say no to Palin.
Alaskans Speak (In A Frightened Whisper): Palin Is “Racist, Sexist, Vindictive, And Mean”

By MATT APUZZO

WASHINGTON (AP) - Jack Abramoff, the once powerful lobbyist at the heart of a far-reaching political corruption scandal, was sentenced to four years in prison Thursday by a judge who said the case had shattered the public’s confidence in government.

Abramoff, who fought back tears as he declared himself a broken man, appeared crestfallen as the judge handed down a sentence lengthier than prosecutors had sought.

Over the past three years, Abramoff has come to symbolize corruption and the secret deals cut between lobbyists and politicians in back rooms or on golf courses or private jets. The scandal shook Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House to Capitol Hill and contributed to the Republicans’ loss of Congress in 2006.

“I come before you as a broken man,” Abramoff said at his sentencing before U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle. “I’m not the same man who happily and arrogantly engaged in a lifestyle of political and business corruption.”

He added later that, “My name is the butt of a joke, the source of a laugh and the title of a scandal.” (more…)

Biden says criminal violations will be pursued
· Democrats have issued subpoenas to Bush aides
· 3 staffers have been held in contempt of Congress

Democratic vice-presidential nominee Joe Biden said yesterday that he and running mate Barack Obama could pursue criminal charges against the Bush administration if they are elected in November.

Biden’s comments, first reported by ABC news, attracted little notice on a day dominated by the drama surrounding his Republican counterpart, Alaska governor Sarah Palin.

But his statements represent the Democrats’ strongest vow so far this year to investigate alleged misdeeds committed during the Bush years.

“If there has been a basis upon which you can pursue someone for a criminal violation, they will be pursued,” Biden said during a campaign event in Deerfield Beach, Florida, according to ABC.

“[N]ot out of vengeance, not out of retribution,” he added, “out of the need to preserve the notion that no one, no attorney general, no president — no one is above the law.”

Obama sounded a similar note in April, vowing that if elected, he would ask his attorney general to initiate a prompt review of Bush-era actions to distinguish between possible “genuine crimes” and “really bad policies”.

“[I]f crimes have been committed, they should be investigated,” Obama told the Philadelphia Daily News. “You’re also right that I would not want my first term consumed by what was perceived on the part of Republicans as a partisan witch hunt, because I think we’ve got too many problems we’ve got to solve.”

Congressional Democrats have issued a flurry of subpoenas this year to senior Bush administration aides as part of a broad inquiry into the authorisation of torturous interrogation tactics used at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.

Three veterans of the Bush White House have been held in criminal contempt of Congress for refusing to respond to subpoenas: former counsel Harriet Miers, former political adviser Karl Rove, and current chief of staff Josh Bolten. The contempt battle is currently before a federal court.

source

First, there is this:

These tourists from Oklahoma drink on Bourbon St. and say they are “playing it by ear,” regarding a possible evacuation as Gustav enters the Gulf of Mexico. Nagin said mandatory evacuations would begin if the storm becomes a Category 3 hurricane.

against this:

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin ordered the city’s more than 239,000 residents to evacuate on Sunday in the face of powerful Hurricane Gustav, which he called “the mother of all storms.”

The evacuation order issued on Saturday was the first in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina devastated the historic Southern city in August 2005.

“This is the mother of all storms,” Nagin said of Gustav, a monstrous Category 4 storm that could approach the central Louisiana coast just west of New Orleans on Monday.

“You need to be concerned and you need to get your butts moving and out of New Orleans right now,” Nagin said at City Hall. “This is the storm of the century.”

The evacuation order, which will not be physically enforced by officials, will start with the city’s low-lying West Bank starting at 8 a.m. CDT (9 a.m. EDT) on Sunday, followed by the East Bank at noon CDT (1 p.m. EDT), Nagin told reporters.

Residents have the choice to remain behind and weather the storm, but “that would be one of the biggest mistakes that you could make in your life,” Nagin said.

He said people might have to chop through the roofs of their houses to escape rising waters if they stay.

“Make sure you have an ax,” he said.

But one day after the third anniversary of Katrina, many had already decided to abandon the city, much of which lies below sea level.

