Welcome to the OND, Magnifico's series…it was his idea, he started it, so it’s all his fault. I accept no responsibility for the contents of this edition, but I will gladly accept tips.
Top Stories
An Israeli air strike into the home of a senior Hamas leader left him dead, along with two of his wives and seven of his children.
Hundreds of supporters scrambling over the concrete rubble vowed revenge as the mangled bodies, covered in blood and cement dust, were extracted from the wreckage.
Former Senator Claiborne Pell (D-RI), the namesake of Pell Grants that help college students, passed away at the age of 90. He suffered from Parkinson's disease for the past 14 years.
Senate Democrats insist that Roland Burris will not be allowed to the Senate floor, and Capital police may be called to escort him out if he resists.
World
As of January 1, 2009, Iraq has control of the Green Zone and US forces there...and also regained possession of Saddam Hussein's former palace.
The U.S. formally transferred control of the Green Zone to Iraqi authorities Thursday in a pair of ceremonies that also handed back Saddam Hussein's former palace. Iraq's prime minister said he will propose making Jan. 1 a holiday marking the restoration of sovereignty.
Under the new security agreement between Washington and Baghdad to replace a U.N. mandate for foreign troops in Iraq, the Iraqi government also now has control of American troops' actions and of the country's airspace.
The moves came amid a dramatic fall in violence over the past year. However, insurgents still stage daily attacks and could try to expand the fight now that U.S. troops cannot take unilateral action.
The disastrous fire at a Bangkok night club New Year's Eve was likely caused by a pyrotechnics display.
Mike Macdonald, a Canadian based in Bangkok, told how he was lucky enough to be carried out of the doors as the rush began. “I felt a blast of heat and looked above the stage to see huge flames,” he wrote on his weblog. “At first my friend and I thought it was a special effect, but the heat was too strong. At that point people had already started to move outside, and we were carried by the crowd out the main front doors.”
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Adam Butler, 26, from Birmingham, said: “There was a pyrotechnic that launched off the stage where a band was playing. For five seconds no one took it seriously and when everyone realised it was serious there was nowhere to run. By then the flames were already above our heads.
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People who watched from outside said that bars on the windows prevented those inside from escaping. Sompong Tritaweelap, who lives in a flat behind the club, said that people were screaming for help.
“It was a terrible sight. Their hair and clothes were on fire, but there was nothing they could do as the fire engulfed them. Everybody was pushing against each other trying to get out to the door as quickly as possible. I saw people, particularly young girls, being pushed away and crushed underneath as others were stomping on them trying to get out.”
The fire killed 61 people and wounded more than 200.
Australia would possibly allow a certain number of Guantanamo Bay inmates to settle there, provided they pass a strict security screening, as any other person seeking residence there would.
Acting Prime Minister Julia Gillard said Friday the government had been approached along with Britain to accept inmates to help U.S. President-elect Barack Obama meet a promise to close the camp in a U.S. enclave on Cuba.
"For anyone to be accepted they would have to meet Australia's strict legal requirement and go through normal rigorous assessment processes," Gillard said in a statement.
Gillard's office said it had not been decided who would be considered for intake and under what conditions.
A feud between Russian and Ukraine over gas payments may disrupt the winter fuel supply for the rest of Europe, as Russia turned off the gas.
Pipelines that cross Ukraine carry about a fifth of the European Union's gas needs and politicians across the continent yesterday urged the two sides to resolve their dispute as quickly as possible.
"We urge both parties to treat this as a commercial matter and seek agreement through negotiation," said Britain's Department of Energy. "All existing commitments to supply and transit must be honoured," said the Czech deputy prime minister, Alexandr Vondra, hours after the republic took over the EU presidency.
Ukraine has said it would not block Russian gas getting through to other countries, and energy firms in Germany, France, Romania and Austria said yesterday they had not experienced any drop in supply.
A study of ICU patients in hospitals in the Netherlands foudn that patients who received precautionary antibiotics were less likely to die.
"We have seen that using antibiotics clearly results in a reduction in the number of deaths and intensive care units should make use of this knowledge," Anne Marie de Smet, a researcher at University Medical Center Utrecht, said in a statement.
Drug-resistant bacteria are a growing problem in hospitals worldwide, marked by the rise of superbugs such as methicillin-resistant Staphyloccus aureus, or MRSA. Such infections kill about 19,000 people a year in the United States, while more than 4,000 a year in Britain are infected.
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De Smet and colleagues looked at 6,000 men and women who stayed in intensive care units for at least two days at 13 hospitals in the Netherlands to compare the effects of different antibiotic treatments.
Volunteers who received oral antibiotics right away were 11 percent less likely to die, and those given oral and intravenous combinations right away were 13 percent less likely to die than people who did not get the drugs, the researchers found.
