Boston Mayor Bans Sugared Beverage Sales on City Property

Boston Mayor Tom Menino is taking a page out of NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg and the other nanny staters by canning sales of soda on city property.

Mayor Tom Menino issued an executive order to ban the sale of sugary drinks on Boston city property on Thursday.

The mayor’s office said Menino is issuing this order because of the link between sugary drinks and rising obesity rates and health care costs. The order sets science-based standards for what’s considered a healthy beverage and what can be sold or served on City property, according to a city press release.

The policy applies to cafeterias, vending machines, concession stands, and beverages served at meetings, City-run programs, and events where food is purchased with City dollars.

Back in 2004, Menino banned soda and junk food from being sold in public school vending machines, and now he’s taking his battle city-wide.

I can't wait until the next city budget comes through and the loss of revenue requires either spending cuts or tax hikes to cover the lost revenue from contracts that enable beverage makers to sell soda on city property.

Moreover, there's a question as to just how far this policy extends - does this mean that vendors will be unable to sell soda on city streets or roadways from vending carts or trucks?

To be clear, this is what Menino intends:

City buildings and departments have a six-month grace period before they’ll be required to phase out the sale of so-called “red” beverages, or those loaded with sugar, such as non-diet sodas, pre-sweetened ice teas, refrigerated coffee drinks, energy drinks, juice drinks with added sugar and sports drinks. The order allows for the sale of “yellow” beverages such as diet sodas, diet iced teas, 100 percent juices, low-calorie sports drinks, low-sugar sweetened beverages, sweetened soymilk and flavored, sweetened milk. “Green” beverages, such as bottled water, flavored and unflavored seltzer water, low-fat milk, and unsweetened soymilk can continue to be sold. The promotion of “red” beverages on City property through sponsorship agreements with City departments, including banners and advertising panels on vending machines, will be prohibited.

Pretty much, unless you're selling bottled water or diet soda, you're going to have to find another source of revenue if you're one of those vendors.

Obesity didn't start with soda and sugared beverages. It got a whole lot worse as people chose to live a sedentary lifestyle where they don't exercise or take care of themselves, all while supersizing their food intake by choice and ignoring proper portion control to manage their weight.

Now, Menino is going to harm small businesses, including distributors, bottlers, and vendors who sell these beverages to a public that wants them because he thinks that soda is the root of the obesity epidemic.

Just as a New York City Councilman entered a bill to eliminate the sales of toys with Happy Meals yesterday turned out to be a poster child for obesity himself (and whose wife complained about his eating habits), that's nanny-staters for you.

Nobody seems to like City Councilman's Leroy Comrie's proposed Happy Meal regulations. On Tuesday when Comrie announced the proposed law—which aims to set "nutrition standards for distributing incentive items aimed at children,"—he acknowledged that, weighing in at 335 pounds himself, he was hardly a model of healthy eating (in fact that was part of his point). So no surprise that both the Post (Councilman, Heal Thyself) and the News (City Councilman Leroy Comrie's bill to ban toys in Happy Meals with over 500 calories is fat-headed) today ran editorials decrying the plan as a dud from a self-hating, publicity-hungry tub of lard. And not happy to stop there, the Post went to the next level and got Comrie's weight-watching, yoga-doing wife Marcia on the record to complain about her rotund husband's eating habits.

In the Councilman's case, he chose to eat unhealthy food options - and his weight (and wife) suffered for it.

When presented with healthy options, he not only took them, but ate up whatever else he could find. You can't simply excuse that because there are only fast food options available. Even fast food restaurants have healthier food options - but Comrie chose to ignore them and ate what he wanted. That's on him.

The same goes with soda. There's nothing wrong with soda, if you have a healthy lifestyle and live by a simply motto - moderation.

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Major 7.4 Aftershock Renews Concerns In Japan

A major 7.4 aftershock rocked Japan just minutes ago:

Japan was rattled by a strong aftershock and tsunami warning Thursday night nearly a month after a devastating earthquake and tsunami flattened the northeastern coast.

The Japan meteorological agency issued a tsunami warning for a wave of up to 6 feet (two meters). The warning was issued for a coastal area already torn apart by last month's tsunami, which is believed to have killed some 25,000 people and has sparked an ongoing crisis at a nuclear power plant.

Officials say Thursday's aftershock was a 7.4-magnitude and hit 25 miles (40 kilometers) under the water and off the coast of Miyagi prefecture. The quake that preceded last month's tsunami was a 9.0-magnitude.

Buildings as far away as Tokyo shook for about a minute.

The USGS is actually reporting this as two separate and distinct 7.4 aftershocks spaced about 2 minutes apart:
MAP     7.4      2011/04/07 14:32:42       38.253       141.640     25.6      NEAR THE EAST COAST OF HONSHU, JAPAN
MAP     7.4      2011/04/07 14:32:00       38.200       142.000     40.0      NEAR THE EAST COAST OF HONSHU, JAPAN

The quakes occurred at slightly different depths and locations, and while each, by themselves, could have serious consequences, together they add to the woes facing the Japanese in their ongoing struggle to recover the remains of those killed in the tsunami and to regain control over the four damaged nuclear reactors at Fukushima. Shake maps show moderate intensity for the region most heavily affected by the 9.1 monster quake.

By itself, a quake this size could cause tremendous damage in a country that doesn't have strict or adequate building codes. Thus far, the initial reports indicate that the quake didn't add to Japan's misery - though there are tsunami warnings and alerts. 

No such alert is issued for Hawaii, Alaska or the West Coast though.

Meanwhile, TEPCO has evacuated Fukushima in the wake of the latest quake and potential for tsunami.

Public broadcaster NHK reported a tsunami warning for Miyagi prefecture, saying people in that area should evacuate away from the shore to a safe place.

NHK also reported a tsunami advisory for Iwate prefecture, saying a tsunami is expected to arrive in coastal regions there as well.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said based on all available data, "a destructive Pacific-wide tsunami is not expected and there is not a tsunami threat to Hawaii."

The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake was centered 41 miles (66 kilomemeters) from Sendai -- one of the areas worst hit by last month's 9.0-magnitude quake -- and 73 miles (118 kilometers) from Fukushima, where a crisis has been under way at a nuclear plant since last month's tsunami.

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Gazan Terrorists Fires Missile Hitting Bus and Injuring Passengers, But Focus Is On Israel's Reprisal

The fact that terrorists in Gaza fired a mortar that struck a bus in Southern Israel injuring several passengers is secondary to the fact that Israel carried out reprisal attacks against numerous terror targets throughout Gaza.

A mortar shell fired from the Gaza Strip into Israel Thursday hit a bus, seriously wounding a teenage boy and injuring several others, Israeli police said.
Reuters

Israeli forces immediately struck back, shelling various locations across the Gaza Strip, killing a 50-year-old man and injuring at least six people, including a 4-year-old girl, Palestinian medics said.

Israeli police spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld said those wounded in the bus attack were being treated at the scene. The head of the Magen David Adom ambulance service told Israel Radio that helicopters were ferrying the worst injured to hospital.

Thursday's bloodshed followed a relative lull in cross border attacks between Gaza and Israel after a sudden spike in violence last month that left at least 16 Palestinians dead.

A 16 year old was in critical condition after that bus was hit. Moreover, the Jerusalem Post reports that it was an anti-tank missile fired at the bus - which would explain how and why it was easily hit. Luckily, there were just two people on board - the aformentioned 16-year-old, and the driver, who was also injured.