Thousands of people fled New Orleans earlier on Saturday. Hoping to avoid the 2005 spectacle of desperate city residents crammed into the New Orleans Superdome, the government lined up hundreds of buses and trains to evacuate 30,000 people who cannot leave on their own.

About 10,000 people left the city by bus or train on Saturday, Nagin said. The rest of the 20,000 people that had requested evacuation assistance would leave on Sunday, he added.

Many evacuees were issued wrist bands with bar codes that will allow city officials to track them.

Gustav crashed across the Cuban mainland on Saturday and could hit the U.S. Gulf Coast as a Category 4 storm, the second-highest on the five-stage Saffir-Simpson scale, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.

SIGNIFICANT FLOODING EXPECTED

In the Lower Ninth Ward, plunged under water by Katrina’s floodwaters, hundreds of residents packed belongings into cars and trucks and left. Some had returned home only a few months ago after fleeing Katrina.

“After Katrina, you’ve got to leave,” said Ruby Hall, a longtime resident, pointing to the place on the timber frame of the porch where Katrina’s waters rose. “I’m not going to chance it, not with my grandchild.”

The city’s West Bank was largely spared by Katrina but could see “significant flooding” because its 10-foot (3-metre) levees are no match for Gustav’s storm surge, which could top 20 feet, Nagin said.

Katrina’s massive storm surge broke through protective levees on August 29, 2005, and flooded 80 percent of the city. New Orleans degenerated into chaos as stranded storm victims waited days for rescue.

The hurricane killed about 1,500 people along the U.S. Gulf Coast and caused $80 billion in damages, making it the costliest U.S. natural disaster.

There was bumper-to-bumper traffic on highways leading out of the city on Saturday, and six low-lying parishes — the Louisiana equivalent of U.S. counties — issued evacuation orders.

All major Louisiana interstates will allow only one-way traffic away from the coast starting at 4 a.m. CDT (5 a.m. EDT) on Sunday. The last flight out of the New Orleans airport is scheduled to depart at 6 p.m. CDT (7 p.m.) on Sunday.

In all, 11.5 million people are in the path of Gustav, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Walter Parker, a security guard who was trapped for eight days in his apartment during the Katrina flooding, lined up outside the Union Passenger Terminal as families with bags packed and children in tow waited for transportation.

“I don’t want to see another Katrina, with dead bodies floating in the water,” Parker said.

(more…)

By GREG BLUESTEIN

ATLANTA (AP) - The tireless tongue already controls taste and speech, helps kiss and swallow and fights germs. Now scientists hope to add one more ability to the mouthy muscle, and turn it into a computer control pad.

Georgia Tech researchers believe a magnetic, tongue-powered system could transform a disabled person’s mouth into a virtual computer, teeth into a keyboard - and tongue into the key that manipulates it all.

“You could have full control over your environment by just being able to move your tongue,” said Maysam Ghovanloo, a Georgia Tech assistant professor who leads the team’s research.

The group’s Tongue Drive System turns the tongue into a joystick of sorts, allowing the disabled to manipulate wheelchairs, manage home appliances and control computers. The work still has a ways to go - one potential user called the design “grotesque” - but early tests are encouraging.

The system is far from the first that seeks a new way to control electronics through facial movements. But disabled advocates have particularly high hopes that the tongue could prove the most effective.

“This could give you an almost infinite number of switches and options for communication,” said Mike Jones, a vice president of research and technology at the Shepherd Center, an Atlanta rehabilitation hospital. “It’s easy, and somebody could learn an entirely different language.”

That’s quite a contrast to the handful of methods already available to the hundreds of thousands of Americans who are disabled from the neck down.

The “sip and puff” technique, which lets people issue commands by inhaling and exhaling into a tube, is among the most popular. But it offers users only four different commands, limiting their options.

Control systems that use sophisticated pads to measure neck and head movements are also widespread, but using the hardware can be tiring, and frustrating on smaller electronics like computers.

And while newer innovations that track eye movement are promising, they can be costly, slow and susceptible to mixed signals.

The tongue, though, is a more flexible, sensitive and tireless option. And like other facial muscles, its functions tend to be spared in accidents that can paralyze most of the rest of the body, because the tongue is attached to the brain, not the spinal cord. (more…)

Soccer team causes surprise by coming home
FREETOWN (Reuters) - A boys’ soccer team from Sierra Leone won silver at a tournament in Sweden, but were hailed as champions in their poor West African homeland — because they all came home.

