March 21, 2006
Man sues himself for vehicle damage
March 15, 2006- LODI, Calif. - When a dump truck backed into Curtis Gokey's car, he decided to sue the city for damages. Only thing is, he was the one driving the dump truck.
But that minor detail didn't stop Gokey, a Lodi city employee, from filing a $3,600 claim for the December accident, even after admitting the crash was his fault.
After the city denied that claim because Gokey was, in essence, suing himself, he and his wife, Rhonda, decided to file a new claim under her name.
City Attorney Steve Schwabauer said this one also lacks merit because Rhonda Gokey can't sue her own husband.
"You can sue your spouse for divorce, but you can't sue your spouse for negligence," Schwabauer said. "They're a married couple under California law. They're one entity. It's damage to community property."
But Rhonda Gokey insisted she has "the right to sue the city because a city's vehicle damaged my private vehicle."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11847551/
The red-hot power of chillies can kill cancer
The substance in chillies that causes the tongue to burn also drives prostate cancer cells to kill themselves, according to research that could pave the way for new treatments.
The pepper component capsaicin makes the cells undergo programmed cell death or apoptosis, says a study published in the journal Cancer Research.
…Prostate cancer tumours treated with capsaicin were about one-fifth the size of tumours in non-treated mice, said a team from the Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre, Los Angeles, in collaboration with colleagues from the University of California, Los Angeles.
"Capsaicin had a profound anti-proliferative effect on human prostate cancer cells in culture," said Dr Sören Lehmann, team member.
He estimated that the dose of pepper extract fed to the mice was equivalent to giving 400 milligrams of capsaicin three times a week to a 200-pound man, roughly equivalent to between three and eight fresh habañera peppers.
Britain's Prostate Cancer Charity welcomed the study, but advised men not to eat more hot chillis.
Head of Policy and Research, Chris Hiley, said: "Eventually, it may be possible to extract the capsaicin and make it available as a drug treatment. In the meantime we caution men with prostate cancer in the UK against upping their weekly intake of the hottest known chillies. High intake of hot chillies has been linked with stomach cancers in the populations of India and Mexico."
http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/03/16/wchilli16.xml
Best job market in 5 years for grads: report
Mar 20, 2006 - U.S. college graduates are facing the best job market since 2001, with business, computer, engineering, education and health care grads in highest demand, a report by an employment consulting firm showed on Monday.
"We are approaching full employment and some employers are already dreaming up perks to attract the best talent," said John Challenger, chief executive of Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
...The survey also found higher starting salaries this year. Graduates with economic or finance degrees will see the biggest gain with starting salaries up 11 percent to $45,191, while accounting salaries are up 6.2 percent, business management salaries up 3.9 percent and pay for civil engineers 4.3 percent higher.
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsarticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyid=2006-03-20T163503Z_01_N20258421_RTRUKOC_0_US-ECONOMY-JOBS.xml&rpc=22
Man faces death penalty for becoming Christian
March 19, 2006- Despite the fact the hardline Taliban regime is no longer in power, an Afghan man faces possible execution for allegedly abandoning his Islamic roots and becoming a Christian.
"Yes that's true, a man has converted to Christianity. He's being tried in one of our courts," Supreme Court judge Ansarullah Mawlavizada told the Middle East Times.
The case centers on Abdul Rahman, believed to be 41, who converted from Islam to Christianity some 16 years ago. His relatives reportedly notified authorities about the conversion.
The constitution in Afghanistan is based on Shariah law, which states any Muslim who rejects his or her religion should be sentenced to death.
...Prosecutor Abdul Wasi says he offered to drop the charges if Rahman made the switch back to Islam, but the defendant is maintaining his Christian beliefs. The judge is expected to rule within two months...
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=49345
Christianity on upswing in Japan
March 18, 2006- LOS ANGELES, Calif. – A poll conducted by the Gallup Organization has yielded some surprising statistics on Japanese attitudes toward religion, morality and spirituality.
According to a media advisory obtained by ANS, among the findings from one of the most extensive surveys of the country ever taken was a Christian population of 6 percent, a number much higher than reported in previous surveys.
