Monday, May 31, 2010
Playing with fire.
At least 19 people were killed and dozens injured when troops intercepted the convoy of ships dubbed the Freedom Flotilla early on Monday, Israeli radio reported.
The flotilla was attacked in international waters, 65km off the Gaza coast.
A breakthrough for China
A Chinese supercomputer has ranked as the world’s second fastest machine, surpassing European and Japanese systems and underscoring China’s aggressive commitment to science and technology.
The Dawning Nebulae, based at the National Supercomputing Center in Shenzhen, China, has achieved a sustained computing speed of 1.27 petaflops — the equivalent of one thousand trillion mathematical operations per second — in the twice annual ranking of the world’s fastest 500 hundred computer.
Your foreign aid money at play.
For almost seven years, since an international warrant was issued for his arrest, the search has stretched from the mangrove swamps and diamond fields of West Africa to Swiss banks and shell corporations — a state-of-the-art version of the sweeping asset hunts that have accompanied the fall of autocrats since the shah of Iran’s demise in the 1970s. ...
... But they have come up dry for any money in Mr. Taylor’s name. In fact, four years ago, Mr. Taylor was classified as “partially indigent” by the Special Court for Sierra Leone at The Hague, where he is charged with instigating murder, mutilation, rape and sexual slavery during intertwined wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone that claimed more than 250,000 victims from 1989 to 2003.
Since I’ve been out of touch for a few days I’m just catching up on this.
Police have arrested seven men over alleged links to the Taleban militants who attacked two mosques in eastern Pakistan on Friday, killing 93 people, including a British businessman. ...
... In the attack Sunni militants wearing suicide bomb vests burst into prayer halls at the Garhi Shahu and Model Town mosques, firing guns, throwing grenades at worshippers, taking hostages and blowing themselves up during Friday prayers. It was the city’s deadliest sectarian attack. Some attackers who had not detonated their vests were arrested.
Sunday, May 30, 2010
View from Galt’s Gulch - Tabernash Colorado - Last night at sunset.
Hero in the mosque.
Nabeel, a 25-year-old Ahmadi Muslim — identified by only a single name — had entered the Model Town mosque at 1.30pm before Friday’s sermon started. As the number of worshippers began to swell, the first gunshots were heard at about 1.45pm.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
This can’t come soon enough.
UC Irvine scientists have created an eight-layer, early stage retina from human embryonic stem cells, the first three-dimensional tissue structure to be made from stem cells.
Back to Galt’s Gulch.
A few days in the mountains so limited blogging for the long weekend. I should be back for the Rockies game Sunday.
Make sure to check in as things may change.
I’m not sure I can come up with the money.
Before this recession it appeared that absent action, the government’s long-term commitments would become a problem in a few decades. I believe the government response to the recession has created budgetary stress sufficient to bring about the crisis much sooner. Our generation — not our grandchildren’s — will have to deal with the consequences.
So much so that they are willing to vote for Rand Paul.
Underfunded pensions could be your responsibility.
Moody’s estimates that large union multiemployer pension plans are underfunded by $165 billion. House and Senate bills seek to allow the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation to assume responsibility for these plans, taking certain employers and unions off the hook at a cost of billions of dollars to US taxpayers. This would discourage these plans from fixing their problems on their own by raising retirement ages and contribution levels and lowering benefits. Watch for a union bailout this fall.
This is from Moody’s. After they’re predictions on the mortgage crisis you may want to think about getting other sources but they are probably right on this one.
I thought I was wrong but I turned out to be right.
This may be the last installment for Serb organ trafficking.
I originally found this to be somewhere between stupid or silly but then the information seemed to show that it might have actually happened but ...
For years rumours have circulated about Serbs abducted and killed for their organs in the months following the Kosovo war.
Three parallel international investigations, by war crimes investigators from Serbia, the European Union, and the Council of Europe, have failed to uncover any evidence that the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) trafficked the organs of captives, according to sources close to each investigation.
Dozens of predominantly Serb captives were allegedly taken to a “yellow house” near Burrel in central Albania from June 1999 to May 2000, where their organs were systematically removed and sold, according to accounts presented by Carla del Ponte, former war crimes prosecutor at The Hague Tribunal in her 2008 autobiography.
But the failure to find either the original sources, or any new evidence since 2004, may mean that the story was unfounded.
I’m sure these guys will give it fair treatment.
The Senate has selected their conferees to meet with the House on ironing out the differences between the two chambers’ financial reform bills. It’s a pretty standard list including members of the Banking and Agriculture Committees that had jurisdiction over the bill as it moved through the Senate. But, since the Senate’s conferees have all been influential players on the issue, it means that they are bringing an unusually large amount of financial industry donations to the negotiating table. ...
...
Senate Conferees ‘09-’10 cycle $ from Finance
Sen. Christopher Dodd [D, CT] $894,888
Sen. Charles Schumer [D, NY] $3,896,839
Sen. Blanche Lincoln [D, AR] $941,350
Sen. Tim Johnson [D, SD] $102,149
Sen. Thomas Harkin [D, IA] $35,060
Sen. Patrick Leahy [D, VT] $159,200
Sen. John Reed [D, RI] $39,050
Sen. Richard Shelby [R, AL] $1,227,738
Sen. Judd Gregg [R, NH] N/A
Sen. Bob Corker [R, TN] $381,163
Sen. Saxby Chambliss [R, GA] $49,850
Sen. Michael Crapo [R, ID] $405,823
Boulder Time