Sierra Leone is bottom of the U.N. development rankings and its athletes frequently vanish when traveling abroad for sporting fixtures in order to seek asylum, meaning many Western countries now simply refuse to let them in.

“It’s rare for a whole team of Sierra Leoneans to go abroad and come back,” Kweku Lisk, legal adviser to their club, FC Johansen, told reporters in the capital Freetown Friday.

“It goes to show what Sierra Leone can do when it puts its mind to it. We have managed to stick a feather in the cap for the country,” he said.

More than 250 teams entered this year’s Mittnorden Cup in Sweden, but Freetown’s FC Johansen was the first African team to compete in the tournament’s 27-year history, thanks to the club’s main supporter, the eponymous Swedish Honorary Consul Arne Johansen.

The club is made up of underprivileged children, many of them orphaned during the country’s savage 1991-2002 civil war.

But Johansen assured authorities in Stockholm he would take personal responsibility for their safe return, and Sweden agreed to waive its ban on issuing visas to Sierra Leonean athletes.

“I didn’t want to disappear, I want to come back here because I like my country and I want to play for the national team,” said Issa Koroma, 13, who lost both his parents in the war.

Having scored six goals, Koroma was the tournament’s top scorer.

“I got the golden boot, and it makes me want to play more,” he told Reuters on his return. “They were good goals … I want to be like (Brazilian footballer) Ronaldo.”

Tiny 10-year-old bullfighter sparks debate in France
By ANGELA DOLAND | Associated Press Writer
August 8, 2008

PARIS (AP) _ He’s a tiny torero, a bullfighter with a baby face. But 10-year-old Michelito has become the symbol of a debate much bigger than himself. French anti-bullfighting campaigners say the boy, who came from Mexico to perform, is risking his life in the ring. Local authorities in southern France canceled two demonstrations where he was set to appear. Other performances have gone ahead, with Michelito — who has big brown eyes and a floppy bowl cut — showered with flowers by fans.

It’s all part of a bigger battle: French animal rights groups vs. bullfighting, which is a tradition in southern France as in neighboring Spain, and which has a small but passionate French following.

For Michelito Lagravere, the passion started young, about as soon as he could walk. Born in Mexico to a Mexican mother and a French bullfighting father, he started playing at being a torero — using a dish towel as a cape — when he was just a tot, his father said.

He was 4 years old the first time he faced off against a month-old calf. Now 10, he has fought about 60 animals to the death, his father said. Videos on the Internet show him in the ring with injured, staggering calves — not to mention Michelito being trampled.

“Am I afraid?” asked his father, Michel Lagravere. “I’m afraid like all fathers are afraid for their children. … It’s like all other sports. It’s more dangerous than playing chess, if that’s considered a sport. But I don’t think it’s more dangerous than horseback riding and riding competitions.” (more…)

this is just insane…

Portland police arrested a 21-year-old man suspected of chasing down a cyclist Sunday and driving off at a high rate of speed — with the cyclist hanging onto the hood.

James F. Millican was arrested on attempted second-degree assault, driving under the influence of intoxicants, third-degree criminal mischief and reckless driving.

According to a police account, the incident began when the cyclist, Jason Scott Rehnberg, 37, yelled at Millican to slow down as they were traveling near Southeast 58th Avenue and Washington Street, police said. Rehnberg told police that “his remarks may have included profanity,” according to a news release.

Millican, angered by the cyclist’s remarks, started to chase Rehnberg in his car, police said. Rehnberg biked into the neighborhood to avoid him. After waiting, he returned to Southeast 58th Avenue, police said.

Millican saw the cyclist and allegedly backed his car up to hit Rehnberg, who jumped off the bike just before it was struck by the car, police said.

Rehnberg and two other witnesses tried to block the car, saying they wanted to get the license plate. Millican allegedly drove at the three and struck Rehnberg, who was thrown onto the hood. Rehnberg held onto the windshield wipers as the car traveled at a high rate of speed and took a turn.

The rest of the story, and video, is located here. Pretty crazy.

don’t go to raves..