Researchers were also surprised by high numbers of teens who claimed the Christian faith, while the traditionally dominant religions, Buddhism and Shintoism, though still claimed by many adults, suffered declines among teenagers. Some respondents answered that they belonged to more than one religion.
Of the 30 percent of adults surveyed who claimed to have a religion, 75 percent considered themselves Buddhists, 19 percent Shintoists, while 12 percent considered themselves to be Christians.
Researchers were especially surprised at the large number of Japanese youth who claimed the Christian faith. Of the 20 percent who professed to have a religion, 60 percent called themselves Buddhists, 36 percent Christians and followers of the traditionally dominant Japanese religion, Shinto.
Calling the numbers "stunning," George Gallup Jr. who assisted with the poll, noted of teenagers: "These projections mean that seven percent of the total teenage population say they are Christians."
...Researchers were also surprised by teen attitudes which reflected an especially pessimistic outlook on life. While 22 percent of U.S. teens in previous Gallup surveys often wondered why they existed, the number for Japanese teens was 85 percent. Similarly, while 76 percent of U.S. teens always see a reason for their being on Earth, only 13 percent of Japanese teens agreed with the statement. A surprisingly high 11 percent of Japanese teens wished they had never been born, a figure that comes in at 3 percent for U.S. teens.
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=49337
Global warming? It's in the stars, says scientist
Blames high-energy rays from distant parts of space smashing into atmosphere
March 18, 2006- A prominent Canadian scientist has defied the conventional wisdom on global warming by proposing stars, not greenhouse gases, as the primary catalyst for climate change.
University of Ottawa science professor Jan Veizer says high-energy cosmic rays, originating from stars across the expanse of space, are hitting Earth's atmosphere in ways that cause the planet to cycle through warm and cold periods.
Veizer's politically loaded theory appeared in "Geoscience Canada" last year and is generating debate on the causes of climate change within the scientific community.
...That cosmic rays strike Earth has long been known – NASA spends considerable effort shielding astronauts in space from them. What's different now is that more researchers are looking at their effect on the atmosphere and asking how they might be influencing the weather.
In 2004, the British science journal "Proceedings of the Royal Society" published a new theory claiming cosmic rays "unambiguously" affect Earth's climate, in particular, by forming clouds. Current research at Florida Tech and the University of Florida is aimed at determining whether cosmic rays trigger the release of lightning from charged thunderclouds. In 2003, NASA and University of Kansas researchers claimed to have traced the effect of cosmic radiation on climate and organisms across millions of years of fossil history.
In explaining the mechanism for a "celestial climate driver," the professor says cosmic rays hit gas molecules in the atmosphere, forming the nucleus of what becomes water vapor. The resulting clouds reflect more of the sun's energy back into space and leave Earth the cooler for it.
During times when more cosmic rays are striking the atmosphere, Earth is cooler. A dearth of rays results in climatic warming.
Veizer argues that Earth has cycled between warm and cold periods many times as our solar system has traveled through different parts of the galaxy. Younger stars give off most of the rays striking Earth's atmosphere.
...He notes the plausibility of the sun's increased intensity, rather than an increase in carbon dioxide, being the primary cause for Earth's warming by one degree over the past century.
...Other scientists are taking issue with the doomsday scenarios being proclaimed by many global-warming alarmists. As WorldNetDaily reported, two Philippine scientists criticized Al Gore for claiming global warming was going to cause flooding of Manila's harbor. They pointed out climate change would only cause sea levels to rise by millimeters while Manila's problems were being caused by rapid subsidence of the land, a local problem created by extraction of groundwater, not greenhouse gases.
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=49329
Anti-war protesters in Salt Lake City, elsewhere lament apathy
...By the time the war protesters began their march Saturday morning in Salt Lake City, only about 50 people had gathered.
Their numbers had swelled to about 200 by noon - and that was with a little high-tech help from a marcher who text-messaged friends to join him.
...It was a scene repeated across the United States...The protests, like those held to mark each of the two previous anniversaries of the March 2003 invasion, were vigorous and peaceful but far smaller than the large-scale marches that preceded the war, despite polls showing lower public support for the war than in years past and anemic approval ratings for President Bush, himself a focus of many of the protesters.
