NEWS TO MAKE YOU CRAZY

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YOU WON'T BELIEVE SOME OF THE STUFF THAT'S GOING ON

LIVE SCIENCE.COM
"LiveScience Image Gallery: Iraq Dust Storm"
Is global warming real? The answer is blowin' in the wind.


DON'T WORRY, YOU'RE NOT CRAZY YET --IT REALLY IS THEM

Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid. The End Is Near, My Proctologist Says...

Yeah. It's a wonderful life, all right all right. And every day there are new wonders. Like, we wonder what the f**k is wrong with people? If you know, please fix it.


LIVE SCIENCE.COM
"Huge Iraq Dust Storm Seen From Space"
But, but, but, Rush says there's no global warming!

' A giant dust storm that has raged through Iraq and other Middle East countries for more than a week has been imaged by satellite. Many Iraqis considered the storm to be the worst in living memory, according to news reports. Hundreds of people reported to the hospital for respiratory distress, and the blowing dust interfered with travel by air and on land. A drought has dried out wetlands and other pockets of moisture in the arid country, which increases the number of places where the shamal [NW wind] can pick up dust. The resulting dust storms can last for days. '

WASHINGTON POST
"Israeli navy commandeers Gaza aid boat"
"Spirit of Humanity"? Can't have any of that in Israel today!

' The Israeli navy intercepted a ship carrying foreign peace activists trying to break a blockade of Gaza on Tuesday and forced it to sail to an Israeli port, the military said. An earlier statement by the voyage's organizers, the Free Gaza Movement, said the vessel, renamed the Spirit of Humanity, left the Cypriot port of Larnaca on Monday bound for Gaza with three tons of medical supplies. The 20 passengers include former U.S. Representative Cynthia McKinney, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire and other activists from Britain, Ireland, Bahrain and Jamaica. '

AFP
"Amnesty accuses Israel of using human shields in Gaza"
The Nazi's were good teachers, apparently.

' "Much of the destruction was wanton and resulted from direct attacks on civilian objects," Amnesty said in a study. Israeli troops forced Palestinians to stay in one room of their home while turning the rest of the house into a base and sniper position, "effectively using the families, both adults and children, as human shields and putting them at risk," the group said. "Intentionally using civilians to shield a military objective, often referred to as using 'human shields' is a war crime," Amnesty said. It could not support Israeli claims that Hamas used human shields. It said it found no evidence Palestinian fighters directed civilians to shield military objectives from attacks, forced them to stay in buildings used by militants, or prevented them from leaving commandeered buildings. More than 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis died during the offensive Israel launched in response to rocket fire from Palestinian militants. Amnesty said 300 children were among those killed. "Others, including women and children, were shot at short range when posing no threat to the lives of the Israeli soldiers," it said. "Most of the cases investigated by Amnesty International of close-range shootings involve individuals, including children and women, who were shot at as they were fleeing their homes in search of shelter. "Others were going about their daily activities. The evidence indicates that none could have reasonably been perceived as a threat to the soldiers who shot them and that there was no fighting going on in their vicinity when they were shot," the report said, adding that "wilful killings of unarmed civilians are war crimes." It said Israel's use of white phosphorus shells was also a clear breach of international law. '

MCCLATCHY
"Flood of Afghan heroin fuels drug plague in Russia"
Here's another reason we're in Afghanistan: It's the world's largest supplier of heroin, a huge source of off-the-books money for black ops, and government officials' retirement funds.

' Russian authorities seized 2.4 metric tons of heroin in 2006, about three times the seizures in 2002, according to United Nations figures. That's a small fraction of the estimated 60 metric tons that are thought to arrive in Russia from Afghanistan each year. The drugs usually reach Russia from Tajikistan and Kazakhstan in trucks or, in smaller amounts, tucked away in train compartments or nervous travelers' stomachs. The trade is nothing new in Russia , but after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, it exploded. Afghan opium production climbed from 3,400 metric tons in 2002 to a record 8,200 metric tons in 2007, partly because U.S. and NATO -led troops put a low priority on curbing it. Heroin flooded into Central Asia , and on to Russia . '

MCCLATCHY
"Chinese makers of faulty products rarely suffer consequences"
Chinese officials & businessmen have no law, no ethics, and no morals. But then, neither do many in our government and business communities, who allow this to go on. The answer: Buy nothing from China. Read your labels, people. This crap is everywhere, and it's costing American lives and jobs.

