the/diseased/republik

the guy i love most to hate- former vice president Dick Chinstrap Cheney tells Politico that there is a “high probability” of a terrorist attack involving “a nuclear weapon or a biological agent of some kind” and that the current administration is “more concerned about reading the rights to an Al Qaeda terrorist than they are with protecting the United States. ...” Of course the last time Cheney warned us about a likely WMD attack he turned out to be a goofball with a $3 trillion quagmire to sell. Politico : “When we get people who are more concerned about reading the rights to an Al Qaeda terrorist than they are with protecting the United States against people who are absolutely committed to do anything they can to kill Americans, then I worry,” Cheney said. Protecting the country’s security is “a tough, mean, dirty, nasty business,” he said. “These are evil people. And we’re not going to win this fight by turning the other cheek.” We all know Ol' Dick is cutesy with the wordp

Media reports put the number of those rescued - thought to be mostly fishermen - at between 100 and 145. Fishermen say ice on Lake Erie has been particularly thick this winter, luring more people on than usual. The ice started to crack when temperatures rose above freezing this weekend and strong gusts of wind pushed on the ice, he told AP. The slab of ice that broke off and floated away was about eight miles (13 km) wide, the Coast Guard said. It is thought the anglers had used wooden pallets to make a temporary bridge across a crack to get further out on the lake, leaving them stranded when the ice shifted and the planks fell in the water. i used to live in Ohio (albeit, shortly) and i imagine a scene more like lemmings than people...

Horses taken from carriage operation neglected, officials say A horse carriage operator that was already on shaky ground with city officials saw six of its horses removed by authorities Friday. Last year, the city denied JC Cutters' application for a 2009 license to conduct carriage rides. -- source --

Goats Had Agricultural Tags, But Unknown Where They Came From First it was coyotes . Then there was a cougar . Now it's goats. Two goats were found wandering near Montrose Harbor Sunday night, police said. The goats, which both had agricultural tags on them, were found wandering near Lake Shore Drive at Montrose Harbor, according to a Town Hall District police lieutenant. Responding Town Hall District police officers placed the goats into the care of Animal Care & Control and it was not immediately known where the goats came, though the lieutenant said it was possible they had come from the Lincoln Park Zoo or from a farm.

Alien Robs Convenience Stores With Klingon "Batleth" @10:06AM from the build-a-more-awesome-criminal dept. "Colorado Springs police are looking for a man who hit two 7-Eleven convenience stores , armed with a Klingon 'Batleth' sword inspired by the Star Trek science fiction series. They did appear more human in the original series." pics for mental image only.

The Boston office of the FBI is conducting a search the home of James William Lewis, a man convicted of extortion in connection with the 1982 Tylenol killings, sources said today. The search was being conducted at his home in Cambridge, Mass., the sources said, but Lewis was not in custody. The Boston FBI would only confirm they were involved in a search "related to an ongoing criminal investigation," said spokesperson Gail Marcinkiewicz. Seven people in the Chicago area died after ingesting Tylenol capsules that had been laced with cyanide. No one ever has been arrested and charged with murder, but the FBI has continued to take tips. Lewis was convicted of trying to extort $1 million from the manufacturer of Tylenol after the killings.

CDC: Tainted peanut butter MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The salmonella bacteria that has sickened more than 400 people in 43 states has been conclusively linked to peanut butter, Minnesota health officials announced Monday. Federal officials said the outbreak may have contributed to three deaths. State health and agriculture officials said last week they had found salmonella bacteria in a 5-pound package of King Nut peanut butter at a nursing facility in Minnesota. Officials tested the bacteria over the weekend and found a genetic match with the bacterial strain that has led to 30 illnesses in Minnesota and others across the country. "The commonality among all of our patients was that they ate peanut butter," said Doug Schultz, a spokesman with the Minnesota Department of Health. While the brand of peanut butter couldn't be confirmed in every case, the majority of patients consumed the same brand, he said Monday. King Nut Companies of Solon, Ohio, on Sunday asked its custom

An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at the Scripps Research Institute are potentially one step closer to creating life . In an experiment they recently created enzymes that can replicate and evolve. 'It kind of blew me away,' said team member Tracey Lincoln of the Scripps Research Institute, who is working on her Ph.D. 'What we have is non-living, but we've been able to show that it has some life-like properties, and that was extremely interesting.'" - full story link at the title.

Vice President Dick Cheney, in another stunning admission during his campaign to burnish the Bush administration’s legacy, said he personally authorized the “enhanced interrogations” of 33 suspected terrorist detainees and approved the waterboarding of three so-called “high-value” prisoners. “I signed off on it; others did, as well, too,” Cheney said about the waterboarding, a practice of simulated drowning done by strapping a person to a board, covering the face with a cloth and then pouring water over it, a torture technique dating back at least to the Spanish Inquisition. The victim feels as if he is drowning. Cheney identified the three waterboarded detainees as al-Qaeda figures Abu Zubaydah, Khalid Sheik Mohammed and al Nashiri. “That's it, those three guys,” Cheney said in an interview with the right-wing Washington Times.

A US man divorcing his wife is demanding that she return the kidney he donated to her or pay him $1.5m (£1m) in compensation. Dr Richard Batista told reporters that he decided to go public because he was frustrated at the slow pace of divorce negotiations with his estranged wife. He said he had not only given his heart to his wife, Dawnell, but donated his kidney to save her life. But divorce lawyers say a donated organ is not a marital asset to be divided.