...In Washington, a relatively small crowd of about 300 gathered at the Naval Observatory, where Vice President Dick Cheney lives, and marched to Dupont Circle. Debbie Boch, 52, a restaurant manager from Denver, said she and two friends bought plane tickets to Washington two months ago, before the demonstration had been planned. It was the fifth protest march she had attended since the war began, she said, and among the smallest.
''It's very disappointing, especially in Washington, D.C.,'' she said. ''You think this is the place where people come to make things happen. I'm just not sure why there aren't more people here today.'' (maybe it's because you're all a bunch of morons, the polls are wrong, and more people fear terrorists than the US)
http://www.sltrib.com/ci_3618103
From Iraq's Front Line, it Looks Like the Media Has Lost the Plot
3-18-2006 - A soldier friend stationed in Baghdad for the past two months has been sending me emails with such arresting lines as: "It's late here and I [have] to get the Chief of Staff back to the Palace."
From his office in the fortified military and government area, the Green Zone, he scans the web for news about Iraq and compares it with his reality.
"Baghdad is not burning down around my ears," he wrote last week. "Things were tense a while back, but violence was within limits. Callous thing to say, but that is the reality around here."
The only "quagmire" he sees is "the soft patch of ground out by the rifle range and no civil war in sight".
...with the third anniversary of the Iraq invasion tomorrow, he says, "the only people who seem to have lost both their grip on reality and their nerve are the western media".
His reality is quite different: "I am more and more impressed with the Iraqis every day. There are problems, to be sure, but I do not know of any country that has gone through the sorts of upheavals that this one has without any problems.
"One just has to remember the catastrophes of the French Reign of Terror, or the Russian and Chinese revolutions, not to mention the disasters that were Vietnam and Cambodia."
He also sent me a letter which has been circulating among soldiers for a month, from the mayor of Tal 'Afar, near the Syrian border, praising the "lion hearts" of the US 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment who have changed the city from "ghost town in which terrorists spread death and destruction to a secure city flourishing with life".
The violence of revenge attacks on Sunnis across Iraq, after last month's bombing of the Shiite Golden Mosque in Samarra, led many commentators to declare the civil war they have been predicting for three years had arrived. But others point to signs the crisis has spurred Iraq's political leaders to sort out their differences and work to form a national unity government, three months after their third successful election. And as Sunni politicians engage in the process, there are encouraging reports of infighting among Sunni insurgents.
Last Thursday Iraq's new parliament was sworn in and 82-year-old Sunni elder statesman Adnan Pachachi told its first short session: "We have to prove to the world that a civil war is not and will not take place among our people. The danger is still looming and the enemies are ready for us because they do not like to see a united, strong, stable Iraq."
...in The Washington Post, David Ignatius, in Baghdad, wrote that the Samarra mosque crisis was the catalyst that broke a deadlock and brought Iraq's political factions together last week...
http://smh.com.au
U.S. Iraq Casualties Plummet in March
March 20, 2006- The press is marking the third anniversary of the liberation of Iraq with an avalanche of reports that a sectarian "civil war" has broken out, which, reporters say, means U.S. efforts to bring stability to Iraq are on the verge of failure.
But only a few short weeks ago reporters were measuring success [or, in their case, failure] in Iraq by a completely different standard: the number of U.S. troops killed in combat operations.
So why the shift in focus? It turns out that while the so-called Iraqi civil war has been raging, the number of U.S. casualties has plummeted to less than half of what they were over the previous five months.
In fact, if the current trend continues, March will be the second least deadly month for American GIs since the war began.
…Big credit goes to the U.S. military: The soldiers on the ground whose efforts to train Iraqis to do the frontline fighting themselves are getting the job done.
Still, don't look for much coverage of this dramatic turn of events - especially from reporters for whom "good news is no news" in Iraq.
http://newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/3/20/100548.shtml?s=lh
David<><
http://freewill-predestination.com/
http://www.knology.net/~lonesomedove/
March 15, 2006- LODI, Calif. - When a dump truck backed into Curtis Gokey's car, he decided to sue the city for damages. Only thing is, he was the one driving the dump truck.
