...Which I'm sure is so terribly important for everyone to know, so the 24-hour networks will be all over it for the next week or two or three.
What else could possibly be happening in the world?
In other news....Hamas and Fatah signed an agreement could help end bloodshed, lead to the recognition of Israel and stop the coming war with Iran.
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Gazans rejoiced in the streets to celebrate a Hamas-Fatah power-sharing deal they hope will avert civil war, but Palestinian officials preached patience today, saying implementing the agreement would be a challenge.
The agreement received a muted response from American and European officials, who said it was too early to decide whether to lift the crippling international sanctions on the Hamas-led government.
The rivalry between Hamas and Fatah began last year when Hamas won parliamentary elections and formed a Cabinet, splitting power with President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah. The friction between the two groups paralyzed the government and eventually exploded into fighting that killed more than 130 Palestinians.
[full story]
Also, it has recently come to light that Vice President Cheney ordered his aide to out a CIA operative married to the guy that pointed out Cheney's rationale for invading Iraq was wrong.
It is I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby whom special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is trying to put in jail in connection with the disclosure of a CIA operative’s identity, but as Libby’s trial reached the halfway point Wednesday, Fitzgerald appeared to be just as intent on putting Vice President Dick Cheney near the center of the case.
Libby, Cheney’s former chief of staff, is charged with perjury for telling a federal grand jury in 2004 that he first learned of the operative’s covert status from NBC News Washington bureau chief Tim Russert. Special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald wrapped up his case Wednesday with Russert’s testimony contradicting Libby’s assertion.
[full story]
Also, it has been revealed that Cheney's rationale for invading Iraq was wrong, and created that way.
WASHINGTON – Pentagon officials undercut the intelligence community in the run-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq by insisting in briefings to the White House that there was a clear relationship between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, the Defense Department's inspector general said Friday.
Acting Inspector General Thomas F. Gimble told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the office headed by former Pentagon policy chief Douglas J. Feith took "inappropriate" actions in advancing conclusions on al-Qaeda connections not backed up by the nation's intelligence agencies.
Gimble said that while the actions of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy "were not illegal or unauthorized," they "did not provide the most accurate analysis of intelligence to senior decision makers" at a time when the White House was moving toward war with Iraq.
"I can't think of a more devastating commentary," said Armed Services Committee Chairman Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich.
[full story]
Also, we found liquid methane on Titan....and some organisms breathe methane [1]....so we could be spending our money trying to find life on other planets.
Instead, we are spending hundreds of billions of dollars blowing up a country that wasn't a threat to us.
Any why? Because OUR MEDIA SUCKS [2].
Oh, and Anna Nicole Smith is still dead.
---
--
[1]But in 1979, a team of scientists exploring the sea floor off the coast of South America in the submersible Alvin came across something incredible: a tall rock "chimney" spewing black liquid. Even though the rush of fluid knocked the little sub around, using Alvin's mechanical arm, the scientists managed to plunge a temperature probe into the dark cloud. It was so hot that the instrument melted! If Alvin had been closer, its plastic portholes would have melted, too.
The team had discovered the first "black smoker," blowing out superheated gases and minerals from inside the earth through "leaks" in the ocean floor. With a sturdier thermometer, the team measured the temperature of the strange substance at 662 degrees Fahrenheit. (Your bath water is probably about 100 degrees Fahrenheit.) Also called hydrothermal vents, the hot, mineral-rich chimneys can support an entire community-clams, mussels, tubeworms-where scientists once believed no life could exist. But the most important, and remarkable, inhabitants of the vents are the extremophiles that dwell there. Called thermophiles, or "heat lovers," they live in water hotter than boiling, and they breathe sulfide, methane, iron oxide, and hydrogen. Because they make wonderful meals for other dwellers of the deepest darkest ocean, the extremophiles keep the whole colorful colony alive. "The discovery of hydrothermal vent life completely rearranged our thinking about where and how life could exist on earth-and possibly on other planetary bodies," observed biologist Tim Shank, of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.
[2] Three steps to fixing it. 1) Re-introduce AND ENFORCE media ownership rules capped at 20% coverage of the country. 2) Limit copyright to 50 years. 3) Quit letting them sells people drugs. BTW, this last one would also do wonders to lower healthcare costs and insurance rates.