Fantastic Lad sends us to Wired for a story on the upside of nicotine. Researchers are developing drugs based on nicotine that may prove beneficial for [ 0 ]brains, bowels, blood vessels and immune systems. "Nicotine acts on the acetylcholine receptors in the brain, stimulating and regulating the release of a slew of brain chemicals, including seratonin, dopamine and norepinephrine. Now drugs derived from nicotine and the research on nicotine receptors are in clinical trials for everything from helping to heal wounds, to depression, schizophrenia, Alzheimer's, Tourette Syndrome, ADHD, anger management and anxiety." A separate story talks about [ 1 ]nicotine warding off Parkinson's disease. source -- slashdot

The operation was launched early in the morning Troops in Pakistan's city of Islamabad have stormed the Red Mosque, after talks with radicals broke down. "It is a final push to clear the place of armed militants," said military spokesman Major General Waheed Arshad. The army said at 20 militants were killed in the operation, as loud explosions and gunfire were heard. Twenty children escaped from the mosque, where women are also being held. Three soldiers are reported killed and some 20 others injured. The military operation began at about 0400 (2300 GMT Monday). The troops entered the compound and exchanged fire with the militants holed up inside. It is an anxious wait for those with relatives inside the mosque The army said 20 militants were killed and another 15 injured. Local medical officials said 20 government troops were injured, and three had died of their

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday July 09, @04:07PM Researchers in Madrid are claiming that they have discovered that a type of wax found in olive skin can help to slow the spread of HIV . "Their work shows that maslinic acid - a natural product extracted from dry olive-pomace oil in oil mills - inhibits serin-protease, an enzyme used by HIV to release itself from the infected cell into the extracellular environment and, consequently, to spread the infection into the whole body. These scientists from Granada determined that the use of olive-pomace oil can produce an 80% slowing down in AIDS spreading in the body."

Internal memos show that four security contractors who were ambushed and killed in Iraq three years ago were told to go through the dangerous city of Fallujah when a safer route was available, a newspaper reported Sunday. The memos said a Blackwater USA supervisor also plucked two members of each six-man team for other work, reducing the teams' numbers and making them more vulnerable to attack, The News & Observer of Raleigh reported. Memos from the second team _ whose leader decided to go around Fallujah on March 31, 2004, and which wasn't attacked _ said the teams also were sent without maps, although other memos suggest maps were available, the newspaper said. "These reports were written by people who were not there," Blackwater spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell told The Associated Press. "The answer to what really happened in Fallujah is a tragedy in which four brave men were killed." Tyrrell said she couldn't comment on specifics because of pending liti

amigoro writes to let us know about an appeals court ruling on Friday that holds that federal agents can snoop on an individual's web surfing, email and all other forms of Internet communication habits without a warrant . The court found recording this kind of information to be analogous to the use of a pen register. In 1979 the Supreme Court ruled that this technique did not constitute a search for Fourth Amendment purposes. fullstory and discusion @ slashdot .

From the Washington Post: 'Attention, all aliens. Come on down. Because, seriously, this is your crowd. About 50,000 of your closest admirers are expected this weekend for the Roswell UFO Festival , celebrating the 60th anniversary of the nearby crash landing of a flying saucer — and, naturally, the ensuing government cover-up." Discuss at slashdot .

chinmay7 writes "There is an excellent selection of articles (and quite a few related scientific papers) in [1]a special edition of Nature magazine on interpretations of the multiverse theory. 'Fifty years ago this month Hugh Everett III published his paper proposing a "relative-state formulation of quantum mechanics" — the idea subsequently described as the 'many worlds' or 'multiverse' interpretation. Its impact on science and culture continues. In celebration, a science fiction special edition of Nature on 5 July 2007 explores the symbiosis of science and sf, as exemplified by Everett's hypothesis, its birth, evolution, champions and opponents, in biology, physics, literature and beyond.' Discuss this story at: http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/07/06/2323214 Links: 0. http://people.vanderbilt.edu/~chinmay.soman/ 1. http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/arts/sciencefiction/index.html

"A unique creature that's been dubbed an ' octosquid ' with eight arms and a squid-like mantle, was discovered off Hawaii. The creature, of a previously unknown species, was trapped in the net covering a 3,000 foot-deep intake tube for the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority. From the article: 'The octosquid was pulled to the surface, along with three rattail fish and half a dozen satellite jellyfish, and stayed alive for three days. According to War, the lab usually checks its filters once a month, but this time, it put a plankton net in one of the filters and checked it two weeks later. The pitch-black conditions at 3,000 feet below sea level are unfamiliar to most but riveting to scientists who have had the opportunity to submerge. The sea floor is full of loose sediment, big boulders and rocks, and a lot of mucuslike things floating in the water, which are usually specimens that died at the surface and drifted to the bottom.'"

RAMALLAH, WEST BANK — Routed in the Gaza Strip, the Fatah party of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is fractured and adrift at a moment when it is viewed by the outside world as the best hope for blunting the militant Hamas movement in the West Bank. Once dominant in Palestinian affairs, the organization long led by the late Yasser Arafat is beset by a weak and aging leadership, internal schisms and a widespread reputation among Palestinians as corrupt, ineffectual and out of touch. Those troubles have some Palestinians wondering whether Fatah is more likely to lose the West Bank than to recapture the Gaza Strip from Hamas. The crisis facing Fatah has deepened since Hamas crushed its forces in Gaza last month, leaving Fatah's authority limited to the West Bank. The United States, Israel and European allies have promised to bolster Abbas, a relative moderate, and his party as a way to isolate Hamas. Fatah ruled unchallenged under Arafat, but was sent reeling after his d