But that minor detail didn't stop Gokey, a Lodi city employee, from filing a $3,600 claim for the December accident, even after admitting the crash was his fault.
After the city denied that claim because Gokey was, in essence, suing himself, he and his wife, Rhonda, decided to file a new claim under her name.
City Attorney Steve Schwabauer said this one also lacks merit because Rhonda Gokey can't sue her own husband.
"You can sue your spouse for divorce, but you can't sue your spouse for negligence," Schwabauer said. "They're a married couple under California law. They're one entity. It's damage to community property."
But Rhonda Gokey insisted she has "the right to sue the city because a city's vehicle damaged my private vehicle."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11847551/
The red-hot power of chillies can kill cancer
The substance in chillies that causes the tongue to burn also drives prostate cancer cells to kill themselves, according to research that could pave the way for new treatments.
The pepper component capsaicin makes the cells undergo programmed cell death or apoptosis, says a study published in the journal Cancer Research.
…Prostate cancer tumours treated with capsaicin were about one-fifth the size of tumours in non-treated mice, said a team from the Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre, Los Angeles, in collaboration with colleagues from the University of California, Los Angeles.
"Capsaicin had a profound anti-proliferative effect on human prostate cancer cells in culture," said Dr Sören Lehmann, team member.
He estimated that the dose of pepper extract fed to the mice was equivalent to giving 400 milligrams of capsaicin three times a week to a 200-pound man, roughly equivalent to between three and eight fresh habañera peppers.
Britain's Prostate Cancer Charity welcomed the study, but advised men not to eat more hot chillis.
Head of Policy and Research, Chris Hiley, said: "Eventually, it may be possible to extract the capsaicin and make it available as a drug treatment. In the meantime we caution men with prostate cancer in the UK against upping their weekly intake of the hottest known chillies. High intake of hot chillies has been linked with stomach cancers in the populations of India and Mexico."
http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/03/16/wchilli16.xml
Best job market in 5 years for grads: report
Mar 20, 2006 - U.S. college graduates are facing the best job market since 2001, with business, computer, engineering, education and health care grads in highest demand, a report by an employment consulting firm showed on Monday.
"We are approaching full employment and some employers are already dreaming up perks to attract the best talent," said John Challenger, chief executive of Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
...The survey also found higher starting salaries this year. Graduates with economic or finance degrees will see the biggest gain with starting salaries up 11 percent to $45,191, while accounting salaries are up 6.2 percent, business management salaries up 3.9 percent and pay for civil engineers 4.3 percent higher.
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsarticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyid=2006-03-20T163503Z_01_N20258421_RTRUKOC_0_US-ECONOMY-JOBS.xml&rpc=22
Man faces death penalty for becoming Christian
March 19, 2006- Despite the fact the hardline Taliban regime is no longer in power, an Afghan man faces possible execution for allegedly abandoning his Islamic roots and becoming a Christian.
"Yes that's true, a man has converted to Christianity. He's being tried in one of our courts," Supreme Court judge Ansarullah Mawlavizada told the Middle East Times.
The case centers on Abdul Rahman, believed to be 41, who converted from Islam to Christianity some 16 years ago. His relatives reportedly notified authorities about the conversion.
The constitution in Afghanistan is based on Shariah law, which states any Muslim who rejects his or her religion should be sentenced to death.
...Prosecutor Abdul Wasi says he offered to drop the charges if Rahman made the switch back to Islam, but the defendant is maintaining his Christian beliefs. The judge is expected to rule within two months...
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=49345
Christianity on upswing in Japan
March 18, 2006- LOS ANGELES, Calif. – A poll conducted by the Gallup Organization has yielded some surprising statistics on Japanese attitudes toward religion, morality and spirituality.
According to a media advisory obtained by ANS, among the findings from one of the most extensive surveys of the country ever taken was a Christian population of 6 percent, a number much higher than reported in previous surveys.
