Top Story
Dole attacks Hagan with second 'Godless' ad.
Hagan has defended her attendance at the fundraiser by noting that other politicians, including Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), also attended. Her campaign has also noted that the Godless Americans group did not sponsor the fundraiser, but Dole has responded that it was hosted by an adviser for the group. |
Democrat Kay Hagan Pulls Ahead By Six Points In N.C..
The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey in the Tar Heel State shows Hagan with 52% of the vote and Dole with 46%. Three weeks ago, Hagan held a five-point advantage.
This is the fourth straight Rasmussen Reports survey to show Hagan in the lead. |
Environmental News
- Intelligence Head Says Next President Faces Volatile Era due to global conflicts over energy, food & water.
The next U.S. president will govern in an era of increasing international instability, including a heightened risk of terrorist attacks in the near future, long-term prospects of regional conflicts and diminished U.S. dominance across the globe, the nation's top intelligence officer said Thursday.
Competition for energy, water and food will drive conflicts between nations to a degree not seen in decades, and climate change and global economic upheaval will amplify the effects, Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, said in a speech here. |
- Why Big Banks May End up Buying Your City's Public Water System.
In uncertain economic and environmental times, big banks and financial groups are buying public water systems as safe investments.
Water is the new oil for global financial powerhouses and water is being commoditized and traded in global stock exchanges. |
- Drill, Baby, Drill: Bureau Proposes Opening Up Utah Wilderness to Drilling.
The federal Bureau of Land Management is reviving plans to sell oil and gas leases in pristine wilderness areas in eastern Utah that have long been protected from development, according to a notice posted this week on the agency's Web site.
The proposed sale, which includes famous areas in the Nine Mile Canyon region, would take place Dec. 19, a month before President Bush leaves office. The targeted areas include parts of Desolation Canyon, White River, Diamond Mountain and Bourdette Draw. |
- Calif. cuts water deliveries to cities, farms.
Farmers in the Central Valley say they'll be forced to fallow fields, while cities from the San Francisco Bay area to San Diego might have to impose mandatory water rationing. |
- Man is to blame for Antarctic temperature rise.
Scientists say they now have conclusive proof that warming is due to man's influence mainly through greenhouse gases and ozone depletion.
The new study says rapid and significant warming in both the Antarctic and Arctic cannot be explained away by natural climate fluctuations and can only have been caused by human influence. |
- Human waste dumped and floating in rivers.
Human waste is being dumped straight into local rivers and streams and 13 Investigates has the video to prove it.
Indianapolis and more than 100 other Indiana towns openly admit they dump human waste into scenic rivers and streams. |
- Bird-eating spiders.
One week after pictures of a giant spider eating a bird made news around the world, a second Australian arachnid has been photographed devouring a helpless finch.
Cases of spiders eating birds in Queensland were rare, and Mr Czechura attributed the apparent increase to "urban sprawl" compacting spider habitats. |
- Office-Related Carbon Emissions Surge.
Despite ongoing efforts to improve energy efficiency in the workplace, the world's growing reliance on the Internet is leading to a rapid increase in greenhouse gas emissions.
The energy required to power all the world's computers, data storage, and communications networks is expected to double by 2020, according to a new McKinsey & Company analysis. |
- World without Frogs: Combined Threats May Croak Amphibians.
Some blame it on the acidifying lakes and streams caused by coal-burning, others point to the ongoing loss of wetlands to development, and now new evidence shows that the herbicide atrazine—widely sprayed on crop fields throughout the region—is killing the frogs by helping parasitic worms that feast on them.
That may explain why amphibians are on the decline worldwide. As many as one third of the nearly 6,000 known amphibian species—frogs, toads, salamanders, even wormlike caecilians—are threatened with extinction, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). And no one knows why. |
- Chemical released by trees can help cool planet, scientists find.
Trees could be more important to the Earth's climate than previously thought, according to a new study that reveals forests help to block out the sun.
Scientists in the UK and Germany have discovered that trees release a chemical that thickens clouds above them, which reflects more sunlight and so cools the Earth. The research suggests that chopping down forests could accelerate global warming more than was thought, and that protecting existing trees could be one of the best ways to tackle the problem. |
- Pickens delays world's biggest wind farm project.
The multibillion dollar project to build the world's biggest wind farm in Texas has been delayed because of the fall-out from the credit crunch and the drop in the price of natural gas, it emerged today. |
- Dinosaur-age reptile nesting in New Zealand.