So, why then is the focus on the Palestinians killed in Gaza - many of whom are terrorists and those ultimately responsible for firing the rockets and mortars into Israel?

But for the Gazan terrorists firing those mortars, rockets, and missiles at Israel, Israel would not need to respond militarily to defend its citizens from the incessant attacks that emanate from Gaza on a daily basis by attacking smuggling tunnels that allow the terrorists to rearm and resupply, and their bases of operation where they plot further attacks.

And the threats keep on coming - Israel's Shin Bet arrested a Hamas cell in East Jerusalem. The cell was responsible for planning multiple attacks, including an attack with a pipe bomb that injured one person.

Moreover, I'm not sure how anyone can characterize the situation in Southern Israel as a lull or a relative lull in violence. Since the beginning of the year, dozens of rockets and mortars have been fired into Israel and it's a situation that continues day after day, week after week. Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other terror groups are hoping to restart their war against Israel, and are itching to pull the trigger at a time and place of their choosing.

Reuters is redefining a relative lull to indicate that even though a couple of rockets or mortars slam into Israel, this isn't a serious situation - even though every last one of those terrorists' rockets and mortars are directed with the intent to destroy property, murder, and maim. Shame on their reporting and focus on Israel's actions, rather than on the terrorists' actions that precipitate Israel's right to defend itself against further attacks.

UPDATE:
Israel's Iron Dome missile/rocket defense system apparently carried out a successful intercept of a terrorists' missile earlier today. That follows Israel's military carrying out airstrikes and other attacks against terror targets in Gaza:

After hitting a student bus traveling through Shaar Hanegev Regional Council Thursday, critically wounding a 16-year old boy and lightly injuring the driver, terrorists in Gaza fired some 45 rockets and mortar shells at Israel. No further injuries were reported.

The IDF immediately began bombing targets in Gaza in response to the onslaught. Palestinian medics said a 50-year old man was killed in the airstrikes and a number of other people injured, including a child.

Ashkelon's Iron Dome system was set up just Monday, with soldiers running extensive tests to make sure it was functioning properly. Another system was set up earlier in Beersheba.

The defense establishment decided to place the system earlier than planned due to the recent escalation of violence in the south. It has already been set up in Haifa, and in the coming weeks officials plan to put it in place in central Israel as well.

The Iron Dome system isn't foolproof, and it isn't cheap, but it does provide a measure of security for Israelis living within range of the missiles and mortars. If the system manages to intercept enough of Hamas' and Islamic Jihad's missiles, expect the terrorists to once again shift tactics in their ongoing attempts to murder and maim Israelis.

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Major Delays Once Again Hit Northeast Corridor; Highlighting Need For Additional Capacity

The moment an Amtrak train became disabled entering one of the two Hudson River tunnels entering Manhattan, the morning rush hour was a lost cause for anyone attempting to commute into Manhattan or even to Hoboken as a result of delays that mounted throughout the NJ Transit and Amtrak operations.

Those delays on the Northeast Corridor were 30-60 minutes (at a minimum), and because NJ Transit was diverting Midtown Direct trains to Hoboken, those who normally commute to Lower Manhattan or Hoboken/Jersey City were also hit with delays due to congestion.

On that latter point, I have to wonder why NJ Transit isn't better prepared to deal with the extra trains. After all, prior to the opening of Secaucus Transfer, Midtown Direct trains used to route into Hoboken and Hoboken could handle the traffic. Now, it appears that the institutional memory of how to deal with the extra trains is gone. It's something that needs to be fixed - and quickly, given that relief on replacing the Portal Bridge and construction of new Amtrak tunnels is still years off.

Speaking of the Portal Bridge project and the Gateway tunnel project, Amtrak has submitted a proposal to claim more than $1 billion to go to replacing the Portal Bridge and begin preliminary study work on the Gateway tunnel project from the more than $2 billion that Florida Gov. Rick Scott rejected when he killed Florida's high speed rail project.

The high-speed rail funds became controversial in some states after the 2010 elections, and Florida’s governor recently scuttled a project that was to receive $2.4 billion.

Under Amtrak’s proposal, New Jersey would have to contribute up to $150 million and Amtrak $570 million toward replacing the Portal Bridge, which connects Kearny and Secaucus and has been in use since 1910.

The movable bridge, which swings open to allow ships to pass, would be replaced with a high-level fixed bridge, removing a bottleneck often blamed for delays on Amtrak and NJ Transit.

Governor Christie approved the state’s commitment in an April 1 letter to DOT Secretary Raymond LaHood.

“The bridge is beyond its useful life, which is reflected in high maintenance costs and frequent failures, and resulting train delays,” Christie said in his letter. “Moreover, this project, which can commence almost immediately, will create approximately 6,000 much-needed jobs.”

Christie, a Republican, had dismissed arguments about job creation benefits last year when he halted construction on a new $8.7 billion NJ Transit tunnel project that his predecessor, Democrat Jon Corzine had begun in 2009.

That project, known as Access to the Region’s Core, had a $2.9 billion federal funding commitment, which New Jersey gave up. The state has also been ordered by LaHood’s department to repay $271 million the federal government had already spent on the project, but New Jersey has hired a Washington law firm to contest the charge.

Amtrak’s application to DOT also seeks $188 million for preliminary engineering and environmental analysis on two new high-speed tunnels, and $50 million for similar work on a new Penn Station South with additional tracks and platforms. This preliminary work is slated to be finished in June 2015.

The Record's report ignores that Christie's central argument to killing the ARC project was that the state would have been on the hook for all cost overruns relating to the ARC project, and that would have been at least $1 billion. Taxpayers could have been exposed to up to $5 billion in overruns, and attempts to get New York or the federal government to cover those overruns came to naught. The fact that the federal government refused to cover the overruns showed just how flawed the financing of the project was, especially since it was an interstate project that would benefit Amtrak, New Jersey and New York and improve reliability on the nation's only "high speed" rail corridor - the NEC - by increasing the slots available to Amtrak and NJ Transit.

The Gateway project would not increase NJ Transit slots nearly as much as the ARC project would, but that too isn't nearly as bad as it appears considering that NJ Transit simply lacks the operational funds to run more trains as it claims from Northern New Jersey into Manhattan. It can barely afford to operate the number of trains it has at present.

The Portal Bridge replacement should go ahead regardless of what happens elsewhere with the high speed rail money, precisely because it has been in the works for years, and now that the financing is available, it should be carried out immediately to reduce the chances of further overruns and cost increases.

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Severe Drought Conditions In Great Plains May Lead To Higher Food Prices

There has been an ongoing drought in the Great Plains states, including Oklahoma and Texas, and there are no indications that the situation will improve anytime soon.

Mike Spradling, the president of the Oklahoma Farm Bureau, said many wheat farmers have considered just plowing under their fields and switching to another crop.

Associate state climatologist Gary McManus said conditions have actually gotten worse since crops began emerging. The plants have rapidly sucked up the limited moisture in the soil.

"Some places have already lost their wheat crop farther south and in the Panhandle," he said. "In the driest parts of the state, the rainfall they have gotten, it's not enough to make them rest easy with their crops. It's just a bad situation."

Paul Fruendt said he's been farming for 25 years and he's never seen such bad growing conditions. His farm in Guthrie in central Oklahoma got a little rain, but he said his crops will still probably run out of water within a few weeks.

Higher wheat prices will translate into higher prices for grains, breads, and other foodstuffs. That, along with higher energy costs, are going to drive up inflation and the cost of living.

The drought conditions also mean that the threat of wildfires increases significantly, and unless the region sees a prolonged period of above-normal rainfall, the drought will persist.

