Chris Vallance | Washington | March 20

BBC - The US technology chief has called on developers to build the "YouTube" of government data.

Vivek Kundra told the BBC that he envisaged a world where anyone could "slice and dice" government information and share their results.

Jason Palmer | Santa Barbara, CA | March 17

BBC - Researchers have created a "quantum state" in the largest object yet.

Such states, in which an object is effectively in two places at once, have until now only been accomplished with single particles, atoms and molecules.

In this experiment, published in the journal Nature, scientists produced a quantum state in an object billions of times larger than previous tests.

Marcia Hofmann | Washington | March 16

EFF - EFF has posted documents shedding light on how law enforcement agencies use social networking sites to gather information in investigations. The records, obtained from the Internal Revenue Service and Department of Justice Criminal Division, are the first in a series of documents that will be released through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) case that EFF filed with the help of the UC Berkeley Samuelson Clinic.

One of the most interesting files is a 2009 training course that describes how IRS employees may use various Internet tools -- including social networking sites and Google Street View -- to investigate taxpayers.

Ann Arbor, MI | March 15

Relax News - On March 19, a new study to be published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, scientific journal, concluded that banana lectins, a naturally occurring chemical, has the ability to stop the transmission and prevention of HIV.

This novel research from the University of Michigan Medical School found BanLec, "a jacalin-related lectin isolated from the fruit of bananas, a potential component for an anti-viral microbicide that could be used to prevent the sexual transmission of HIV-1. BanLec is an effective anti-HIV lectin and is similar in potency to T-20 and maraviroc, two anti-HIV drugs currently in clinical use."

Brian Stelter | Washington | March 15

NYT - Researchers, political satirists and partisan mudslingers, take note: C-Span has uploaded virtually every minute of its video archives to the Internet.

The archives, at C-SpanVideo.org, cover 23 years of history and five presidential administrations and are sure to provide new fodder for pundits and politicians alike. The network will formally announce the completion of the C-Span Video Library on Wednesday.

Iuri Dantas | Brasília | March 15

Bloomberg - Brazil will seek to break intellectual property rights on U.S.-made prescription drugs, music, books, software and movies in a bid to force the U.S. government to end cotton subsidies that violate global trade rules.

Brazil’s government submitted a list of products that may have royalties, copyrights and patents suspended as part of $829 million in retaliatory sanctions authorized by the World Trade Organization, according to a statement published today in the country’s official gazette.

The New Yorker, By Jeffrey Toobin, March 22

Supreme Court Justices are remembered for their opinions, but they are revealed by their questions. For many years, Sandra Day O’Connor chose to open the questioning in most cases, and thus show the lawyers—and her colleagues—which way she, as the Court’s swing vote, was leaning. Today, Antonin Scalia often jumps in first, signalling the intentions of the Court’s ascendant conservative wing, and sometimes Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., makes his views, which are usually aligned with Scalia’s, equally clear. New Justices tend to defer to their senior colleagues, but Sonia Sotomayor, in her first year on the Court, has displayed little reluctance to test lawyers on the facts and the procedural posture of their cases; these kinds of questions had generally been the province of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who, at times, has not seemed entirely pleased by the newcomer’s vigor. Samuel A. Alito, Jr., often says little; Clarence Thomas never says anything. (Thomas has not asked a question at an oral argument since 2006.)

Rob Edwards | March 14

Herald Scotland - Hundreds of powerful US “bunker-buster” bombs are being shipped from California to the British island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean in preparation for a possible attack on Iran.

The Sunday Herald can reveal that the US government signed a contract in January to transport 10 ammunition containers to the island. According to a cargo manifest from the US navy, this included 387 “Blu” bombs used for blasting hardened or underground structures.

Experts say that they are being put in place for an assault on Iran’s controversial nuclear facilities. There has long been speculation that the US military is preparing for such an attack, should diplomacy fail to persuade Iran not to make nuclear weapons.

Caren Bohan | Washington | March 14

Reuters - President Barack Obama is "outraged" by the murders in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico of three people connected with the U.S. consulate there, a White House official said on Sunday.

"In concert with Mexican authorities, we will work tirelessly to bring their killers to justice," White House National Security Council spokesman Mike Hammer said in a statement.

A consulate employee and her husband, both U.S. citizens, were killed along with the husband of another employee who is a Mexican citizen, the statement said.

Because of this assumption, members of the Tea Party right, like the members of the New Left, spend a lot of time worrying about being co-opted. They worry that the corrupt forces of the establishment are perpetually trying to infiltrate the purity of their ranks. – David Brooks New York Times Columnist

First of all I want to apologize to all of those people from the peace movement, civil rights movement, and the other groups from the sixties who fought and died for long denied social change in America for this article from David Brooks. Obviously while so many Americans were actually trying to grapple with a social system that they felt no longer represented who they were Mr. Brooks was too young to know what was going on. I have a real hard time taking anyone seriously who writes about a period of history that they did not actually participate in. To me most post-history is either conjecture or an attempt at a mulligan for those who are promoting their own agendas.