A rare reptile with lineage dating back to the dinosaur age has been found nesting on the New Zealand mainland for the first time in about 200 years.
Four leathery white eggs from an indigenous tuatara were found by staff at the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary in the capital Wellington, during routine maintenance work, conservation manager Rouen Epson said. |
- Red light for green taxis in New York City - Judge blocks rule requiring 25 mpg or better from taking effect Saturday.
A federal judge on Friday blocked New York City from forcing taxi operators to using higher mileage, and less polluting, vehicles.
Taxi operators said in a lawsuit that fuel-efficient vehicles were not built to withstand the pounding that city cabs endure. |
Political News
- More tricks than treats in final days: The pastor Wright ads.
BARACK OBAMA'S controversial pastor, Jeremiah Wright, is set to make a last-minute resurgence in the US presidential campaign as the centrepiece of attack ads paid for by a political fund-raising group aligned with the Republican Party.
The advertisements are set to air nationally on all major networks and on cable channels Fox and CNN. |
- Palin Fears Media Threaten Her First Amendment Rights.
"If [the media] convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations," Palin told host Chris Plante, "then I don't know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear of attacks by the mainstream media." |
- Bush's move to deregulate may not have quick fix by Obama, 90 new regulations in works: Bush lawyers also argued recently that courts do not have power to overturn his regulations.
The White House is working to enact a wide array of federal regulations, many of which would weaken government rules aimed at protecting consumers and the environment, before President Bush leaves office in January.
The new rules would be among the most controversial deregulatory steps of the Bush era and could be difficult for his successor to undo. Some would ease or lift constraints on private industry, including power plants, mines and farms. |
- Judge says Cheney Aide to be deposed in lawsuit to preserve records.
CREW is suing Cheney and the Executive Office of the President in an effort to ensure that no presidential records are destroyed or handled in a way that makes them unavailable to the public. |
- Obama cabinet would have Republicans: Please say no defense secretary: Nonpartisan national security? Which party is usually sitting in chair for defense secretary?
He declined to say whether Mr Gates, whose handling of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars has earned respect from Democrats and Republicans, was on his shortlist for secretary of defence.
"It is important for us, particularly when it comes to national security, to return to a tradition of nonpartisan national security," the Democratic senator said. |
War News
- US drone missiles strike kills 20 in Pakistan.
A mid-level al Qaeda leader, identified as an Iraqi, was among up to 20 people killed on Friday in a U.S. missile strike in northwest Pakistan, a Pakistani intelligence official said.
U.S. drones have carried out about 15 such missile attacks on militant targets in lawless ethnic Pashtun tribal lands on the Pakistani side of the border with Afghanistan since the beginning of September. U.S. forces also launched a cross-border commando raid in September. |
- Ministry blast kills 5, wounds dozens: Insurgents increasingly employing complex attacks in Afghanistan.
A suicide bomber detonated explosives inside a government ministry Thursday, killing at least five and injuring dozens. The attack is the latest in a series this year showing insurgents' ability to penetrate the capital using complicated and daring methods. |
- British troop commander quits over disgust with 'negligence that killed his troops'.
Major Sebastian Morley claims that Whitehall officials and military commanders repeatedly ignored his warnings that people would be killed if they continued to allow troops to be transported in the vulnerable Snatch Land Rovers.
...In his resignation letter, Major Morley, the commander of D Squadron, 23 SAS, said "chronic underinvestment" in equipment by the Ministry of Defence was to blame for their deaths. |
- No charges but US may never release Guantánamo Chinese.
Seventeen Chinese prisoners who have been held for nearly seven years in Guantánamo Bay will be informed on Monday that they could spend the rest of their lives behind bars, even though they face no charges and have been told by a judge they should be freed.
No country is willing to accept them and the US justice department has now blocked moves for them to be allowed to go to the US mainland, where they had been offered a home by refugee and Christian organisations. |
World News
- Ecuadorean commission alleges CIA infiltration in its military, police.
Following the attack on a Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia camp inside Ecuador on March 1, President Rafael Correa accused the CIA of infiltrating his nation's intelligence services and appointed a commission to investigate.
... An Ecuadorean presidential commission has concluded that U.S. intelligence services infiltrated the Andean nation's military and police and supported a cross-border incursion by Colombian troops that killed a top rebel commander. |
- DR Congo refugee camps 'burned'.