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Gbagbo's Regime Enters Death Spiral

Laurent Gbagbo's regime has entered its death spiral, and opposition forces have closed the noose around Gbagbo's residence. Reports indicate that he's in a bunker and surrounded and while he claims not to want to die, he's refusing to cede power.

Forces loyal to Ivory Coast presidential claimant Alassane Ouattara on Wednesday stormed the residence of incumbent leader Laurent Gbagbo who has refused to cede power, a spokeswoman for Ouattara forces told Reuters.

"Yes they (Ouattara forces) are in the process of entering the residence to seize Gbagbo, they have not taken him yet, but they are in the process, they are in the building," Affousy Bamba told Reuters.

Residents around the presidential palace in Abidjan's Cocody neighborhood said they heard heavy gunfire and loud explosions coming from the direction of the palace.

"I have seen from my building the FRCI fighters (Ouattara forces) in pickups and 4x4 jeeps rushing toward Gbagbo's residence, weapons in their hands," Alfred Kouassi, who lives near Gbagbo's residence in Cocody, told Reuters.

"We can hear automatic gunfire and also the thuds of heavy weapons coming from the residence," he said.

Gbagbo representative Toussaint Alain, speaking to The Associated Press in a phone interview from Paris, said Gbagbo's residence was being bombarded by the French army, but the French military denied the claim.

A negotiated end to the fighting has failed, and Gbagbo has refused to cede power, despite losing the November election to Ouattara.

France is intervening in Ivory Coast, and is backed by UN mandate so as to protect civilian populations.



Gbagbo is attempting to use French intervention as a means to rally support - noting French colonialism.

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Mixed Messages of Hate Sent To Rep. Peter King's Office

Someone has their bigotry all mixed up in a melange of hate, when someone sent GOP Rep. Peter King a bloody pig’s foot and an anti-Semitic note in wake of his hearings on Muslim radicalization.

U.S. Capital Hill cops said the parcel was intercepted Monday morning at a postal facility in Landover, Maryland, during a routine screening of congressional mail that began after the 9/11 attacks and an anthrax scare.

The severed pig's foot was accompanied by a letter filled with anti-Semitic slurs.

The gory package never reached King's office, and police notified the Long Island Republican about it Monday.

"The package was discovered at a mail facility off the Hill early this morning. We have an active open investigation regarding the incident and are working with postal inspectors," said Capitol Police Sgt. Kimberly Schneider without elaborating.

The threatening mailing came after King launched a series of controversial hearings last month on the "The Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community."

It was not clear if the package was mailed in response to the hearings, whichsparked protests from American-Muslims in New York and in Washington.

King, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, has been the target of threats since he scheduled the hearing.

King is a Roman Catholic, so whoever sent the attached anti-Semitic statement was clearly confused (besides being a racist loon). Whoever was responsible has a whole lot of hate stored up.

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New York Makes Bid To Capture High Speed Rail Money Rejected By Florida

New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo intends to seek $517 million in federal high speed rail money that was rejected by Florida when Gov. Rick Scott killed a high speed rail project between Orlando and Tampa.

New York's rail system could desperately use the funds, and the money will help improve track and station conditions between New York and Albany, although there are a total of eight projects statewide:

The projects include:
Northeast Corridor Congestion Relief: Harold Interlocking: The largest application is for $294.7 million for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's (MTA) Harold Interlocking plan. This project calls for the construction of a new conflict-free route for Amtrak along two miles of the Northeast Corridor where Amtrak service must cross over a flow of MTA Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) trains, resulting in significant and routine delays for Northeast Corridor service, particularly during peak periods.

The Amtrak bypass routes that will be constructed as part of this project will greatly improve reliability, on-time performance, and travel time for existing Amtrak service between New York and Boston and will provide the direct path through Harold Interlocking that is needed to make high-speed rail possible on the Northeast Corridor in the future.

Moynihan Station Phase 2 Final Design Project: The Governor is seeking $49.8 million to fund the final design of Phase 2 of the Moynihan Station Project, providing new passenger and back-of-house facilities for Amtrak. The Project will improve operational reliability and on-time performance at the station by allowing trains and people to move more efficiently through the Penn Station complex.

Northeast Corridor Congestion Relief: New Upper Hudson Line High-Capacity Signal System - Croton to Poughkeepsie: The $112 million project will construct a new high-capacity signal system to replace the present outdated signal system between Croton-Harmon and Poughkeepsie. The project will provide for higher capacity and reliability to all users and will result in improved on-time-performance and increased capacity.

Empire Corridor Capacity Improvements: Final Phase Signal Improvements Hudson Line: At a cost of $18.6 million this project will replace the final 48 miles of the Hudson Line signal system between Poughkeepsie and Albany and bury the signal cable. The current system is 30 years old and outages in inclement weather account for most of the delay affecting all trains between Albany and New York City.

Empire Corridor Capacity Improvements: Final Phase 4th Track Construction at Rensselaer Station: This $35.4 million project will complete work at the new Rensselaer Station which was opened in 2002. The funding will be used to construct a new fourth track, extended platforms, realignment of existing tracks and new signal system.

Empire Corridor Capacity Improvements: Final Phase Track Construction at Schenectady Station: The Governor would use $4.1 million to make major upgrades to the Schenectady Station. Built in 1970, the station is in poor condition with inadequate track and platforms. CDTA has designed a new station and tracks and has State and local funding in place for constructing the station. This project will provide for construction of the track and platforms and complete the funding package necessary for the Schenectady Station replacement.

Empire Corridor West: Rochester Intermodal Station: The City of Rochester plans to replace the inadequate, 37 year old temporary Rochester Station with a new Rochester Intermodal Station. This $1.4 million project would complete the preliminary engineering and environmental work.

Empire Corridor West: Niagara Falls High-speed Rail Inspection and Maintenance Facility: This project will use $1.75 million to conduct the preliminary engineering and environmental analysis necessary to construct the first heated, in-door maintenance facility west of Schenectady on the Empire Corridor West. Employees at the present facility built in 1978 service 728 locomotives, 2,912 coaches and 728 food service cars annually. The facility has no enclosed heated building to thaw out frozen equipment and Amtrak mechanics must use torpedo heaters and hand held torches to get equipment operating. This project will prepare the construction of an enclosed heated building, inspection pit, compressed plant air, and a track catch basin in which to capture water and oils.

However, notably absent among the projects is the use of any of those funds towards the construction of the Gateway Tunnel, which supersedes the ARC tunnel killed by Gov. Christie, which would enable high speed rail to access Penn Station.

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ElBaradei Using Threat of War Against Israel as Platform To Win Egyptian Elections

Mohamed ElBaradei is a feckless hack who is now trying to become Egypt's first elected leader in decades. To do so, he has to curry favor with Islamists and those who would like to see the Camp David Accords and Israel wiped from history.

To that end, he's busy claiming that should Israel attack Gaza to go after Hamas, that Egypt would go to war against Israel.

In an interview with the Al-Watan newspaper he said: "In case of any future Israeli attack on Gaza - as the next president of Egypt – I will open the Rafah border crossing and will consider different ways to implement the joint Arab defense agreement."

He also stated that "Israel controls Palestinian soil" adding that that "there has been no tangible breakthrough in reconciliation process because of the imbalance of power in the region - a situation that creates a kind of one way peace."

Discussing his agenda for Egypt, ElBaradei said that distribution of income between the different classes in Egypt would be his most important priority if he were to win the upcoming elections.