Ravers lose sight at laser show
By Chris Baldwin

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Dozens of partygoers at an outdoor rave near Moscow last week have lost partial vision after a laser light show burned their retinas, Russian health officials said on Monday.

Moscow city health department officials confirmed 12 cases of laser-blindness at the Central Ophthalmological Clinic, and daily newspaper Kommersant said another 17 were registered at City Hospital 32 in the centre of the capital.

Attendees at the July 5 Aquamarine Open Air Festival in Kirzhach, 80 km (50 miles) northeast of Moscow, began seeking medical help days after the show, complaining of eye and vision problems, health officials told Reuters.

“They all have retinal burns, scarring is visible on them. Loss of vision in individual cases is as high as 80 percent, and regaining it is already impossible,” Kommersant quoted a treating ophthalmologist as saying.

Attendees said heavy rains forced organizers to erect massive tents for the all-night dance party, and lasers that normally illuminate upwards into the sky were instead partially refracted into the ravers’ eyes.

“I immediately had a spot like when you stare into the sun,” rave-attendee Dmitry told Kommersant.

“After three days I decided to go to the hospital. They examined me, asked if I had been at Open Air, and then put me straight in the hospital. I didn’t even get to go home and get my stuff,” he said.

Cosmic Connection, promoters of the Aquamarine rave, were unreachable and did not list contact numbers on their Web site.

Industry Web site www.laserfx.com said focused laser light can cause eye damage almost instantly.

The owner of a Moscow laser rental company told Reuters the accidental blindings were due to “illiteracy on the part of technicians.”

“It was partly the rain, but also partly the size of the laser. Somebody set up an extremely powerful laser for such a small space,” said Valentin Vasiliev, who said his company did not provide the Aquamarine lasers.

(Additional reporting by Tatiana Ustinova; Editing by Giles Elgood)

Former Iraqi detainees sue U.S. military contractors
By Daren Butler

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Four Iraqi men are suing U.S. military contractors who they say tortured them while they were detained in Abu Ghraib prison, according to lawsuits being filed at U.S. federal courts on Monday.

The lawsuits allege the contractors committed violations of U.S. law, including torture, war crimes and civil conspiracy.

The scandal over the treatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib unleashed a wave of global condemnation against the United States when images of abused prisoners surfaced in 2004.

The four plaintiffs, all later released without charge, described their experiences to Reuters on Monday at an Istanbul hotel, where they periodically meet their U.S. legal team. They gave accounts of beatings, electric shocks and mock executions.

Farmer Suhail Naim Abdullah Al-Shimari, 49, said he was caged, beaten, threatened with dogs and given electric shocks during more than four years in detention. He was released in March without being charged and without any judicial process.

“I lost my house, my family were made homeless and left without a breadwinner. I lost four-and-a-half years of my life and all they did was say sorry,” he told Reuters.

Some lower-ranking soldiers have been convicted in military courts in connection with the physical abuse and sexual humiliation of Abu Ghraib detainees.

The latest lawsuits follow a similar one launched in early May in federal court in Los Angeles by another former Abu Ghraib detainee, Emad Al-Janabi. The latest plaintiffs sought unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.

“This litigation will contribute to the true history of Abu Ghraib. These innocent men were senselessly tortured by U.S. companies that profited from their misery,” said Susan L. Burke, one of the attorneys representing the detainees.

The lawsuits were being filed where the contractors reside. They named CACI International Inc, CACI Premier Technology, L-3 Services Inc and three individual contractors.

The first suit was filed on Monday in Seattle, Washington, and the others were being filed in Maryland, Ohio and Michigan.

CACI provided interrogators at Abu Ghraib and L-3 provided translators at the prison.

Sa’adoon Ali Hameed Al-Ogaidi, a 36-year-old shopkeeper and father of four, described being caged, abused and paraded naked as one of the unregistered “ghost” detainees, hidden for a time from the International Committee of the Red Cross.

“In our Arab culture being stripped naked is one of the worst rights violations. It made me feel ashamed and it has left a deep scar in me,” he told Reuters.

“What I want is for the perpetrators to be brought to justice and punished for what they have done,” he said.

According to the complaints, the contractors participated in physical and mental abuse of the detainees, destroyed documents, prevented the reporting of torture and misled officials about the state of affairs at the prisons in Iraq.