' Chinese manufacturers made more than half of the goods that the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission recalled last year, but few of them paid any price for producing defective wares. The long list of faulty products included Chinese-made highchairs whose seat backs failed, steam cleaners that burned their users, bikes whose front-wheel forks broke, saunas that overheated, illuminated exit signs that stopped working when commercial power failed, dune buggies whose seat belts broke on impact and coffee makers that overheated and started fires. It also included loosely knotted soccer goal nets that entrapped and strangled a child and a toy chest whose poorly supported lid fell on a toddler's neck and killed him, according to CPSC filings. For starters, suing a Chinese company in a Chinese court isn't a good idea for most American plaintiffs, said Michael Lyle , a seasoned international lawyer. "It's like suing Michael Jordan in Chicago ." Yet many Chinese manufacturers also evade trial in the U.S. simply by persuading judges that their companies had no substantial business presence in the states in which they've been sued. That's not hard for Chinese manufacturers, which typically rely on independent importers to sell to the American market. Moreover, without the threat of high-dollar damage claims, Chinese and other foreign manufacturers can continue to produce shoddy and dangerous goods undeterred. That's clear from another part of the CPSC's list of recalls. It cites 2008 makers of faulty and sometimes deadly products that the agency deemed defective years ago but are still being shipped here. They included breakable toys on which infants can choke, lead toys, toys painted in appetizing lead-based colors and cribs whose slats are far enough apart to trap babies' heads. To be sure, the frequency of recalls that involve Chinese makers reflects the country's outsized role in supplying Americans with low-priced goods. Roughly 40 percent of imported U.S. consumer goods are from China. Their recall rate is much higher than 40 percent, however. In 2007, the CPSC named Chinese makers in 69 percent of all recalls, of both imported and domestically produced goods. In 2008, China's share was 53 percent. '

YAHOO NEWS
"Pa. doc at center of VA cancer probe admits errors"
ANOTHER CHANCE??? Keep out of my flippin' butt, you butcher!

' Flippin, 68, of Charleston, W.Va., testified that he lost his job during five months he spent in bed, incapacitated, after Kao implanted seeds into his rectum instead of his prostate in 2005. The VA suggested he was suffering from hemorrhoids or constipation afterward, but an Ohio State University physician finally diagnosed the problem as radiation burn and surgically corrected it, Flippin said. "Rev. Flippin, we should have, we can do better," Dr. Kao said. "I hope we have a chance to do better for you and your colleagues in the future." Flippin said he would have chosen another treatment option, such as having his prostate removed, had he known the risks involved with the radiation seeds. '

YAHOO NEWS
"Mississippi's still fattest but Alabama closing in"
In America today, the rich are starving themselves and the poor are morbidly obese. The poorest States are the fattest, and will soak up the most medical services. Yet they're against public healthcare. Poor AND stupid, those Red States.

' While the nation has long been bracing for a surge in Medicare as the boomers start turning 65, the new report makes clear that fat, not just age, will fuel much of those bills. In every state, the rate of obesity is higher among 55- to 64-year-olds — the oldest boomers — than among today's 65-and-beyond. Mississippi had the highest rate of adult obesity, 32.5 percent, for the fifth year in a row. Three additional states now have adult obesity rates above 30 percent, including Alabama, 31.2 percent; West Virginia, 31.1 percent; and Tennessee, 30.2 percent. In 1991, no state had more than a 20 percent obesity rate. Today, the only state that doesn't is Colorado, at 18.9 percent. The South is the fattest region. The Northeast and West are slightly slimmer than the rest of the country. '

REUTERS
"Pet python kills Florida toddler"
Sorry, but child plus predator pet equals natural selection. They should sterilize the parents.

' A Florida toddler was strangled on Wednesday by a 12-foot (3.6-meter) albino Burmese python that escaped from a holding tank in the girl's home, authorities said. Wildlife officials are increasingly concerned about the proliferation of non-native pythons in Florida's wilderness areas. State officials say there may be as many as 150,000 Burmese pythons, which are native to Southeast Asia, living in the wild in the Everglades, where they have no natural predator. Wildlife experts say the population grew from snakes dumped in the fragile wetlands by pet owners who no longer wanted them and pose a significant threat to native species. '

REUTERS
"Drug cartel tunnelers target U.S. border town"
So much for the big fence.

' The agents found two men constructing the exit for a sophisticated but unfinished tunnel from Mexico. The discovery was no great surprise because authorities have been finding tunnels every two or three weeks all year. As security tightens along the Mexico border, the twin cities of Nogales -- where stores, homes and warehouses in Mexico and Arizona lie just a few yards (meters) either side of the fence -- are in the grip of a tunneling boom. '

CNN
"Bomb parts smuggled into 10 federal buildings during test"
Outsourcing strikes again. What do expect from civilians working "privatized" Federal security jobs for minimum wage without supervision or training? Republicans make us safer? BULLSH*T!!!

