September 18, 2005
German Inventor's 'Cat Fuel' Angers Animal Lovers
Sept 14, 2005 BERLIN (Reuters) - A German inventor has angered animal rights activists with his answer to fighting the soaring cost of fuel -- dead cats. Christian Koch, 55, from the eastern county of Saxony, told Bild newspaper that his organic diesel fuel -- a home-made blend of garbage, run-over cats, and other ingredients -- is a proven alternative to normal consumer diesel.
…The Web site of Koch's firm, "Alphakat GmbH," says his patented "KDV 500" machine can produce what he calls the "bio-diesel" fuel at about 23 euro cents (30 cents) a litre, which is about one-fifth the price at petrol stations now…Koch said around 20 dead cats added into the mix could help produce enough fuel to fill up a 50-litre (11 gallon) tank.
But the president of the German Society for the Protection of Animals, Wolfgang Apel, said using dead cats for fuel was illegal… "There's no danger for cats and dogs in Germany because this practice is outlawed in Germany," Apel told Bild on Wednesday in a story entitled "Can you really make fuel out of cats?"
http://go.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=scienceNews&storyID=9652233&src=rss/scienceNews
Why wireless calls can fail in disaster
9/17/2005 The crux of the problem is simple. Unbeknownst to many subscribers, wireless calls in the United States travel partly over old-fashioned wireline phone networks. When those systems encounter trouble like severed cables -- or in the case of New Orleans, massive flooding -- wireless networks can also fail…The same problems are likely to arise in future disasters where the scale of damage is comparable, such as a major earthquake. Even though phone companies spend billions of dollars each year to maintain or upgrade networks, they're not immune to failure.
Trying to make them disaster-proof, moreover, is an impossibly expensive notion, industry officials say.
http://www.investors.com/breakingnews.asp?journalid=31672525&brk=1
NBC to Air Christian Show
Sept. 17, 2005 An upcoming TV series featuring Christian pop singer Amy Grant will make its debut next Friday, and NBC is pulling out all the stops to promote it.
In "Three Wishes," Amy Grant will visit a different town every week, where, in a gesture of Christian charity, she will seek to fulfill the wishes of needy families and community groups, according to the New York Times.
…The Times, widely noted for its dismissive attitude toward anything that smacks of Christianity, was unable to resist commenting that the network's promotion of the series is "evocative of a red-state presidential campaign," which "bears scant resemblance to any NBC has crafted before.” …
"Three Wishes," Times reporter Jacques Steinberg noted, "is aimed, in no small part, at a churchgoing rural and suburban audience" – you know, the sort of intellectually backward types who inhabit red states.
http://newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/9/17/140204.shtml
Clinton Summit: Don't Shun Terror Groups
Sept. 17, 2005 Attendees at the Clinton Global Initiative were told on Friday that terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas should be "engaged" by the world's peace loving nations - even if their members persist in trying to destroy Israel and America...ex-President Clinton suggested that the best way to prevent terrorists from discouraging economic growth in the Middle East was to offer businesses looking to invest there terrorism insurance…
http://newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/9/17/132309.shtml
Good Job, Now Here Let me punch Your Nose
Sept. 17, 2005 Sen. Mary Landrieu refused on Friday to withdraw or apologize for her threat to punch President Bush if he criticized Louisiana officials - despite Bush's magnanimous speech Thursday night and a federal down payment of more than $60 billion dollars to rebuild her state.
"I do not take it back, I don't apologize for it. I said I would punch anybody, including the president," she told the Chicago Tribune... "Though threatening the president is a crime," the Tribune noted - "the Secret Service took it as a joke and the White House brushed off her remarks." Standing in the Capitol, however, Landrieu made it clear she wasn't joking. ...After saying she stood by her ugly comments, the Louisiana Democrat also offered praise for the president on Friday, saying the Katrina reconstruction plan he outlined in his speech was "innovative and bold." http://newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/9/17/94602.shtml
True-life 'Robinson Crusoe' lived atop a hill on isle off Chile
09/17/2005 A team led by explorer Daisuke Takahashi says it has found where the true-life 18th century model for "Robinson Crusoe" spent more than four years in the Pacific Ocean waiting to be rescued.
