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John and Adam discuss International News from a unique perspective.
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No Agenda
Running time: approx. 95 mins.
The Chinese people are often stereotyped as being inscrutable, meaning “difficult to fathom or understand.” And that about sums up my reaction to yesterday’s news that the flight controllers at the Chinese National Space Administration intentionally sent the Chang’e 1 orbiter crashing into the Moon.
According to this report from the Xinhua news agency, ground zero was 1.50° south, 52.36° east. That’s a nondescript tract of Mare Fecunditatis about 90 miles (145 km) from the crater Messier.
The spacecraft, which carried eight experiments, rocketed toward the Moon on October 24, 2007, and had been in lunar orbit for 16 months. And it was beefy, weighing in at more than 2 tons. That’s comparable to the mass of a Centaur rocket that NASA’s hopes to drill into one of the lunar poles later this year, along with the LCROSS spacecraft. Chang’e 1’s impact undoubtedly made a sizable splash that should have been observable from Earth.
Meanwhile the editors of Businessweek seem to think that this qualifies as a “landing.”
Found by Mike Cosmi.
Opening paragraph…
BALTIMORE In the halcyon days when American newspapers were feared rather than pitied, I had the pleasure of reporting on crime in the prodigiously criminal environs of Baltimore. The city was a wonderland of chaos, dirt and miscalculation, and loyal adversaries were many. Among them, I could count police commanders who felt it was their duty to demonstrate that crime never occurred in their precincts, desk sergeants who believed that they had a right to arrest and detain citizens without reporting it and, of course, homicide detectives and patrolmen who, when it suited them, argued convincingly that to provide the basic details of any incident might lead to the escape of some heinous felon
  
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After news broke this week about a North Carolina factory tied to bacteria-tainted syringes that killed five patients, criminal investigators revealed a telling fact: The company’s “chief microbiologist” was a teenage high school dropout. This week, two former employees of the AM2PAT manufacturing center in Angier, N.C., pleaded guilty in federal court to charges related to falsifying documents and shipping bacteria-tainted syringes full of blood thinners meant for patients receiving intravenous fluids.
Authorities are still seeking the company’s owner, who will face a 10-count indictment. In addition to the deaths, more than 200 people were sickened by contaminated syringes. The case raises a glaring question: As this biological tragedy was taking shape, where was the agency charged with standing between Americans and deadly medicine?
The Food and Drug Administration, it turns out, was aware of problems at the 40-employee lab as early as 2005. According to a letter it released Wednesday to ProPublica and the Raleigh News & Observer, the FDA warned the company in August of 2005 about “serious violations” and ordered the firm to change its practices. During a June 2005 inspection of the company, the FDA found nine “significant [quality] violations,” the letter says.
The company failed to conduct routine tests on its syringe-filling machine. The daily log of the “clean room” was only filled out once a month, the letter states. The company’s complaint-response system was in disarray. And employees were not properly trained: One was chewing gum while filling syringes; another was “improperly gowning” during sterility tests.
FYI.
In the same month that Logan International Airport hiked its parking rates by $1, Governor Deval Patrick is asking for another $2 parking “carbon fee” as part of his transportation overhaul filed this week.
The carbon fee, described on page 137 of Patrick’s 141-page bill, would that mean a 20- or 30-minute trip to pick up a relative at Logan could cost $6 in parking alone, not including tunnel tolls, which could rise to as much as $7 if legislators fail to pass Patrick’s other proposal to raise the gas tax. Three hours in a Logan garage would cost $18; all-day parking in a garage would run $26.
Boston’s short-term rates are currently higher than those in the nation’s largest cities – from New York’s LaGuardia to Los Angeles International, to Chicago’s O’Hare.
It’s still cheaper than the miserable SFO airport in San Francisco.
Found by Joe Carlson.
How should I put this? The video contains colourful language.
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VOA News – Snow Storm Pounds Northeastern United States — Geez, it’s March already and this?
A powerful late-winter snow storm pounded the northeastern United States Monday, cutting power to thousands of homes and grounding hundreds of flights.