The UN says it has credible reports that camps sheltering 50,000 displaced people in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo have been destroyed.
Reports suggest the camps were forcibly emptied and looted before being burned, the UN refugee agency, the UNHCR, said.
Aid groups say they are struggling to reach an estimated 250,000 people in the region fleeing fierce fighting between government and rebel forces. |
National News
- Charter 'ghost schools' paid millions for absent students.
Taxpayers pay millions of dollars every month to educate tens of thousands of high school students who rarely or never show up for class, part of a growing trend of high absenteeism at privately operated schools.
These special charter schools are supposed to rescue students who were failing in traditional public high schools, but a Scripps Howard News Service investigation found that many students are not attending class and few are graduating. Some of these institutions have become ghost schools with thousands of students who are enrolled but never attend. |
- Nearly 1/5 or 7.5 million homeowners 'underwater', owing more on mortgages than homes currently worth.
In other words: If they sold their homes today, they'd have to bring a check to the closing. Ouch.
Another 2.1 million people stand right on the brink, according to the report by First American CoreLogic. Their homes are worth less than 5% more than the mortgages they're paying on them. |
- Bill collectors get tough, some threaten deportation, and complaints surge.
West Virginia's attorney general sued a Florida company this month, accusing it of trying to intimidate people into paying delinquent cell phone bills by falsely threatening them with arrest, harassing their relatives and contacting their employers.
In New York, authorities said one collector was recently disciplined for threatening to have immigrant debtors deported. |
- Federal Regulators Shut Down Freedom Bank - 17th failure this year of a federally insured bank.
The 17 bank failures so far this year compare with three for all of 2007 and are more than in the previous five years combined. It's expected that many more banks won't survive the next year of economic tumult. The pressures of tumbling home prices, rising mortgage foreclosures and tighter credit have been battering many banks, large and small, across the nation. |
Civil Rights News
- Palo Alto uproar over police chief's issuing stop-and-question orders of African Americans to find robbery suspects.
The remark by the chief that most disturbed Mayor Klein occurred as she mentioned that one robber near the California Avenue train station wore a do-rag.
"If my officers see an African American who has a do-rag on his head, absolutely the officers will be stopping and trying to find out who that person is," the chief said. |
- Inquiry Targeted 2,000 Foreign Muslims in 2004.
An operation in 2004 meant to disrupt potential terrorist plots before and after that year’s presidential election focused on more than 2,000 immigrants from predominantly Muslim countries, but most were found to have done nothing wrong, according to newly disclosed government data.
The internal reports show that immigration agents questioned the foreigners about what they thought of America, whether violence was preached at their mosques, and whether they had access to biological or chemical weapons. A sampling of 300 cases turned over by federal officials showed that none of those interrogated were charged with national security offenses. Fewer than one in five were charged, most of them with immigration violations. |
- Judge orders Colorado Secretary of State to stop continued voter purge.
"The court," said Jenny Flanagan, the executive director of Colorado Common Cause, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, "has now sent a clear and binding message to state and local election officials that every legitimate voter should be able to vote, every vote should be counted, and anyone who interferes with the voting process should be held accountable." |
Hate & Racism News
- Obama Halloween display causes stir in western Colorado.
A skeleton pirate holding a gun to an effigy of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, who appeared to have just walked off the plank of a pirate ship, caused a stir in far western Colorado.
Obama was constructed from a white plastic skeleton, painted dark brown, with large ears and eyes and black hair glued in place. He wore suit pants, a white shirt and a tie.
On the ship was a sign, "Obama for president of Afghanistan." |
- Two charged in latest Obama effigy incident with burglary, disorderly conduct and theft:
Two men faced criminal charges Thursday for hanging an effigy of Barack Obama from a tree with a noose, the latest in a string of racially tinged incidents targeting the man who hopes to be the first black president.
The effigy hung at the University of Kentucky Wednesday was seen as particularly offensive because it was reminiscent of the lynchings that once took place in the former slave state. |
- McCain-Palin Supporter Starts Backlash Over Obama Anti-Muslim Poster (VIDEO at link)
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McCain supporter Charles David Ficken descended upon an Obama rally in Raleigh, North Carolina with a 10-foot tall picture of Barack Obama in East African attire, shouting the United States doesn't need a "Muslim-leaning" person for president. While exercising his free speech at the rally, so too did several dozen fiery Obama supporters. |