Traces of a structure that Scottish navigator Alexander Selkirk (1676-1721) likely built after he was marooned in 1704 were found atop a hill on what is now called Robinson Crusoe Island, off the coast of Chile, Takahashi said in Tokyo on Thursday.
http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200509170133.html
Chavez Says U.N. to Move to Jerusalem
9/15/5 - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez denounced the U.S.-led war in Iraq on Thursday and told world leaders they should consider moving the U.N. headquarters out of the United States because of it. …World leaders had been asked to speak for five minutes, and when Chavez kept talking, the presiding diplomat passed him a note that his time was up. The Venezuelan leader threw the note on the floor and said if Bush could speak for 20 minutes at Wednesday's opening session, so could he… Chavez said U.N. headquarters should be moved from New York to international city "outside the sovereignty of any state," and noted that some have suggested Jerusalem.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2005/09/15/national/a200542D00.DTL
Evacuation-plan funds from Congress diverted
Money to write strategy for New Orleans in 1997 used instead to study lake bridge
September 17, 2005 Taxpayer dollars Congress appropriated during the Clinton administration that were meant for FEMA to develop a comprehensive evacuation plan for New Orleans instead was diverted and used to study the causeway bridge that spans the city's Lake Pontchartrain, officials say.
"They never used it for the intended purpose," former Rep. Billy Tauzin, R-La., told the Associated Press. "The whole intent was to give them resources so they could plan an evacuation of New Orleans that anticipated that a very large number of people would never leave."
…In 1999, after seeing no action taken, Congress strengthened its directive, ordering "an evacuation plan for a Category 3 or greater storm, a levee break, flood or other natural disaster for the New Orleans area."
…The hefty report produced by the Greater New Orleans Expressway Commission "primarily was not about evacuation," Robert Lambert, the general manager for the bridge expressway, told the news service. "In general it was an overview of all the things we need to do" for the causeway through 2016. …
…"FEMA received an earmark which it processed through to the state as instructed by Congress," said senior vice president in the consulting firm of former FEMA Director James Lee Witt. Witt now works as a Katrina recovery specialist for Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco. http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=46382
Blair calls BBC coverage 'full of hate of America'
Sep 17 - British Prime Minister Tony Blair has complained privately to media tycoon Rupert Murdoch that the BBC's coverage of Hurricane Katrina carried an anti-American bias, Murdoch said at a conference here.
Murdoch, chairman of the media conglomerate News Corporation, recounted a conversation with the British leader at a panel discussion late Friday hosted by former president Bill Clinton.
"Tony Blair -- perhaps I shouldn't repeat this conversation -- told me yesterday that he was in Delhi last week. And he turned on the BBC world service to see what was happening in New Orleans," …"And he said it was just full of hate of America and gloating about our troubles. And that was his government. Well, his government-owned thing," he said of the publicly owned broadcaster.
…The former US president, who held his conference to coincide with the United Nations summit in New York, agreed that the BBC's coverage was lacking… While the BBC's reports on the hurricane were factually accurate, its presentation was "stacked up" to criticize President George W Bush's handling of the disaster, Clinton said. "... it was designed to be almost exclusively a hit on the federal response, without showing what anybody at any level was doing that was also miraculous, going on simultaneously in a positive way," Clinton said. http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20050917/wl_uk_afp/usbritainblairbbc_050917223538
Louisiana Officials Indicted Before Katrina Hit
Federal audits found dubious expenditures by the state's emergency preparedness agency, which will administer FEMA hurricane aid. ...Senior officials in Louisiana's emergency planning agency already were awaiting trial over allegations stemming from a federal investigation into waste, mismanagement and missing funds when Hurricane Katrina struck...And federal auditors are still trying to track as much as $60 million in unaccounted for funds that were funneled to the state from the Federal Emergency Management Agency dating back to 1998...In March, FEMA demanded that Louisiana repay $30.4 million to the federal government.
...The reports were prepared by the federal agency's field office in Denton, Texas, and cover 1998 to 2003. Improper expenditures previously identified by auditors include a parka, a briefcase and a trip to Germany...Much of the FEMA money that was unaccounted for was sent to Louisiana under the Hazard Mitigation Grant program, intended to help states retrofit property and improve flood control facilities, for example.
The $30.4 million FEMA is demanding back was money paid into that program and others, including a program to buy out flood-prone homeowners. As much as $30 million in additional unaccounted for spending also is under review in audits that have not yet been released, according to a FEMA official....