At the same time the number of antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections did not increase among the people on the drugs.
USA
Four suspects in the gang-rape of a San Francisco woman are in custody after the fourth turned himself in.
Officers arrested Humberto Hernandez Salvador at his Richmond home Wednesday night, Richmond police Lt. Mark Gagan said. The 31-year-old is being held without bail on gang rape, kidnapping and carjacking charges.
Police on Wednesday also arrested a 15-year-old Richmond boy and a 16-year-old Hercules boy, who were being held at a juvenile detention center on similar charges. Their names were not released.
Josue Gonzalez, 21, turned himself in Thursday after police announced they were searching for him. He was wanted on charges of gang rape, kidnapping and carjacking.
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Detectives say the 28-year-old victim was attacked on Dec. 13 after she got out of her car, which bore a rainbow gay pride sticker. The alleged attackers made comments indicating they knew she was a lesbian, police said.
Authorities have characterized the case as a hate crime. Police said the victim lives openly with a female partner.
The discovery of four homemade gasoline bombs in Aspen, CO, forced the cancellation of New Year's festivities in the popular resort town.
Hours later, a suspect — a longtime Aspen resident who an acquaintance said was bitter because he had not profited from the community’s transformation from a rural mining town into a luxury resort town — killed himself with a gunshot to the head, the authorities said.
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The police said they believed Mr. Blanning left the bombs, which were disguised as holiday gifts, at the banks on Wednesday afternoon, along with threatening notes that promised “mass death” unless two Aspen banks turned over $60,000.
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Two more bombs were found in a nearby alley, and all four were dismantled by a bomb squad unit from Grand Junction, said Stephanie Dasaro, a spokeswoman for the Aspen police. She said the police believed Mr. Blanning might have been interrupted before he could set off the bombs.
Two major bank mergers have been completed, as Bank of America finalized its purchase of Merrill Lynch while Wells Fargo completed its purchasee of Wachovia.
Merrill Lynch's sale to Charlotte, N.C.-based Bank of America, announced Sept. 15, creates the nation's largest financial services company. San Francisco-based Wells Fargo's purchase of Wachovia, a deal that was announced Oct. 3, creates a coast-to-coast powerhouse with community banks in 39 states and the District of Columbia.
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Bank of America reiterated Thursday it expects to achieve $7 billion in pretax expense savings by 2012. It said the cost reductions would come from a range of sources, including the previously announced job cuts and the reduction of overlapping technology, vendor and marketing expenses.
A man shot by a transit agency police officer responding to reports of a fight on an arriving train in Oakland, CA, died after being taken to a hospital.
The Bay Area Rapid Transit officer's gun went off while police were trying to restrain 22-year-old Oscar Grant at BART's Fruitvale station around 2:15 a.m. Thursday, agency spokesman Jim Allison said.
Grant was taken to a nearby hospital and pronounced dead later Thursday morning, Allison said.
Authorities said they were still investigating whether the gun was fired on purpose or accidentally.
"It's clear that it was a volatile situation with young men who were arguing and in fact had continued to argue even in the presence of multiple police officers," Allison said.
Bottom Stories
Not surprisingly, teens who take a "virginity pledge" or an oath of abstinence are no more likely to delay having sex than other teens, when factoring out religion and conservative views.
While teens who take virginity pledges do delay sexual activity until an average age of 21 (compared to about age 17 for the average American teen), the reason for the delay is more likely due to pledge takers' religious background and conservative views – not the pledge itself, claims a study published in the January 2009 issue of journal Pediatrics.
“The sexual behavior of virginity pledgers does not differ from that of closely matched nonpledgers, and pledgers are less likely to protect themselves from pregnancy and disease before marriage,” the researchers concluded.
“Virginity pledges may not affect sexual behavior but may decrease the likelihood of taking precautions during sex,” they added. “Clinicians should provide birth control information to all adolescents, especially virginity pledgers.”
After stopping to help people in a car crash, a former Fort Lauderdale city commissioner found his bike stolen...ironic, because
[Tim] Smith — as a commissioner — had successfully pushed for a citywide bike registration program to help police track stolen bikes. But when he contacted police to report his own stolen bike, he had to admit it was not registered.
By the numbers
Bush has about 18 little days, less than three weeks, left to finish what he started (whatever that is), before letting the Obama-Biden team in to clean up the mess.
The Operations in Iraq have cost $584,680,000,000, as the race to one trillion dollars of war continues (and remember, this doesn't include what was spent in Iraq...but it is less than what was given to banks...at least we have some proof of money being spent blowing things up in Iraq).
In the same time, the national debt has soared from $6,400,000,000,000 to $10,583,175,000,000, an increase of more than 4.1 trillion dollars.
Have a good one.
So long, and thanks for all the ghoti*