Researchers were also surprised by high numbers of teens who claimed the Christian faith, while the traditionally dominant religions, Buddhism and Shintoism, though still claimed by many adults, suffered declines among teenagers. Some respondents answered that they belonged to more than one religion.
Of the 30 percent of adults surveyed who claimed to have a religion, 75 percent considered themselves Buddhists, 19 percent Shintoists, while 12 percent considered themselves to be Christians.
Researchers were especially surprised at the large number of Japanese youth who claimed the Christian faith. Of the 20 percent who professed to have a religion, 60 percent called themselves Buddhists, 36 percent Christians and followers of the traditionally dominant Japanese religion, Shinto.
Calling the numbers "stunning," George Gallup Jr. who assisted with the poll, noted of teenagers: "These projections mean that seven percent of the total teenage population say they are Christians."
...Researchers were also surprised by teen attitudes which reflected an especially pessimistic outlook on life. While 22 percent of U.S. teens in previous Gallup surveys often wondered why they existed, the number for Japanese teens was 85 percent. Similarly, while 76 percent of U.S. teens always see a reason for their being on Earth, only 13 percent of Japanese teens agreed with the statement. A surprisingly high 11 percent of Japanese teens wished they had never been born, a figure that comes in at 3 percent for U.S. teens.
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=49337
Global warming? It's in the stars, says scientist
Blames high-energy rays from distant parts of space smashing into atmosphere
March 18, 2006- A prominent Canadian scientist has defied the conventional wisdom on global warming by proposing stars, not greenhouse gases, as the primary catalyst for climate change.
University of Ottawa science professor Jan Veizer says high-energy cosmic rays, originating from stars across the expanse of space, are hitting Earth's atmosphere in ways that cause the planet to cycle through warm and cold periods.
Veizer's politically loaded theory appeared in "Geoscience Canada" last year and is generating debate on the causes of climate change within the scientific community.
...That cosmic rays strike Earth has long been known – NASA spends considerable effort shielding astronauts in space from them. What's different now is that more researchers are looking at their effect on the atmosphere and asking how they might be influencing the weather.
In 2004, the British science journal "Proceedings of the Royal Society" published a new theory claiming cosmic rays "unambiguously" affect Earth's climate, in particular, by forming clouds. Current research at Florida Tech and the University of Florida is aimed at determining whether cosmic rays trigger the release of lightning from charged thunderclouds. In 2003, NASA and University of Kansas researchers claimed to have traced the effect of cosmic radiation on climate and organisms across millions of years of fossil history.
In explaining the mechanism for a "celestial climate driver," the professor says cosmic rays hit gas molecules in the atmosphere, forming the nucleus of what becomes water vapor. The resulting clouds reflect more of the sun's energy back into space and leave Earth the cooler for it.
During times when more cosmic rays are striking the atmosphere, Earth is cooler. A dearth of rays results in climatic warming.
Veizer argues that Earth has cycled between warm and cold periods many times as our solar system has traveled through different parts of the galaxy. Younger stars give off most of the rays striking Earth's atmosphere.
...He notes the plausibility of the sun's increased intensity, rather than an increase in carbon dioxide, being the primary cause for Earth's warming by one degree over the past century.
...Other scientists are taking issue with the doomsday scenarios being proclaimed by many global-warming alarmists. As WorldNetDaily reported, two Philippine scientists criticized Al Gore for claiming global warming was going to cause flooding of Manila's harbor. They pointed out climate change would only cause sea levels to rise by millimeters while Manila's problems were being caused by rapid subsidence of the land, a local problem created by extraction of groundwater, not greenhouse gases.
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=49329
Anti-war protesters in Salt Lake City, elsewhere lament apathy
...By the time the war protesters began their march Saturday morning in Salt Lake City, only about 50 people had gathered.
Their numbers had swelled to about 200 by noon - and that was with a little high-tech help from a marcher who text-messaged friends to join him.
...It was a scene repeated across the United States...The protests, like those held to mark each of the two previous anniversaries of the March 2003 invasion, were vigorous and peaceful but far smaller than the large-scale marches that preceded the war, despite polls showing lower public support for the war than in years past and anemic approval ratings for President Bush, himself a focus of many of the protesters.