Peter Henderson | SAN FRANCISCO | March 4, 2010

Reuters - Students and faculty at California's public universities rallied across the state on Thursday to protest steep fee hikes they say have damaged a system of higher education long the envy of the nation.

More than 100 such events in over 30 states were scheduled for a "Day of Action" in support of public education across the country, prompted by tuition hikes and program cuts that reflect financial problems affecting nearly every U.S. state.

Weakening of the education system is considered particularly severe in California, one of the states hardest-hit by the recession.

Several hundred students, faculty and staff rallied at the University of California at Berkeley, the 1960s hub of Vietnam war protests. Yoga students there held classes outside to avoid crossing picket lines.

Washington | March 4

BBC - A US Congressional committee is debating a resolution to label as genocide the killing of Armenians by Turkish forces during World War I.

The non-binding resolution is fiercely opposed by Turkey, a key US ally.

Deborah Blum

Slate - Although mostly forgotten today, the "chemist's war of Prohibition" remains one of the strangest and most deadly decisions in American law-enforcement history. As one of its most outspoken opponents, Charles Norris, the chief medical examiner of New York City during the 1920s, liked to say, it was "our national experiment in extermination."

Note, if you are not "insane enough to believe that the US government could or would kill 3000 10,000 innocent citizens for whatever reason", then please dont click the link below

Link ~ link fixed

RH Reality Check, By Rachel Larris, February 20

A bill passed by the Utah House and Senate this week and waiting for the governor's signature, will make it a crime for a woman to have a miscarriage, and make induced abortion a crime in some instances.

According Lynn M. Paltrow, executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women, what makes Utah's proposed law unique is that it is specifically designed to be punitive toward pregnant women, not those who might assist or cause an illegal abortion or unintended miscarriage.

San Juan, PR | February 26

AP - Health officials in Puerto Rico have declared an epidemic of dengue fever.

Health Secretary Lorenzo Gonzalez says 210 cases have been confirmed for January, more than triple the number in the same month of 2007. That year proved the worst for the U.S. Caribbean territory in nearly a decade, with 11,000 cases.

Rachel Sanderson & Michael MacKenzie | Washington | February 24

FT - US regulators have tried to steer a middle ground on the controversial issue of short selling by voting to adopt a rule that will impose restrictions only when a stock’s price is in free fall.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission shied away from reinstating the full “uptick rule”, which prevented stocks from being shorted unless the last tick in their price was up, but it recognised there needed to be some control when a stock loses more than 10 per cent.

Eric Dash | Washington | February 23

NYT - After weathering the nation’s worst run of bank failures in nearly two decades, the Federal Insurance Deposit Corporation announced Tuesday that it had added 450 institutions to its list of challenged lenders in 2009 and warned that the industry was likely to remain under stress.

The number of so-called problem banks rose to 702 at the end of 2009, compared to 252 at the beginning of the year. Both the number of troubled institutions and their total assets are at the highest level since 1993, putting enormous strain on the government-administered insurance fund that protects customer deposits.

Luke Air Force Base | February 23

msnbc.com - One man was killed and another injured after they drove a stolen car through the entrance to Luke Air Force Base in Arizona and security forces opened fire, police said.

The car went through the entrance without stopping as required and security forces then used a vehicle to set up a roadblock on a bridge leading to the operational side of the base, near Glendale, Capt. Jerry Gonzalez, a spokesman for the base, told msnbc.com.

Police said the car drove directly at a security officer who feared for his life and opened fire.

Andrew Graham | Washington | February 22

Green Technology Daily - Federal regulators gave Internet search giant Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) the go-ahead to make the seemingly odd move into the energy market as a power reseller and energy trader, aspirations some say could run contrary to the company's “Do No Evil” philosophy.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued the approval (.pdf) late Thursday, which goes into effect Feb. 23. It noted that Google Energy, a wholly owned subsidiary of the company, met criteria for a “Category 1 seller in all regions.”

Tim Weiner | February 20

NYT - Alexander M. Haig Jr., the four-star general who served as a confrontational secretary of state under President Ronald Reagan and a commanding White House chief of staff as the Nixon administration crumbled, died Saturday at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, according to a hospital spokesman. He was 85.

Mr. Haig was a rare American breed: a political general. His bids for the presidency quickly came undone. But his ambition to be president was thinly veiled, and that was his undoing. He knew, Reagan’s aide Lyn Nofziger once said, that “the third paragraph of his obit” would detail his conduct in the hours after President Reagan was shot, on March 30, 1981.