ELBaradei's main competition is Arab League Secretary General and former Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa. Last month he discussed Egypt's relationship with Israel. "During my term in office the foreign ministry was subject to unfavorable policies from Israel with regards to the peace agreement," Said Moussa who served as foreign minister 1991-2001," he said.

"We thought the peace process was like a waterwheel – endlessly turning around and around without reaching a defined point. My opinion was that we needed to be honest with the Israelis, taking determined measures within the framework of the foreign ministry's operations. Maybe this led to a lack of agreement on all Israel related issues."

Israel doesn't control Gaza - Hamas does - and should Hamas and other terror groups use Gaza as a continuing launching pad for terror attacks against Israel, Israel has every right to defend itself and eliminate the terror threat.

For ElBaradei to claim otherwise, and to further assert that Egypt would come to the defense of the terror masters in Gaza, shows just how dangerous ElBaradei could be. Moreover, it shows just how tenuous the Camp David Accords truly are and how further trades of land for peace will come to naught. Gaza has been in Palestinian hands since 2005. Hamas has used the territory as a launching pad for thousands of terror attacks since then. Under Oslo, the West Bank is largely under Palestinian civil administrative control, and many areas are no-go locations for Israelis.

Israel lacks a partner in peace, and when one of those so-called partners refuses to recognize Israel's right to exist and seeks Israel's destruction, further negotiations will be fruitless. Gaza has exposed Palestinian intentions for the world to see - except they choose not to. It has, however, shown Israelis the futility of trading land for peace with those that do not want a 2-state solution.

ElBaradei is pandering to that crowd and in doing so, he's following in the footsteps of every other Middle Eastern despot, dictator, and regime that uses Israel as a scapegoat for all that ails their own floundering countries.

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What Is Huckabee Hiding?

FOIA requests for information from Mike Huckabee's years as governor in Arkansas have revealed a rather troublesome response: the computer hard drives and records were physically destroyed by the outgoing Huckabee administration in anticipation of a run for President.

Those requests were made of his successor, Mike Bebee, who noted that Huckabee destroyed everything ranging from travel records to calendars and call logs, but gave a backup copy to Huckabee's former chief of staff:

In February, Mother Jones wrote to the office of Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe seeking access to a variety of records concerning his predecessor's tenure, including Huckabee's travel records, calendars, call logs, and emails. Beebe's chief legal counsel, Tim Gauger, replied in a letter that "former Governor Huckabee did not leave behind any hard-copies of the types of documents you seek. Moreover, at that time, all of the computers used by former Governor Huckabee and his staff had already been removed from the office and, as we understand it, the hard-drives in those computers had already been 'cleaned' and physically destroyed."

He added, "In short, our office does not possess, does not have access to, and is not the custodian of any of the records you seek."

"Huckabee just absolutely doesn’t trust anybody," says one former high-ranking Arkansas Republican. "In my experience, if you don't trust people, it's because you're not trustworthy."

The person who may know the most about Huckabee's records—or lack of them—is Jim Parsons. A self-described gadfly, Parsons is a former Green Beret turned good-government crusader who has filed dozens of Freedom of Information requests targeting Arkansas politicos on both sides of the aisle, including the Clintons. Shortly after Huckabee left office, Parsons went to battle with the state over his records.

In January 2007, Parsons requested "a copy of all information" on the Huckabee administration's computers the day he left office. Beebe's office provided Parsons with a January 9 memo addressed to Huckabee from the Arkansas Department of Information Systems, reporting that all of the gubernatorial hard drives had been "crushed under the supervision of a designee of [Huckabee's] office." That is, a Huckabee aide had made sure all this information was destroyed.

The memo included another tantalizing piece of information: The information stored on the drives had been saved on a backup, which was handed over to Huckabee's then-chief of staff, Brenda Turner. The history of the Huckabee administration, then, was locked away, under the watchful eye of a former aide. What did she do with this information? Where is it now? Turner, who now runs the PR shop for a Arkansas-based purveyor of Christian-themed greeting cards, did not respond to repeated requests for comment. (Contacted via his political action committee, Huckabee didn't respond to questions about his records.)

Parsons requested the backups and eventually filed a lawsuit against Huckabee and Beebe, alleging that the new governor had siphoned taxpayer money from an emergency fund to pay to replace the destroyed hard drives. Altogether, the new equipment cost over $335,000. Huckabee countered that the information on the hard drives included private details, such as social security numbers, that shouldn’t be released to the public. In the end, Parsons' suit was dismissed—largely because he didn't name Turner, who apparently possessed the records, as a plaintiff.

Why would someone do that if they didn't have something(s) to hide. Given his track record (including giving out pardons to those who didn't deserve it), this should raise more questions about his character and fitness to be a candidate for president.

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Noose Tightens Around Ivory Coast's Gbagbo; Gbagbo Seeks Exit Strategy

Laurent Gbagbo lost elections in November to Alassane Dramane Ouattara, but chose to remain in power. That has led to an ongoing uprising, and now the UN and France are assisting Ouattara's supporters in regime change.



They're helping to force Gbagbo from power, and now that Gbagbo's forces have been pushed from key locations around the country, and have lost the presidential palace compound, Gbagbo is now looking at a negotiated exit strategy.

Speaking on France Info radio, Ali Coulibaly did not provide any details about the alleged negotiations. The ambassador represents Alassane Ouattara, who is regarded by the international community as the country's democratically elected president.

Coulibaly's comments come a day after attacks by United Nations and French forces on Gbagbo's presidential palace, military bases and other targets in the country's main city Abidjan.

Ouattara's forces claimed they had taken the residence. However, this was denied by a Gbagbo adviser.

Pro-Ouattara supporters had succeeded in taking much of the country last week, but they faltered upon reaching Abidjan, Ivory Coast's largest city.

With the help of international forces, the armed group pushed its way into the city.

The loss of life and damage to the economy is considerable. All of this could have been avoided had Gbagbo simply heeded the results of the election. Instead of facing justice, expect Gbagbo to be given the golden ticket to exile.

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Failed Pakistani Suicide Bomber Hopes To Try Again

A teenage Pakistani suicide bomber whose bomb failed to detonate hopes to have the opportunity to try again. He and his cohorts had planned to blow up parishioners at a Sufi shrine and while the teenager's bomb didn't detonate, several others did - killing 42 people and wounding 100 more:

A teenage suicide bomber who failed to blow up pilgrims at a shrine in Pakistan stunned his captors when he made clear how desperate he was to die for his cause.

"Let me go, I want to be a martyr," 14-year-old Fida Hussain screamed as policemen led him away. "I want to send all you policemen to hell."

While Hussain was unable to detonate the bomb strapped to his chest, others succeeded Sunday, killing 42 people and wounding 100 more among the thousands gathered at a Sufi shrine near Dera Ghazi Khan.

A second suspect was also detained alive at the shrine, but police revealed no details about him.

Both apparently hail from an area known for breeding militants.

With his strikingly boyish face, Hussain represents the most insidious practice of the Taliban in recruiting young, uneducated boys to carry out suicide attacks.

Experts say young boys are not only less suspicious, but they are easier to indoctrinate into the cause.

"You are all accomplices of the enemies of Islam who are bent upon eliminating Islam and Muslims," Hussain yelled, according to police officer Khalid Mahmood.

The Taliban and al Qaeda recruit from those who are wholly ignorant and are impressionable in order to indoctrinate them into a nihilistic worldview where those who do not practice Islam as they do are worthy targets and that promises of paradise in the afterlife are sufficient to lure them into becoming suicide bombers.