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-money17sep17,1,5736422.story?coll=la-headlines-nation&ctrack=1&cset=true
http://www.freewill-predestination.com
Sept 14, 2005 BERLIN (Reuters) - A German inventor has angered animal rights activists with his answer to fighting the soaring cost of fuel -- dead cats. Christian Koch, 55, from the eastern county of Saxony, told Bild newspaper that his organic diesel fuel -- a home-made blend of garbage, run-over cats, and other ingredients -- is a proven alternative to normal consumer diesel.
…The Web site of Koch's firm, "Alphakat GmbH," says his patented "KDV 500" machine can produce what he calls the "bio-diesel" fuel at about 23 euro cents (30 cents) a litre, which is about one-fifth the price at petrol stations now…Koch said around 20 dead cats added into the mix could help produce enough fuel to fill up a 50-litre (11 gallon) tank.
But the president of the German Society for the Protection of Animals, Wolfgang Apel, said using dead cats for fuel was illegal… "There's no danger for cats and dogs in Germany because this practice is outlawed in Germany," Apel told Bild on Wednesday in a story entitled "Can you really make fuel out of cats?"
http://go.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=scienceNews&storyID=9652233&src=rss/scienceNews
Why wireless calls can fail in disaster
9/17/2005 The crux of the problem is simple. Unbeknownst to many subscribers, wireless calls in the United States travel partly over old-fashioned wireline phone networks. When those systems encounter trouble like severed cables -- or in the case of New Orleans, massive flooding -- wireless networks can also fail…The same problems are likely to arise in future disasters where the scale of damage is comparable, such as a major earthquake. Even though phone companies spend billions of dollars each year to maintain or upgrade networks, they're not immune to failure.
Trying to make them disaster-proof, moreover, is an impossibly expensive notion, industry officials say.
http://www.investors.com/breakingnews.asp?journalid=31672525&brk=1
NBC to Air Christian Show
Sept. 17, 2005 An upcoming TV series featuring Christian pop singer Amy Grant will make its debut next Friday, and NBC is pulling out all the stops to promote it.
In "Three Wishes," Amy Grant will visit a different town every week, where, in a gesture of Christian charity, she will seek to fulfill the wishes of needy families and community groups, according to the New York Times.
…The Times, widely noted for its dismissive attitude toward anything that smacks of Christianity, was unable to resist commenting that the network's promotion of the series is "evocative of a red-state presidential campaign," which "bears scant resemblance to any NBC has crafted before.” …
"Three Wishes," Times reporter Jacques Steinberg noted, "is aimed, in no small part, at a churchgoing rural and suburban audience" – you know, the sort of intellectually backward types who inhabit red states.
http://newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/9/17/140204.shtml
Clinton Summit: Don't Shun Terror Groups
Sept. 17, 2005 Attendees at the Clinton Global Initiative were told on Friday that terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas should be "engaged" by the world's peace loving nations - even if their members persist in trying to destroy Israel and America...ex-President Clinton suggested that the best way to prevent terrorists from discouraging economic growth in the Middle East was to offer businesses looking to invest there terrorism insurance…
http://newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/9/17/132309.shtml
Good Job, Now Here Let me punch Your Nose
Sept. 17, 2005 Sen. Mary Landrieu refused on Friday to withdraw or apologize for her threat to punch President Bush if he criticized Louisiana officials - despite Bush's magnanimous speech Thursday night and a federal down payment of more than $60 billion dollars to rebuild her state.
"I do not take it back, I don't apologize for it. I said I would punch anybody, including the president," she told the Chicago Tribune... "Though threatening the president is a crime," the Tribune noted - "the Secret Service took it as a joke and the White House brushed off her remarks." Standing in the Capitol, however, Landrieu made it clear she wasn't joking. ...After saying she stood by her ugly comments, the Louisiana Democrat also offered praise for the president on Friday, saying the Katrina reconstruction plan he outlined in his speech was "innovative and bold." http://newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/9/17/94602.shtml
True-life 'Robinson Crusoe' lived atop a hill on isle off Chile
09/17/2005 A team led by explorer Daisuke Takahashi says it has found where the true-life 18th century model for "Robinson Crusoe" spent more than four years in the Pacific Ocean waiting to be rescued.