' Plainclothes investigators sent to test security at federal buildings in four U.S. cities were successful in smuggling bomb components through guard posts at all 10 of the sites they visited, according to a government report. The investigators then assembled the bombs in restrooms and freely entered numerous government offices while carrying the devices in briefcases, the report said. The buildings contained offices of several federal lawmakers as well as agencies within the departments of State, Justice and Homeland Security, which is responsible for safeguarding federal office buildings. The Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, conducted the tests to check on the effectiveness of the Federal Protective Service .The FPS protects federal buildings by having about 1,200 federal law enforcement officers oversee an army of 13,000 private security guards. Wright says his immediate goal is to have federal officers -- not contract guards -- protect Level IV buildings, and ultimately to have them protect Level III buildings as well. '

SF SCOPE.COM
"Comics artist Mark Sable detained for Unthinkable acts"
Our security can't stop bombs, just comic books.

' 'The minute I saw the faces of the agents, I knew I was in trouble. The first page of the Unthinkable script mentioned 9/11, terror plots, and the fact that the (fictional) world had become a police state. The TSA agents then proceeded to interrogate me, having a hard time understanding that a comic book could be about anything other than superheroes, let alone that anyone actually wrote scripts for comics.' '

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AWFUL NEWS

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YOU HEARD IT HERE LAST

THE SICK, THE SAD & THE UGLY

"All The Lonely People, Where Do They All Come From?"

"Get a life!" Ever heard that one? Most people have one. We even have one, sorta. But there are evidently people out there who not only do not have a life, they have a negative life, a reverse-life, the opposite of life. That would be death, we guess. And they just have to share it.


CNN
"Man charged in slaying of Kansas abortion doctor "
"Right to life"?

' Dr. George Tiller was shot and killed while serving as an usher at his Wichita, Kansas, church Sunday morning, according to police. Tiller was one of the few U.S. physicians who still performed late-term abortions and had survived a 1993 shooting outside his clinic. Scott Roeder from the Kansas City, Kansas, area is being held without bond in the Sedgwick County Adult Detention Facility, according to the sheriff's office Web site. He is also charged with two counts of aggravated assault. "This is a tragedy for the Tiller family. We feel so badly about that," Clarence Roeder, Scott's uncle, said in a statement provided to CNN affiliate KMBC. "That Scott would murder the doctor in the Lutheran Church. We are also Lutherans, and it adds a double touch of sadness and irony." Roeder is expected to appear in court early this week, law enforcement officials said. '

AFP
"Teen model escapes 'abusive' Malaysian prince"
'Abusive"? Bit of an understatement. The little bastard tortured and mutilated the girl. Why, it's like the U.S., for God's sake!

' Her mother, Daisy Fajarina, said she would press charges against the 31-year-old prince, and blamed the Malaysian and Indonesian governments for trying to cover up the alleged abuse. "The things I've been afraid of were revealed to be true. Manohara has suffered physical abuse. She's got several razor cuts on her chest," Fajarina told AFP on Monday. "No parent could be silent if their child was treated in such a barbaric way." The Malaysian government had ignored her pleas for access to her daughter and had blocked her from entering the country, she said, while the Indonesian embassy had said that Manohara was fine with her new husband. But the young woman -- a well-known socialite in Jakarta -- said her life at the royal palace involved a "daily routine" of rape, abuse, torture and occasional drug injections that made her vomit blood. She said she was usually held under guard in her bedroom at the palace and was injected with tranquilisers whenever she complained. "I am still traumatised by all that happened and it has left an impact on me," she told reporters in Jakarta on Sunday, after escaping the royal family during a trip to Singapore over the weekend. "Sexual abuse and sexual harassment were like a daily routine for me, and he did that every time I did not want to have sexual intercourse," she was quoted as saying in The Jakarta Globe. "I could never think a normal man could do such things," she said, adding: "Some parts of my body were cut by a razor." The teenager whose fairy-tale wedding to a prince captured the imagination of Indonesia said she would be tortured if she did not appear to be happy when she attended social functions with Fakhry. "Every time I went for events they forced me to smile and would torture me if I did not do what they said," she told the press conference. '

YAHOO NEWS
"Bausch & Lomb settles 600 eye fungus lawsuits"
"Out of the public eye"? WHAT EYE!!!??? The eye is GONE!!! -(Not the Government's eye: It was closed. Asleep. Needed a "wake-up call.")