...In Washington, a relatively small crowd of about 300 gathered at the Naval Observatory, where Vice President Dick Cheney lives, and marched to Dupont Circle. Debbie Boch, 52, a restaurant manager from Denver, said she and two friends bought plane tickets to Washington two months ago, before the demonstration had been planned. It was the fifth protest march she had attended since the war began, she said, and among the smallest.
''It's very disappointing, especially in Washington, D.C.,'' she said. ''You think this is the place where people come to make things happen. I'm just not sure why there aren't more people here today.'' (maybe it's because you're all a bunch of morons, the polls are wrong, and more people fear terrorists than the US)
http://www.sltrib.com/ci_3618103
From Iraq's Front Line, it Looks Like the Media Has Lost the Plot
3-18-2006 - A soldier friend stationed in Baghdad for the past two months has been sending me emails with such arresting lines as: "It's late here and I [have] to get the Chief of Staff back to the Palace."
From his office in the fortified military and government area, the Green Zone, he scans the web for news about Iraq and compares it with his reality.
"Baghdad is not burning down around my ears," he wrote last week. "Things were tense a while back, but violence was within limits. Callous thing to say, but that is the reality around here."
The only "quagmire" he sees is "the soft patch of ground out by the rifle range and no civil war in sight".
...with the third anniversary of the Iraq invasion tomorrow, he says, "the only people who seem to have lost both their grip on reality and their nerve are the western media".
His reality is quite different: "I am more and more impressed with the Iraqis every day. There are problems, to be sure, but I do not know of any country that has gone through the sorts of upheavals that this one has without any problems.
"One just has to remember the catastrophes of the French Reign of Terror, or the Russian and Chinese revolutions, not to mention the disasters that were Vietnam and Cambodia."
He also sent me a letter which has been circulating among soldiers for a month, from the mayor of Tal 'Afar, near the Syrian border, praising the "lion hearts" of the US 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment who have changed the city from "ghost town in which terrorists spread death and destruction to a secure city flourishing with life".
The violence of revenge attacks on Sunnis across Iraq, after last month's bombing of the Shiite Golden Mosque in Samarra, led many commentators to declare the civil war they have been predicting for three years had arrived. But others point to signs the crisis has spurred Iraq's political leaders to sort out their differences and work to form a national unity government, three months after their third successful election. And as Sunni politicians engage in the process, there are encouraging reports of infighting among Sunni insurgents.
Last Thursday Iraq's new parliament was sworn in and 82-year-old Sunni elder statesman Adnan Pachachi told its first short session: "We have to prove to the world that a civil war is not and will not take place among our people. The danger is still looming and the enemies are ready for us because they do not like to see a united, strong, stable Iraq."
...in The Washington Post, David Ignatius, in Baghdad, wrote that the Samarra mosque crisis was the catalyst that broke a deadlock and brought Iraq's political factions together last week...
http://smh.com.au
U.S. Iraq Casualties Plummet in March
March 20, 2006- The press is marking the third anniversary of the liberation of Iraq with an avalanche of reports that a sectarian "civil war" has broken out, which, reporters say, means U.S. efforts to bring stability to Iraq are on the verge of failure.
But only a few short weeks ago reporters were measuring success [or, in their case, failure] in Iraq by a completely different standard: the number of U.S. troops killed in combat operations.
So why the shift in focus? It turns out that while the so-called Iraqi civil war has been raging, the number of U.S. casualties has plummeted to less than half of what they were over the previous five months.
In fact, if the current trend continues, March will be the second least deadly month for American GIs since the war began.
…Big credit goes to the U.S. military: The soldiers on the ground whose efforts to train Iraqis to do the frontline fighting themselves are getting the job done.
Still, don't look for much coverage of this dramatic turn of events - especially from reporters for whom "good news is no news" in Iraq.
http://newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/3/20/100548.shtml?s=lh
David<><
http://freewill-predestination.com/
http://www.knology.net/~lonesomedove/
posted by David Bennett | 10:07 AM
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