Might be very limited blogging for a couple of weeks. I’ll do what I can. Be sure and check below for updates.

I’m surprised how slow the connection is here. This from the land that invented Bluetooth and Skype.

A usually moderate online paper.

I don’t remember seeing a headline like this when the Democratic candidate started his campaign.

And the tunnel will provide service to thousands of people a day while the recovery will help keep a few archeologists employed. Hmmmmm. The trade of is a quick excavation with the builders getting some form of re-numeration. It that is not done the builders will try to quietly destroy the next ship found. I’m not saying that is the right thing to do. I’ve never had the opportunity to work on an archeological site but I have had experience at a couple of paleontological sites. There is trade offs.

The largest collection of antique shipwrecks ever found in Norway has been discovered under mud at the building site for a new highway tunnel in Oslo, the project’s lead archaeologist said Friday.

The archaeologist, Jostein Gundersen, said at least nine wooden boats, the largest of them 17 meters, or 56 feet, long, were found well preserved nearly 400 years after they sank at Bjoervika, an Oslo inlet near the new national opera house.

“For us, this is a sensation,” he said. “There has never been a find of so many boats and in such good condition at one site in Norway.”

Italy is to provide billions of dollars to Libya as part of a deal to resolve colonial-era disputes, Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi has announced.

It became independent in 1951.

An alleged terrorist leader suspected of plotting the bombing of a Philippine superferry more than four years ago, killing at least 116 people, has arrived in Manila after his arrest in Bahrain, a Philippine justice official said Saturday.

Authorities suspect Ruben Pestano Lavilla Jr. was behind the 2004 superferry bombing.

Lavilla is one of the top ideologues in the Rajah Solaiman Movement, a group of former Christians who converted to Islam and claim affiliation with the al Qaeda-linked regional terrorist groups Jemaah Islamiyah and Abu Sayyaf, Blancaflor said.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is willing to release some 450 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for an Israeli soldier held by militants in the Gaza Strip, an Israeli newspaper reported Friday.

Olmert has asked the five ministers dealing with the proposed swap with the Hamas movement to draw up the list which would increase from about 80 the number of prisoners Israel is willing to release in exchange for Gilad Shalit, the Haaretz newspaper said.

Venezuelan government officials received kickbacks in schemes involving the country’s bonds, state oil company and National Guard, U.S. prosecutors said before the trial of a Venezuelan businessman.

Franklin Duran and his business partner, Carlos Kauffmann, funneled the kickbacks to officials in the government of President Hugo Chavez for more than eight years, prosecutors said today in a filing in federal court in Miami. Duran is scheduled for a Sept. 2 trial on charges he acted in the U.S. as an unregistered agent for Venezuela.

``Franklin Duran and Carlos Kauffmann amassed their financial wealth by doing the bidding of officials of the government of Venezuela,’’ prosecutors wrote. ``Proof that Duran and Kauffmann jointly and improperly conspired’’ with Venezuelan officials contradicts Duran’s likely argument that ``his actions have been simply misinterpreted,’’ according to the filing.

Moroccan police said Friday they had dismantled “a dangerous terrorist network” linked to Al-Qaeda and arrested 15 suspects who were planning attacks in the kingdom.

“Members of this structure ... were planning attacks in Morocco and had established operational links with foreign extremists of the Al-Qaeda organisation,” MAP quoted police as saying.

Traveling. I’ll try and check in. This post will remain at the top so be sure and check below.

More and more South Africans were being listed on so-called “terrorist” lists, Minister in the Presidency Essop Pahad said on Friday.

He was referring to lists that not only the big super powers like the United States compiled, but other countries as well relating to terror threats.

Over the past two decades, Michael Dickinson has been interviewed by reporters hundreds of times about his research on the biomechanics of insect flight. One question from the press has always dogged him: Why are flies so hard to swat?

Using high-resolution, high-speed digital imaging of fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) faced with a looming swatter, Dickinson and graduate student Gwyneth Card have determined the secret to a fly’s evasive maneuvering. Long before the fly leaps, its tiny brain calculates the location of the impending threat, comes up with an escape plan, and places its legs in an optimal position to hop out of the way in the opposite direction. All of this action takes place within about 100 milliseconds after the fly first spots the swatter.

And yesterday I said that I probably won’t comment on it. It looks like I won’t have to.

Which is good because I will need the time to You Tube the ‘Palin pick’.

Yet that is not what the FDIC is now doing. Its mission has changed. As it tries to clean up California’s Indy Mac Bank, for example, its first order of business is avoiding foreclosure on bad loans the bank made to homeowners. An analyst with Barclays Capital called this approach “dangerous” because it gives investors in mortgage-backed securities a reason to run for the exits if the FDIC does not care about recovering their money. In effect, the policy shorthand has changed to read, “Not to fear, you are not going anywhere. Uncle Sam will pay your mortgage.” This is very different thing from its original mission, but perfectly consistent with the public policy trend which began in the 1970s and accelerated with the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). The goal was to make banks agents of social change.

I also don’t think it would be wise to get too close.

The Tower of Pisa is being challenged by a lesser-known 12th-century building in the northern Dutch town of Bedum as Europe’s most steeply leaning tower.

“In Italy they’re happy with the result, but here in Bedum we are much more happy, because the tower of Pisa is now leaning less than the tower of Bedum,” said Van Dijk.