow to post this in the News Bucket:

    41 year old British woman marries 35 year old dolphin in Israel.

    “I’m the happiest girl on earth,” the bride was quoted as saying. “I made a dream come true. And I am not a pervert.”

    • 

      Cali Scribe on March 8, 2006 at 4:25 pm

      had that in “Oddball” about a month or so ago…nice to see the MSM is catching up to him…

13. 

    Cedwyn on March 8, 2006 at 4:16 pm

    http://actionalert.blogspot.com/2006/03/27-days-left-for-public-input-on.html

    make public statements on the sale of public lands while we can!

14. 

    CabinGirl on March 8, 2006 at 4:54 pm

    just a fun little college prank: AP/Yahoo

    Three college students, including two aspiring actors known around campus as pranksters, were arrested Wednesday in a string of nine church fires that spread fear across Alabama last month.

    Federal agents said the defendants claimed that the first few blazes were set as “a joke” and that the others were started to throw investigators off the track.

    • 

      Militarytracy on March 8, 2006 at 10:31 pm

      the whole story freaks me out.  I thought there was really going to be something profound going on but they did as a joke and then set more on fire to “throw of investigators”?  It is so damn weird!  Who burns down churches as a joke?  Maybe I’m not “getting” something.

      • 

        CabinGirl on March 8, 2006 at 10:33 pm

        I thought of you when I saw this story…The whole thing is bizarre.  

        • 

          BooMan on March 8, 2006 at 10:36 pm

          and wasn’t the tracks that gave them away?

          • 

            CabinGirl on March 8, 2006 at 10:41 pm

            Yep.  They tracked down the people who had purchased that particular tire brand/size and found the mother of one of them that way.

15. 

    Mattes on March 8, 2006 at 8:37 pm

    Cheney takeover… (none / 0)

        Cheney’s daughter takes on Iranian mullahs
        Sarah Baxter, Washington
        March 06, 2006

        THE war in Iraq is her father’s business, but Elizabeth Cheney, the US Vice-President’s daughter, has been given responsibility for bringing about a different type of regime change in Iran.

        Ms Cheney, a 39-year-old mother of four, is a senior official in the US State Department, which has often been regarded as hostile territory by Dick Cheney’s White House team.

        However, father and daughter agree it would be better for the mullahs’ regime in Iran to collapse from within rather than be ousted by force.

        The question is whether democratic reform can be achieved before Iran becomes a nuclear power. That is the younger Cheney’s job.

        In the State Department, she is referred to as the “freedom agenda co-ordinator” and the “democracy tsar” for the Middle East. “She’s fantastic and dynamic,” said a colleague.

    more:link

16. 

    Mattes on March 9, 2006 at 11:20 am

    http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,18360632%255E2703,00.html