Forecasters predicted up to 30 centimeters of snow in several northeastern states. Strong winds also swept across the region. Municipal workers drove salt trucks and snow plows to clear roads, but motorists still faced hazardous conditions during the morning commute. Many bus services were canceled. U.S. authorities closed schools in several states and delayed the opening of federal offices in Washington.
Heavy snow forced the cancellation of hundreds of flights at airports in New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts.
On Sunday, the storm swept through the southern U.S. states of Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina, bringing unusually heavy snowfall to the region.
Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense – and the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mike Mullen – appeared on separate TV shows, Sunday, and said the same thing two completely opposite ways.
The United States believes Iran has stockpiled enough nuclear fuel to make a bomb, U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen said on Sunday.
“We think they do, quite frankly,” Mullen said on CNN’s “State of the Union” program when asked whether Iran has enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon.
“And Iran having nuclear weapons, I’ve believed for a long time, is a very very bad outcome — for the region and for the world,” Mullen said.
Sure sounds like imminent danger – to any ignorant watcher who hasn’t a clue about the differences between low-grade fissile material and weapons grade – and what it takes to grow from one to the other.
A US clinic has sparked controversy by offering would-be parents the chance to select traits like the eye and hair colour of their offspring.
The LA Fertility Institutes run by Dr Jeff Steinberg, a pioneer of IVF in the 1970s, expects a trait-selected baby to be born next year.
His clinic also offers sex selection.
UK fertility experts are angered that the service will distract attention from how the same technology can protect against inherited disease.
The science is based on a lab technique called preimplantation genetic diagnosis, or PGD.
This involves testing a cell taken from a very early embryo before it is put into the mother’s womb.
Doctors then select an embryo free from rogue genes – or in this case an embryo with the desired physical traits such as blonde hair and blue eyes – to continue the pregnancy, and discard any others.
Dr Steinberg said couples might seek to use the clinic’s services for both medical and cosmetic reasons.
For example, a couple might want to have a baby with a darker complexion to help guard against a skin cancer if they already had a child who had developed a melanoma. But others might just want a boy with blonde hair.
His clinic is offering this cosmetic selection to patients already having genetic screening for abnormal chromosome conditions in their embryos.
Here’s another article on the clinic which says the price is about $18,000.
Pay no attention to that eerie silence in the nation’s most populous county this week; it will simply be the sound of 10 million people not cussing.
At least that’s the result McKay Hatch is hoping for once his campaign to clear the air is recognized by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.
On Tuesday, the board is scheduled to issue a proclamation by Supervisor Michael Antonovich making the first week in March No Cussing Week.
That would mean no blue language from the Mojave desert, where it gets hot as $&# in the summer, to the Pacific Ocean, where on a winter’s day it can get colder and nastier than %$#!
Not that 15-year-old Hatch expects complete compliance. When his No Cussing Club meets at South Pasadena High School on Wednesdays it’s not unusual for a nonmember to throw open the door and fire off a torrent of four-letter words. He’s also been the target of organized harassment by pro-cussers.
[…]
“Next year I want to try to get California to have a cuss-free week. And then, who knows, maybe worldwide,” said the 10th grader, who believes if people treat each other with more civility they can better work together to solve bigger problems.
Check out the No Cussing Club’s website. Cripes! The kid’s turned this into a money making industry!
Eighteen senators were sent home from Congress after a routine screening found an infestation of nits, larvae, and adult parasites living on the scalps of high-ranking Washington lawmakers.
The outbreak of head lice, which many are calling the worst in U.S. Senate history, has brought the Capitol to a standstill, with presiding officer Vice President Joe Biden suspending all daily sessions until further notice.
“I regret to inform the American people that the Senate chamber has been struck by a devastating case of lice,” majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said. “Although we’ve already dismissed a number of afflicted senators, and thrown out most of their personal belongings, it is imperative that this issue be resolved as quickly as possible.”
“This outbreak needs to be addressed,” continued Reid, speaking from behind a podium wrapped in airtight plastic sheets. “We can’t risk having lice spread to the House.”
The Boston Globe on Boston.com
WASHINGTON – The faltering US economy is fueling a dramatic turnaround in military recruiting, with new statistics showing that the Army is experiencing the highest rate of new enlistments in six years.