That day, Secretary of State Haig wrongly declared himself the acting president. “The helm is right here,” he told members of the Reagan cabinet in the White House Situation Room, “and that means right in this chair for now, constitutionally, until the vice president gets here.” His words were taped by Richard V. Allen, then the national security adviser.

Austin | February 18

Star-Telegram - A small single-engine airplane has crashed into an office complex in North Austin, an Austin police spokeswoman said Thursday.

The seven-story office building, described as the Echelon building, is in the 9400 block of Research Boulevard, according to Austin fire officials. The site is near U.S. 183 and MoPac. The crash happened about 10 a.m.

Spokeswoman Helena Wright said officials do not yet know whether the aircraft was private or commercial, and they had no immediate word on casualties.

A spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security said there is no reason to believe that terrorism or criminal activity is involved

Sharon Begley | Brookhaven National Lab, Long Island, NY | February 16

Newsweek - While the Large Hadron Collider gets all the attention (it never hurts a physics experiment's street cred when rumors spread that it might create a mini black hole and swallow up the Earth), a lesser-known particle collider has been quietly making soup—quark soup. For the field of experimental particle physics, in which progress has been at a near-standstill since the glory days of the 1970s (yes, the top quark was discovered in an experiment at Fermilab in 1995, but really, everyone knew this last of the six quarks existed), this counts as the most notable achievement in years: a discovery that doesn't merely confirm what theory has long held, but points the way to new revelations about the creation and evolution of the universe.

The reason for that accolade is that quark soup was last seen when the universe was 1 microsecond old, physicists reported at the annual meeting of the American Physical Society. It was created at the 2.4-mile-around Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Lab on New York's Long Island, which smashes together gold ions traveling at nearly the speed of light. The result of the collisions is a tiny region of space so hot—4 trillion degrees Celsius—that protons and neutrons melt into a plasma of their constituent quarks and gluons, as Brookhaven describes here. The soup is 250,000 times hotter than the center of the sun, 40 times hotter than a typical supernova, and the hottest temperature in the universe today. Right there on Long Island. (For anyone wondering what kind of thermometer is used to measure a 4-trillion-degree soup, it is color: by analyzing the energy distribution (color) of light emitted from the soup, scientists can infer its temperature much as they infer the temperatures of stars or even of a glowing andiron.) In one of the truly helpful advances since the golden age of particle physics, several cool simulations of the RHIC collisions and resulting quark soup are on YouTube.

The last time such a quark-gluon plasma existed was 13.7 billion years ago, when the universe burst into existence in the big bang. By creating it in a lab for the first time, the RHIC teams have given scientists a chance to study how the cosmos came to evolve into the riot of galaxies and nebulae that we see today. And although the quark soup created at RHIC lasts not even 1 billionth of a trillionth of a second, there are already surprises. The quarks and gluons in the soup were expected to behave independently, for instance, but instead they behave cooperatively, almost like synchronized swimmers—or, in the spirit of the moment, like Olympic pairs skaters.

Rob Hotakainen | Washington | February 12

McClatchy - Megan's Law soon could go international.

The law, named after Megan Kanka, a 7-year-old New Jersey girl who was raped and killed by a neighbor in 1994, requires convicted sex offenders to be registered with the government, making it easier to track their whereabouts. Their names can then be put into databases, allowing the public to do a quick online check to determine where offenders reside.

I guess I can no longer say I've never paid for sex. Actually, no American tax-payer can make that claim anymore.

The troubled American private ­security company Blackwater faced fresh ­controversy today when two former employees accused it of defrauding the US government for years, including ­billing for a Filipina prostitute on its payroll in Afghanistan.

According to Melan Davis, a former employee, Blackwater listed the woman for payment under the "morale welfare recreation" category.

The company, which allegedly employed her in Kabul, billed the ­government for her plane tickets and monthly salary, Davis said.

One question: can we finally start calling these guys what they really are now? They may not fit the technical, legal definition under international treaty law, but historically, everything about these firms spells 'mercenary.' Please? Kthxbai.

Four and a half months into our 12 month lease and we get a call from the owner that they need to move back into the house we rented. Of course he would like us to break the lease for him. WTF? So we look up the house we rented in the county records and find that he bought it for $365K and he owes $292K. Based on income generation the 1400 sq ft house is worth around $100K so he's in a little over his head on the place but wait! He has a sale pending on a 1600 sq ft residence that he paid $449K for in 2007 and he has to move out. He was asking $389K for it originally but we don't know what he got for it. A short sale? Pending? Yeah right! We can't be sure but he is loosing money on that one. This guy is on the short road to bankruptcy.