Traces of a structure that Scottish navigator Alexander Selkirk (1676-1721) likely built after he was marooned in 1704 were found atop a hill on what is now called Robinson Crusoe Island, off the coast of Chile, Takahashi said in Tokyo on Thursday.
http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200509170133.html
Chavez Says U.N. to Move to Jerusalem
9/15/5 - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez denounced the U.S.-led war in Iraq on Thursday and told world leaders they should consider moving the U.N. headquarters out of the United States because of it. …World leaders had been asked to speak for five minutes, and when Chavez kept talking, the presiding diplomat passed him a note that his time was up. The Venezuelan leader threw the note on the floor and said if Bush could speak for 20 minutes at Wednesday's opening session, so could he… Chavez said U.N. headquarters should be moved from New York to international city "outside the sovereignty of any state," and noted that some have suggested Jerusalem.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2005/09/15/national/a200542D00.DTL
Evacuation-plan funds from Congress diverted
Money to write strategy for New Orleans in 1997 used instead to study lake bridge
September 17, 2005 Taxpayer dollars Congress appropriated during the Clinton administration that were meant for FEMA to develop a comprehensive evacuation plan for New Orleans instead was diverted and used to study the causeway bridge that spans the city's Lake Pontchartrain, officials say.
"They never used it for the intended purpose," former Rep. Billy Tauzin, R-La., told the Associated Press. "The whole intent was to give them resources so they could plan an evacuation of New Orleans that anticipated that a very large number of people would never leave."
…In 1999, after seeing no action taken, Congress strengthened its directive, ordering "an evacuation plan for a Category 3 or greater storm, a levee break, flood or other natural disaster for the New Orleans area."
…The hefty report produced by the Greater New Orleans Expressway Commission "primarily was not about evacuation," Robert Lambert, the general manager for the bridge expressway, told the news service. "In general it was an overview of all the things we need to do" for the causeway through 2016. …
…"FEMA received an earmark which it processed through to the state as instructed by Congress," said senior vice president in the consulting firm of former FEMA Director James Lee Witt. Witt now works as a Katrina recovery specialist for Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco. http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=46382
Blair calls BBC coverage 'full of hate of America'
Sep 17 - British Prime Minister Tony Blair has complained privately to media tycoon Rupert Murdoch that the BBC's coverage of Hurricane Katrina carried an anti-American bias, Murdoch said at a conference here.
Murdoch, chairman of the media conglomerate News Corporation, recounted a conversation with the British leader at a panel discussion late Friday hosted by former president Bill Clinton.
"Tony Blair -- perhaps I shouldn't repeat this conversation -- told me yesterday that he was in Delhi last week. And he turned on the BBC world service to see what was happening in New Orleans," …"And he said it was just full of hate of America and gloating about our troubles. And that was his government. Well, his government-owned thing," he said of the publicly owned broadcaster.
…The former US president, who held his conference to coincide with the United Nations summit in New York, agreed that the BBC's coverage was lacking… While the BBC's reports on the hurricane were factually accurate, its presentation was "stacked up" to criticize President George W Bush's handling of the disaster, Clinton said. "... it was designed to be almost exclusively a hit on the federal response, without showing what anybody at any level was doing that was also miraculous, going on simultaneously in a positive way," Clinton said. http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20050917/wl_uk_afp/usbritainblairbbc_050917223538
Louisiana Officials Indicted Before Katrina Hit
Federal audits found dubious expenditures by the state's emergency preparedness agency, which will administer FEMA hurricane aid. ...Senior officials in Louisiana's emergency planning agency already were awaiting trial over allegations stemming from a federal investigation into waste, mismanagement and missing funds when Hurricane Katrina struck...And federal auditors are still trying to track as much as $60 million in unaccounted for funds that were funneled to the state from the Federal Emergency Management Agency dating back to 1998...In March, FEMA demanded that Louisiana repay $30.4 million to the federal government.
...The reports were prepared by the federal agency's field office in Denton, Texas, and cover 1998 to 2003. Improper expenditures previously identified by auditors include a parka, a briefcase and a trip to Germany...Much of the FEMA money that was unaccounted for was sent to Louisiana under the Hazard Mitigation Grant program, intended to help states retrofit property and improve flood control facilities, for example.
The $30.4 million FEMA is demanding back was money paid into that program and others, including a program to buy out flood-prone homeowners. As much as $30 million in additional unaccounted for spending also is under review in audits that have not yet been released, according to a FEMA official....
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-money17sep17,1,5736422.story?coll=la-headlines-nation&ctrack=1&cset=true
http://www.freewill-predestination.com
posted by David Bennett | 5:30 PM
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