This is the face of evil in Pakistan, and the Islamists in Pakistan have created a monster in which they backed the Taliban and protect those who are enabling these extremists to indoctrinate many more to their cause. Anyone who speaks out against laws like the anti-blasphemy laws, is targeted for assassination. Non-Muslims are targets, and anything that can be used to whip their fellow Islamists into a violent frenzy is seized upon, including the idiot Florida Pastor Terry Jones, whose exhortations to burn a koran and hold a mock trial of Mohammad has led to multiple days worth of rioting and more than a dozen dead.

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Yemeni Security Opens Fire On Protesters, and US Considers

Yemeni security forces have once again opened fire on protesters, and the US is now considering withdrawing its support for Yemen's Ali Abdullah Saleh's regime. Indeed, it would appear that the US is paving the way for regime change and pushing Saleh from power:

Security forces and plainclothes gunmen opened fire on crowds of Yemenis marching through a southern city Monday, killing at least 15 and wounding dozens, in an intensifying crackdown against the uprising against the 32-year rule of President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Witnesses described troops and gunmen, some on nearby rooftops, firing wildly on thousands of protesters who marched past the governor's headquarters in Taiz in the second straight day of violence in the southern city. Some — including elderly people — were trampled and injured as the crowds tried to flee, witnesses said.

Violence has swelled in recent days amid frustration over behind-the-scenes efforts to convince Saleh to step down in the face of a nearly two-month-old uprising. The United States and European countries have been contacting Saleh and his opponents, trying to find a formula for the president to leave his post with a stable transfer of power, an opposition spokesman said.

The New York Times on Monday said Washington had "quietly shifted positions" and "concluded that [Saleh] is unlikely to bring about the required reforms and must be eased out of office."

At least 12 people were killed in the latest skirmishes, and there's no sign that Saleh will be able to impose any kind of political or social changes that will placate the opposition.

I have no doubt that al Qaeda will attempt to exploit and benefit from the ongoing power vacuum and struggle to control the country. The terror group has long used Yemen as a safe haven, and its lawless border regions provide easy access to and from Saudi Arabia and its location astride major shipping channels provides further access.

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9/11 Terrorists To Be Tried In Military Commissions At Guantanamo Bay

After several years of attempting to bring Khalid Sheikh Mohammad into the civilian federal justice system, the Obama Administration and the Department of Justice have decided that it is best to have him tried in a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay Cuba.

Mohammed was to have been tried in New York City, but city officials strongly objected to the move and Congress refused to appropriate funds to house Guantanamo inmates on mainland United States and to provide funds for a trial of extraordinary expense.

New York City projected it would cost more than $400 million to provide security for the pre-trial preparation and trial of the suspects in the Sept. 11 terror attacks. It would have cost another $206 million annually if the trial ran beyond two years, Mayor Michael Bloomberg's office estimated.

President Obama announced in March his decision to resume military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay after heavy resistance from both Democrats and Republicans over trying suspects in U.S. courts.

Closing the detainee center at Guantanamo Bay was one of the first orders of business Obama announced more than two years ago when he took office. But Obama has faced months of fierce, bipartisan resistance from Congress on his proposal to try Guantanamo detainees on U.S. soil.

The $725 billion National Defense Authorization Act that Obama signed Jan. 7 explicitly prohibits the use of Defense Department funds to transfer detainees from Guantanamo Bay in Cuba to the United States or other countries. It also bars Pentagon funds from being used to build facilities in the United States to house detainees, as the president originally suggested.

Part of the problem was that the evidence potentially used against Mohammad and other terrorists would not pass muster in federal court, and that could lead to the perverse situation where the admitted mastermind of the worst terror attack in history could be found not guilty, but which the Administration said would never see the light of day because of his being an ongoing risk to American lives. The tribunal enables the Administration to carry out a trial with due process and legal rights without giving the terrorists the freedom to turn the trial into a political trial and mockery of the legal system.

It also shows that the Administration had to bow to the political and legal realities of prosecuting those responsible for the 9/11 terror attacks when those individuals were not captured in the typical American law enforcement method and where those suspects may (or were) subjected to harsh interrogation methods.

The promise to close Guantanamo Bay's detention facilities also ran to a stumbling block because Congress realized that changing the location where the detainees were being held would not change the fact that these individuals were detained (and will be detained) indefinitely due to their risk to Americans should they be repatriated. Members of Congress didn't want these individuals in their Congressional districts, and they didn't want to authorize the spending of still more money to build detention facilities in the US when there was sufficient facilities in Guantanamo Bay.

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The Rebuilding of Ground Zero, Part 131

A group of families who lost loved ones in the 9/11 attacks are angry over plans for unidentified remains to be placed in a crypt near bedrock at the Ground Zero site. Those remains had been stored at the City's Medical Examiner's Office since the attacks, and new DNA identification technologies have helped identify some of those remains, but more than 1,000 people have never been positively identified.

There is a family group that wants the remains to be placed in an above-ground structure.

I could swear that this issue had been addressed several years ago back when the memorial design was proposed and a solution was sought for where to honor and preserve the unidentified remains, but now that the memorial is on track to open this year, those old wounds are being reopened and the raw emotions of that day will come roaring back for those who lost their loved ones in the blink of an eye without so much a a trace to bury on their own. Indeed, reports from 2005 indicated that the remains would be placed near bedrock - 70 feet below street level - in a mausoleum-like structure.

The WTC remains were originally stored in four huge refrigerated trucks near the medical examiner's office in midtown Manhattan, but they have been dried and sealed in deterioration-proof pouches.

The "Reflecting Absence" memorial plan selected for the World Trade Center site calls for the interment of unidentified human remains at the site's deepest point, 70 feet underground, in a sort of walk-in mausoleum.

Meanwhile, today marks the beginning of the manslaughter trial of three supervisors involved in the deconstruction of the former Deutsche Bank building which caught fire in 2007 and resulted in the death of two firefighters, Robert Beddia and Joseph Graffagnino.

Mitchell Alvo, Jeffrey Melofchik and Salvatore DePaola are charged with manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide in the deaths of firefighters Robert Beddia and Joseph Graffagnino in 2007.

Prosecutors say the men didn’t fix and covered up a major break in a crucial firefighting water pipe.

DePaola, Melofchik and Alvo say they didn’t realize what the pipe was, and the firefighters’ lives were endangered by many other hazards in the building. Mostly, they say they’re small-time scapegoats for a fire fueled by others’ mistakes.

The defendants were supervisors at the construction company hired to demolish the building that was irreparably damaged when the falling south tower of the World Trade Center ripped a 15-story gash into the structure on Sept. 11, 2001. The impact heavily damaged the bank building and filled it with toxic debris.

On Aug. 18, 2007, a construction worker’s discarded cigarette sparked a fire that tore through several stories of the building. Beddia, 53, and Graffagnino, 33, became trapped on the burning 14th floor. They died of smoke inhalation after their oxygen tanks ran out.

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Autism Awareness Week Kicks Off With Misleading Headlines and Reporting

Autism awareness week kicks off today (and April is autism awareness month), and media outlets are scrambling for content to fill their health segments. However, the accuracy of those reports isn't what it should be.

All too often, they are including references to the debunked vaccine-autism link, which was peddled by Andrew Wakefield, and that continues to guide parents into making poor health care choices for their children. Such was the case with WPIX Channel 11's segment today, which referred to the autism-vaccine link in passing, but then went on to get comments from Autism Speaks, which does not support that bogus claim.