' Sometimes, the damage was irreparable. Seven people in Florida, Maryland, New York, Oregon, Tennessee and West Virginia had to have an eye removed. At least 60 more Americans needed vision-saving corneal transplants. "The truth has been very carefully buried, and it appears to have been buried going back to the beginnings of the outbreak," said Dr. Arthur Epstein, who was chairman of the American Optometric Association's contact lens and cornea section during the highly publicized crisis. "All settlements were predicated on silence about the clinical findings and blame and so forth. My hope was that what actually happened would become part of public record in a courtroom. That way, we'd be able to learn from it and move on and make sure it never happened again." Multipurpose solutions have been on the market for over a decade, all but replacing older systems for rinsing and cleaning lenses. In 2007, another popular formula made by Santa Ana, Calif.-based Advanced Medical Optics, the No. 3 manufacturer behind Alcon Inc. and Bausch & Lomb, was linked to a flurry of hard-to-treat Acanthamoeba keratitis infections caused by a parasite. More than 170 people have sued the company, which was acquired this year by Abbott Laboratories. The Food and Drug Administration is poised to lay out more comprehensive testing standards for lens solutions. "We did take the two epidemics as very much of a wake-up call, because contact lens safety is an essential public health issue," said Dr. Malvina Eydelman, director of the agency's ophthalmic division. While Bausch says it has settled "the vast majority of fungal infection cases," it is challenging another 500-plus lawsuits linking MoistureLoc to assorted bacterial, viral and parasitic afflictions. A pretrial hearing set for June 3-5 in New York will decide if there's a reliable scientific basis for arguing such a link. When Bausch & Lomb was acquired by private equity firm Warburg Pincus for $3.67 billion in October 2007, Chief Executive Ronald Zarrella said the deal would allow the company "to pursue the growth path we were on ... without a lot of outside distraction." Zarrella retired last year. "They can do all this out of the public eye — guys like me aren't sitting there scrutinizing the financial impact of every single settlement," said analyst Jeff Johnson of Robert W. Baird & Co. in Milwaukee. "You can completely focus on your brand and on doing what's right by the patient." '

REUTERS
"Paper says mistakenly ran ad urging Obama killing"
"Just an honest mistake." And so was the ad for genuine Jewish lampshades. They're actually made from Gypsies. The paper printed a retraction. The Gypsy ad starts tomorrow. It's all good.

' A local newspaper in northwest Pennsylvania apologized on Friday for running a classified advertisement that called implicitly for the assassination of U.S. President Barack Obama. The Warren Times Observer, with a circulation of about 11,000, ran the ad in Thursday's paper and pulled it as soon as it was discovered by a manager, said publisher John Elchert. The ad read: "May Obama follow in the footsteps of Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and Kennedy," Elchert said. Elchert declined to identify the person who placed the ad, and said he had referred the case to local police, who notified the Secret Service. Elchert said the representative who took the ad apparently didn't make the connection between the four assassinated presidents -- Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley and John F. Kennedy -- and mistakenly allowed the ad to run. "It was just an honest mistake," he told Reuters. Jim Mackin, a spokesman for the Secret Service, said investigators had identified the person who placed the ad and were taking it seriously. "We do not have the luxury of doing otherwise," he said. '

YAHOO NEWS
"Report: Singer Susan Boyle in London clinic"
Anybody not see this coming?

' London police would not directly confirm the report, but said doctors had been called to assist a woman under the Mental Health Act. Police said the woman had gone to a clinic voluntarily. Boyle drew 20.2 percent of the vote in the final, behind the dance group Diversity, which won 24.9 percent of the 4 million votes cast. The discovery that a 48-year-old woman from a small Scottish town was capable of singing very well on a national stage made Boyle an international sensation. Heavy media coverage followed, much of it laced with snide commentary about her looks, her social awkwardness, and her remark that she had never been kissed. Still, on Oprah Winfrey's U.S. television show, the singer said she was "loving every second" of her unexpected stardom. Scotland's First Minister Alex Salmond was scathing about the media pressure. "We've got elements of a press who like nothing better than to build people up and then drag them down," Salmond said. "It's pretty sad actually. It's almost a psychosis." '

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TO POST A COMMENT: CLICK ON "COMMENTS," "Post a Comment" or "# of COMMENTS" just below the SOCIAL BOOKMARKING LINKS (Digg, Delicious, etc), about three inches down from here. Please do comment. Thank you.

IMPORTANT MESSAGE FROM YOUR BLOGGERS:

Suggestion Box & Tip Jar We would like to make over this blog to make it easier to access, to read and to comment on. We would also like to serve our readers better by providing more of what you need and want to see. All serious suggestions will be considered. We hope to move to our own domain in the near future, and we would like to ask for your financial assistance in doing that, and in upgrading our hardware & software. Small one-time donations and larger long-term subscriptions are welcome. Exclusive advertising is also available. If you think we are wasting our time in doing all this, please let us know. If you wish to help us, now is the time. As always, negative bullsh*t from right-wing trolls will be sh*tcanned. Thank you to everyone else. Please send feedback & PayPal contributions to cosanostradamusATexciteDOTcom. Thanks.

SUPPORT OUR TROOPS: BRING THEM ALL HOME ALIVE, NOW!