The Army exceeded its goals each month from October through January – the first quarter of the new fiscal year – for both the active-duty Army and the Army Reserve, according to figures compiled by the US Army Recruiting Command.
Officials said it is the first time since the first quarter of fiscal year 2003, before the start of the Iraq War, that the Army has started out its recruiting year on such a high note.
In recent years the Army either missed its initial goals or barely met them, and was forced to accept increasing percentages of recruits who either did not graduate from high school, scored in the lowest category on the armed forces qualification test, or required a waiver for past criminal activity.
Well, I guess that’s at least one good thing about the crumby economy.
Joe the Plumber (no longer a plumber; first name actually Samuel) popped into our town yesterday evening to sell his new book and to remind people that he’s still a plain and simple guy. Mission accomplished, on at least one of his missions.
About 11 people wandered into the rows of seats set up hopefully in the basement of a downtown Border’s bookstore to hear Joe speak. Joe addressed them from behind a lectern and with a microphone, but that seemed unnecessarily formal. If you’ve already forgotten “Joe” Wurzelbacher, 35, of Toledo, Ohio, it just goes to show you how ephemeral the life of a plain-speaking, Republican Everyman is these days. Joe was the square-jawed guy briefly drafted by John McCain’s campaign to be its Voice of Regular Folks. Now, only a few months later, he’s kind of like a vestigial tail, a leftover artifact from a forgotten time. He’s Clara Peller, Willie Horton or Gennifer Flowers — names that are the questions in a “Jeopardy!” category called “Presidential Campaign Distractions.” To his credit, Wurzelbacher is hip to the audacity of hype: “I get e-mails all the time from people asking me when my 15 minutes is going to expire,” he grinned after his talk. “Sometimes they just write, ’15 . . . 14:59 . . . 14:58 . . .’ ” It’s fair to say Joe’s appearance at Borders at 18th and L streets wasn’t eagerly anticipated. People just kind of shuffled over when Joe strode in with Thomas N. Tabback, the co-author of “Joe the Plumber: Fighting for the American Dream.” Annie Hickman, a young woman whom Wurzelbacher called “sweetie” during a brief Q&A, was browsing when the PA announced that Joe was in the house. “I’m missing pottery class for this,” she said.
Wurzelbacher was scheduled to speak and sign books for three hours, but the Joe Show was over in 55 minutes. Total copies of “Joe the Plumber” sold: five.
Oh well, there’s always plumbing that needs attention somewhere.
MGMT ‘insulted’ by €1 offer from Sarkozy’s party — I guess it is OK to steal when the bosses do it.
U.S. indie band MGMT has threatened to sue French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s party for repeatedly using one if its hit songs without permission, unless the band is fully compensated for its use.
The Union pour un Mouvement Populaire party paid a standard €53 fee $75.54 Cdn. to France’s music licensing body, but MGMT’s lawyer Isabelle Wekstein says that this was not enough to cover subsequent uses of the song, particularly on the Web.
The party has admitted to using the popular track, Kids, at its national congress in January, in two online videos and in political advertisements. But it claims this was an unintentional mistake and offered the band a symbolic €1 $1.43 Cdn. for copyright infringement.
Wekstein has rejected the offer, calling it insulting.
Found by Mike Cosmi.
The Obama administration has lost its argument that a potential threat to national security should stop a lawsuit challenging the government’s warrantless wiretapping program.
A federal appeals court in San Francisco on Friday rejected the Justice Department’s request for an emergency stay in a case involving a defunct Islamic charity. Yet government lawyers signaled they would continue fighting to keep the information secret, setting up a new showdown between the courts and the White House over national security.
The Obama administration, like the Bush administration before it, claimed national security would be compromised if a lawsuit brought by the Oregon chapter of the charity, Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, was allowed to proceed.
Now, civil libertarians hope the case will become the first chance for a court to rule on whether the warrantless wiretapping program was legal or not.
RTFA. I’m certain you have an opinion.
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Here is what Gary Shapiro CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) said: Dvorak's writing sings with insight and clarity. Whether or not you agree with John's views, he will get you thinking and is never boring. These essays are worth the read!
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