Other reports highlight studies that found that various drug therapies have shown to have little to no effect, but downplay the fact that intensive behavioral therapies have shown to be effective in many cases.

All this information ends up being even more confusing for parents who are coping with children who have autism-spectrum disorders. Parents will frequently turn to the Internet for information and guidance, and that's where the junk science really does its damage where opinions substitute themselves for facts.

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Measles Outbreak Hits Minnesota's Somali Community Hard

An ongoing measles outbreak in Minnesota highlights all that junk science has wrought and it again features the disreputable and lamentable Andrew Wakefield, whose report claiming an autism link with vaccines was disproven and repudiated by the Lancet and Wakefield's coauthors because Wakefield cooked the books.

Health officials struggling to contain a measles outbreak that's hit hard in Minneapolis' large Somali community are running into resistance from parents who fear the vaccine could give their children autism.

Fourteen confirmed measles cases have been reported in Minnesota since February. Half have been in Somali children, six of whom were not vaccinated and one who was not old enough for shots. State officials have linked all but one of the cases to an unvaccinated Somali infant who returned from a trip to Kenya in February. The state had reported zero or one case of measles a year for most of the past decade.

Amid the outbreak, a now-discredited British researcher who claimed there was a link between vaccines and autism has been meeting with local Somalis. Some worry Andrew Wakefield is stoking vaccination fears, but organizers say the meetings were merely a chance for parents to ask him questions.

"Unfortunately a lot of the media thinks he's saying 'Don't get vaccinated.' That's far from the truth. He's basically encouraging people to get vaccinated but do your homework and know the risks," said Wayne Rohde, a co-founder of the Vaccine Safety Council of Minnesota, which says parents should have other options for immunizing their children.

Measles has been all but eradicated in the United States, but accounts for about 200,000 annual deaths worldwide, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. None of those infected in Minnesota have died, though eight have required hospitalization.

The infections come as autism concerns have surged over an apparent rise in cases in Minnesota's Somali community, the largest in the U.S. Officials, though, haven't determined if that's really happening.

The outbreak began when an underage toddler who couldn't receive the vaccine became infected while visiting Somalia. That toddler became patient zero in the outbreak, as it spread among other children who were not vaccinated or who could not be vaccinated due to their age. This is a disease that was all but eradicated in the US except for the occasional case that was brought in just as this outbreak was.

It again highlights the junk science Wakefield peddled; kids should not be getting sick from diseases that are easily prevented by vaccination. Moreover, there's absolutely no way that Wakefield should be having anything to do with the practice of medicine or talking about vaccines. He's responsible for more misery and death and health care costs than one could possibly realize through his bogus claims.

Eight of the Minnesota kids have had to be hospitalized.

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Better Late Than Never; Goldstone Retracts Claims Israel Targeted Gazans

It's better late than never, but the UN's Richard Goldstone retracted the central thesis of his report from Operation Cast Lead - namely that Israel targeted Gazan civilians.

Richard Goldstone, an esteemed South African jurist who led the panel of experts that spent months examining the Gaza war, wrote in an opinion article in The Washington Post that Israeli investigations into the conflict “indicate that civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy.”

“If I had known then what I know now,” he wrote, “the Goldstone Report would have been a different document.”

His article, which was posted on The Post’s Web site on Friday night, follows a report submitted two weeks ago by a committee of independent experts led by Mary McGowan Davis, a former New York judge, that said that Hamas had not conducted any internal investigations of its own but that Israel had devoted considerable resources in looking into more than 400 accusations of misconduct.

Mr. Goldstone’s article fell like a bomb in Israel, where many people considered the 2009 publication of the Goldstone report as one of the most harmful events in recent years. It was viewed as offering spurious justification for damaging accusations, which Israelis considered to be part of a campaign to delegitimize the state and label it as a war criminal.

“We face three major strategic challenges,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last year, “the Iranian nuclear program, rockets aimed at our citizens and Goldstone.”

On Saturday night, Mr. Netanyahu called on the United Nations to retract the entire Goldstone report. “Everything we said has proven to be true,” he said. “Israel did not intentionally harm civilians. Its institutions and investigative bodies are worthy, while Hamas intentionally fired upon innocent civilians and did not examine anything.”

“The fact that Goldstone backtracked,” Mr. Netanyahu added, “must lead to the shelving of this report once and for all.” The Goldstone report documented numerous examples of the mistreatment of Palestinian civilians by Israeli soldiers, and he did not back away from those findings in his article in The Washington Post.

Efforts to reach Mr. Goldstone by telephone and e-mail on Saturday were unsuccessful. Farhan Haq, a deputy spokesman for the United Nations, said it was up to member nations to decide whether to re-evaluate the report.

Never mind that Goldstone's claims were easily rebutted by the factual evidence within hours of those incidents, but Goldstone put politics ahead of the facts and that adversely affected Israel and its ability to defend itself from ongoing terror attacks emanating from Gaza.

Hamas used human shields and purposefully fought from civilian areas in order to attack Israel. Those civilians killed in the fighting are the result of actions by Hamas, not Israel. Goldstone claimed that Israel purposefully targeted civilians, which was simply false.

Months after the fighting ended, even Hamas officials conceded that the overwhelming majority of those killed in the fighting were terrorists.

And Israel carried out military judicial proceedings against some of its soldiers for actions as varied as possibly misreading drone imagery to authorize an airstrike that killed 29 members of a family and the extrajudicial shooting of civilians.

The retraction comes as a backdrop to renewed terror attacks from Gaza - dozens of rockets and mortars fired at Israel and Israel redoubling efforts to go after terrorists in Gaza. Hamas is once again threatening massive reprisals for Israel defending itself - from Hamas terror attacks.

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Japanese Nuclear Emergency Will Take Months To Bring Under Control

Japan's nuclear emergency will take months to fully bring under control as efforts to keep the nuclear reactors and spent fuel pools cool have caused their own problems that are proving to be as problematic as the coolant problems were.



To keep the reactors and spent fuel pools cool, TEPCO and the Japanese government were pouring hundreds of tons of sea water, including boron infused water, and TEPCO now faces tons of radioactive water due to leaks in any number of places.

It is those leaks that are now dogging the efforts to contain the radioactivity because the water is disrupting efforts to contain the reactors.

The remains of two workers at Fukushima were discovered; they had been presumed missing since the tsunami hit. Their bodies will need to be decontaminated for radiation due to the ongoing exposures at the nuclear reactor.

Workers are trying to plug leaks and aren't having much success.

On Saturday, workers discovered an 8-inch-long crack in a maintenance pit at the Fukushima plant that they said was believed to have been caused by the earthquake. Water containing levels of radioactive iodine far above the legal limit spilled from it into the Pacific, said Hidehiko Nishiyama of Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.

A picture released by TEPCO shows water shooting some distance away from a wall and splashing into the sea, though the amount of water was not clear. The contaminated water was expected to quickly dissipate in the ocean but could pose a danger to workers at the plant.

Pooling water at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex — which is believed to come from the reactor cores — has repeatedly forced technicians to pull back and suspend their work.

Word of the leak came Saturday as Prime Minister Naoto Kan toured the town of Rikuzentakata, his first trip to survey damage in one of the dozens of villages, towns and cities slammed by the tsunami.

"The government has been too focused on the Fukushima power plant rather than the tsunami victims. Both deserve attention," said 35-year-old Megumi Shimanuki, who was visiting her family at a community center converted into a shelter in hard-hit Natori, about 100 miles from Rikuzentakata.

More than 165,000 are still living in shelters, and tens of thousands more still do not have electricity or running water.

Although the government had rushed to provide relief, its attention has been divided by the efforts at the Fuskushima plant.

The plant's reactors overheated to dangerous levels after electrical pumps — deprived of power — failed to circulate water to keep them cool. A series of almost daily problems have led to substantial amounts of radiation leaking into the atmosphere, ground and sea. Huge hydrogen explosions destroyed the buildings surrounding two of the reactors.

Over the past 10 days, pools of contaminated water have been found throughout the plant and high levels of radioactivity have been measured in the ocean, but this marks the first time authorities said they had found a spot where the water was directly entering the sea.

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Death Toll Mounts In Ivory Coast As UN Comes Under Attack From Gbagbo's Loyalists

The death toll continues rising in the Ivory Coast as a result of the political unrest and demands that Laurent Gbagbo leave office.



French peacekeepers took control over a key airport and are bolstering UN peacekeepers elsewhere in the country. Various reports indicate that anywhere from several hundred to more than a thousand people were killed in one town near the heart of the cocoa producing region. There is some dispute over who engaged in the killings, but there were retaliatory attacks between Gbagbo's loyalists and the rebel groups backing the winner of November's election, Alassane Dramane Ouattara.

United Nations helicopters patrolled the skies over the city as a tense calm reigned Sunday morning, a local resident told CNN.

The man, whom CNN is not naming to protect his safety, said he had been to church as usual, where another parishioner said he had seen dead bodies by the road on his way to the congregation.

The uneasy peace came in the wake of claims of a massacre as fighters backing internationally recognized President Alassane Ouattara battle forces loyal to Laurent Gbagbo, who refuses to leave office.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton demanded Sunday that Gbagbo step aside immediately.

"Gbagbo is pushing Cote d'Ivoire into lawlessness," she said, using the French name for the country. "He must leave now so the conflict may end."

She also called "on the forces of President Ouattara to respect the rules of war and stop attacks on civilians."

The International Committee of the Red Cross said 800 people were shot to death in the western cocoa-producing town of Duekoue. A United Nations official put the death toll so far at 330.

The massacre occurred between Monday and Wednesday as Ouattara's Republican Forces led an offensive through the country to Abidjan, said Guillaume Ngefa, the deputy human rights director at the U.N. mission in Ivory Coast.

He blamed 220 deaths on forces loyal to Ouattara. Ngefa said pro-Gbagbo forces killed 100 people.

"We have evidence, we have pictures. This was retaliation," he said, referring to Ouattara's forces.

The Ouattara camp said it "firmly rejects such accusations and denies any involvement by the Republican Forces of Cote d'Ivoire in possible abuses."

The UN is withdrawing some of its personnel after their headquarters building has come under repeated attack by Gbagbo's loyalists.

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Fiat/Chrysler Exhibit All the Business Brilliance of a Gnat

The whole purpose of building cars is to make money. Lots of money. So, when you start selling a car that will cost you $10,000 more to build than to sell, something is quite wrong.

In fact, that's a huge gaping hole in Fiat and Chrysler's business plan for the sale of the upcoming Fiat 500 electric vehicle.

Chrysler Group LLC will lose more than $10,000 on every battery-powered Fiat 500 its sells, Fiat-Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne says. That heavy financial hit won't stop the automaker from launching the Chrysler-built electric version of the minicar in the United States in 2012, underlining the pressure automakers face to improve fuel economy and remain competitive in the race to offer alternative powertrains.

"The economics of EVs simply don't work. On the 500 that (Chrysler) will begin selling in the U.S. next year, we will lose over $10,000 (per unit) despite the retail price being three times higher" than a version of minicar with an internal combustion engine, Marchionne said on the sidelines of Fiat S.p.A.'s general meeting on Wednesday.

Marchionne said that Fiat would lose a similar amount on the Fiat 500 EVs it will get from Chrysler's Mexico plant once the Italian company starts the car's European sales, likely in 2013. Chrysler has a license from Fiat to build the fuel- and battery-powered versions of the 500, which means the U.S. automaker gets all the profits – or losses – from North American sales of the cars. Fiat has a 25 percent stake in Chrysler.

In the rush to market electric vehicles, car companies seem to have forgotten the bottom line. You need to make money on the car in some fashion, and for a struggling carmaker, the decision to sell cars at a loss like this can and will be disastrous. Fiat left the US market because its cars couldn't compete. Chrysler went bankrupt because its cars couldn't stay on the road and because it couldn't market vehicles that people wanted and turn a profit. Now, the combined company is about to make the same mistakes.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

Of course, there are going to be those people who claim that these cars will eventually be sold and that the costs to the manufacturers will come down as sales increase, but one has to wonder exactly when the manufacturer will recoup the costs. The companies aren't making enough money elsewhere to cover the kinds of losses that could be envisioned on the Fiat 500 EV, and the experience with the Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf should be instructive. Since they were introduced in 4Q 2010, both cars have sold a grand total of nearly 2,000 cars. Their sales have inched upwards slightly (and Nissan may have trouble in upcoming months as their distribution network was hammered by the 9.0 earthquake and tsunami), but barely register among overall sales.

Had Chrysler/Fiat sold this many of the Fiat 500 EVs, they'd have lost $20,000,000 just to move that many cars. That's unsustainable.

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Protesters Again Demonstrate In Syria

Protesters have again taken to the streets to protest against the regime of Bashar al-Assad, primarily after the Friday prayers. Protests were not confined to Daraa, but there are indications of protests in multiple cities.




There are reports of casualties in skirmishes between Assad's goons and the protesters. Three people were reportedly killed in the latest violent crackdown against opponents to the regime.

At least three people reportedly were killed in Douma, a suburb of Damascus, Reuters says, citing witnesses. AFP news agency, also citing witnesses, said at least four people were killed and dozens of others wounded after security forces fired on protesters in Douma.

Earlier posting: Protests broke out in three Syrian cities after prayers today, two days after President Bashar Assad sought to quell unrest that has rocked the country for two weeks.

Al-Jazeera TV reports that thousands of protesters turned out in the southern city of Daraa, where 61 people were killed last week by security forces, and around the capital of Damascus, as well as several other towns.

Reuters, quoting opposition activists, reports demonstrations in the Damascus suburb of Douma and in the coastal cities of Latakia and Banais.

Al-Jazeera and other media report that the government is using tear gas, water cannon and people in plainclothes armed with sticks to try to subdue the protesters.

Syria's Muslim Brotherhood, which took it on the chin nearly 30 years ago in Hama, says that while they support Western intervention in Libya to stop Khadafi, they see no need for a similar intervention in Syria. Then again, there's no one clamoring for a no-fly zone in Syria - not France, not the US, and not the UN, so for the moment, Assad is free to quell the protests as he sees fit.

The regime has released a Reuters reporter, but a photographer remains in custody.

Reuters correspondent Suleiman al-Khalidi was released by Syrian authorities Friday, three days after he was detained in Damascus.

A week after Syria expelled another Reuters foreign correspondent, Khalidi was set free to cross back into Jordan, where he is based, shortly after 4 p.m. (3 p.m. British time)

But Reuters had still had no contact with photographer Khaled al-Hariri, a Syrian based in Damascus, since he disappeared in the capital four days ago. He was last seen arriving at work Monday morning.

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Japan Struggles To Contain Nuclear Emergency

New video footage has been taken showing several of the damaged reactors at Fukushima from much closer than previous videos. It would seem that the footage was taken from the boom used to pour water on the damaged reactors:



The Japanese Prime Minister is expected to visit the restricted area around Fukushima, but the government and TEPCO are struggling to deal with the ongoing radiation discovered in and around the damaged facility. Radiation has been found in ground water near the plant, and there have been contradictory messages by both the government and TEPCO about radiation levels at different times:

High levels of radioactive materials have been found in groundwater below a stricken nuclear power station in north- eastern Japan, the plant's operator said Friday.

Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) confirmed that radioactivity in groundwater below the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant measured 10,000 times the legal threshold after the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said earlier in the day that part of the data had errors and ordered the operator to re-examine the figures.

The contaminated groundwater was detected around the turbine building of reactor number 1 at the plant, TEPCO said. The plant, 250 kilometres north-east of Tokyo, was crippled by the March 11 earthquake and ensuing tsunami and has been leaking radiation.

Further muddying the issue was the revelation from TEPCO late Friday that the computer monitoring radiation levels at reactor number 1 was not working properly, reported the NHK broadcaster.

Experts have criticized information from the plant, saying levels reported in the water tested at the plant were too high. The revelation adds to a long chain of concerns about TEPCO's reporting on the process to restore control at Fukushima.

The Health Ministry reported Thursday that beef in Fukushima prefecture contained radioactive material above the legal limit, the first such detection in beef.

But a re-examination showed Friday that no radioactive substances were found in beef, the ministry said. No explanation was offered for the change.

There's no explanation for how the water levels have become radioactive - whether that was due to the water being poured into the reactor complex to cool down the damaged reactors and spent fuel pools, or whether leaks in the reactor core containment and spent fuel pools is contributing to the problem. The solutions will depend greatly on determining the source of the radioactive water and how to limit its further spread (although radioactive water has been detected in the ocean nearby - sourced to the reactor complex).

Also, the US Marines are deploying a unit that has special training in dealing with NBC hazards. Navy units are also participating in efforts to clear harbors and waterways of obstacles so shipping can resume to the affected region.

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The Rebuilding of Ground Zero, Part 130

Construction continues all around Ground Zero, and now that the former Deutsche Bank building has been demolished, plans are underway to utilize a portion of the site as a visitor's plaza for the 9/11 Museum. The site will eventually be used as the Vehicle Security Center for the World Trade Center complex, but due to construction throughout the site, visitors need a place from which they can enter safely.

With the Memorial on track to open to the public on the 10th anniversary of 9/11, the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. authorized the funds to redevelop a small sliver of 130 Liberty St.

The building, contaminated by toxic debris from the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, was finally dismantled this winter after endless blunders, costly delays and a horrific 2007 blaze that cost the lives of two firefighters, Robert Beddia, 53, and Joseph Graffagnino, 33.

"This is where the visitor's experience will begin," said Joe Daniels, president of the National Sept. 11 Memorial & Museum.

"It's the perfect use of the space, it's inexpensive and it provides a huge amenity," he said.

"Plus, it gets people off the streets and sidewalks, protects them during construction and takes into account the needs of the residential population."

Only the southernmost portion of the parcel will be used for the Welcome Plaza.

Visitors will present their passes there, listen to a brief talk about the site, and proceed along paths to a West Street entrance gate to Ground Zero.

Opening Sept. 12 - when the public will be allowed to visit the Memorial - the plaza will be used until adjacent World Trade Center construction projects are completed, which could be several years.

Meanwhile, the Port Authority has issued updates on its construction schedule and progress in building the WTC Memorial.

UPDATE:
There's a new controversy brewing with the 9/11 Memorial and Museum, and that has to do with what to do with the thousands of remains that have yet to be identified. Some families don't want the unidentified remains to be placed within the museum as a tourist lure.

“To allow remains to be put in a museum, really for gawkers,” marveled Sally Regenhard, the mother of a 28-year-old probationary firefighter and aspiring writer, Christian, who died on Sept. 11, 2001. “I personally feel I’ve been robbed of access to where my son’s remains are potentially being buried. My entire family, we will never go in there. This is a post-traumatic stress situation waiting to happen.”

How to handle remains is one of the most delicate questions that confront those trying to commemorate the darker chapters of human history. Over the past 20 years, museums across the country have grappled with how to repatriate Native American skeletons, scalps and bones to their tribal heirs, as prescribed by a 1990 federal law. At its inception, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington debated whether to display human hair from the Nazi death camps, and decided not to when some survivors felt it would be offensive.

In Oklahoma City, unidentified remains of the 168 victims of the 1995 bombing are buried under a grove of 168 trees on the State Capitol complex — two and a half miles from the museum chronicling the events. In Shanksville, Pa., where Flight 93 crashed on Sept. 11, only family members are allowed access to the crash site, which is assumed to contain some remains of the 40 passengers and crew members, though there will eventually be an elaborate memorial open to the public surrounding it. At Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, ashes from the Nazi death camps are kept in the Hall of Remembrance, separate from the museum, which turns away people who bring remains from the fields surrounding the camps.

“We are not dealing with anatomy,” said Avner Shalev, Yad Vashem’s chairman. “This is our policy.”

The plan at the World Trade Center is for the remains to be invisible and inaccessible to the public, museum officials said; an adjoining room will be available to victims’ families for contemplation and grief. Although people would have to enter the museum to get to the remains, the remains will technically be in the custody of the medical examiner, so that they may be removed for future testing.

Alice Greenwald, the museum’s director, said that because the museum would be at ground zero, it had a special place in history.

“Yad Vashem is not the site of an atrocity,” Ms. Greenwald said. “When you go to the genocide museum in Phnom Penh, when you go to genocide museums all around Rwanda, there have been decisions in those places to present corpses, skulls, evidence of human remains. When you go to Auschwitz, the entire facility is made up of human remains.

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Ivory Coast's Gbagbo's Regime Is At End, Except for the Shooting

The situation in the Ivory Coast remains in flux as rebel groups continue gaining ground against former President Laurent Gbagbo. Fighting continues in the country's commercial capital, and the state television station has gone off the air. The fighting is now focusing on the presidential compound, and Gbagbo's regime may be nearing an end.

U.N. peacekeepers moved to secure the Abidjan airport by sending armed elements and additional personnel there, according to a U.N. peacekeeping official in New York who was not authorized to speak publicly.

Patrick Achi, a spokesman for Ouattara, said the fighters — largely drawn from a northern rebel group that launched a 2002 rebellion against Gbagbo — had breached the city limit overnight.

It was unclear whether Gbagbo was inside the presidential mansion. The defiant leader has not been seen in public since the offensive began five days ago.

"We don't know where he is," a senior diplomat told The Associated Press. He asked not to be named because he is not authorized to speak to the press.

A Swedish woman working for the United Nations was killed by a stray bullet during fighting in Abidjan on Thursday night, the Foreign Ministry in Stockholm confirmed. Some 500 foreigners sought refuge at a French military base, Col. Thierry Burkhard told the AP.

The chairperson of the commission of the African Union, Jean Ping, urged Gbagbo to immediately hand over power to Ouattara "in order to shorten the suffering of the Ivorians," the AU said in a statement from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Gbagbo lost last November's presidential election according to his country's election commission and international observers, but has stubbornly refused to step down. Sanctions imposed on him and his inner circle failed to dislodge him.

The armed offensive is the most severe threat that he has faced, and analysts say they expect Gbagbo's regime to fall within days. "It's over — except for the shooting," said the diplomat.

Gbagbo was defeated in elections this past November by Alassane Dramane Ouattara, but Gbagbo refused to step down, setting up the current conflict.

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