Tonight's diary is being written and posted by me, rfall, so Oke can post a new weekly digest covering Native American news stories tomorrow. Oke will be back to posting OND from her own account next week.
Clinton says US administration will block 'genocide' vote
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said the Obama administration will seek to block a controversial bill describing as genocide the World War I killing of Armenians by Turks.
A congressional panel on Thursday approved the resolution, paving the way for a possible vote by the House. |
Top Republicans: Yeah, We're Calling Obama Socialist
Revelations that the Republican National Committee urged fundraisers to shake the money trees by playing on fears about President Obama and "socialism" have ignited a classic Washington kerfuffle.
Democrats have dubbed the fundraising plan, contained in a private GOP document, "RNC Fear-Gate." They have accused Republicans of adopting extreme Tea Party talking points and called on GOP leaders to repudiate the strategy. |
Obama calls in key senators to discuss immigration legislation
WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama plans to focus attention on immigration next week by meeting at the White House with two senators crafting a bill on the issue.
White House spokesman Nicholas Shapiro said Obama will meet with Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York and Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina on Monday.
The president is "looking forward to hearing more about their efforts toward producing a bipartisan bill," Shapiro said Friday. |
Pentagon gunman: Local roots, downward spiral
The man who wounded two guards at the Pentagon on Thursday before being shot to death was a former San Jose State University electrical engineering student with a history of mental problems, whose parents in Hollister were worried about a recent purchase he had made at a Sacramento gun range, authorities said Friday.
A portrait emerged of 36-year-old John Patrick Bedell as a man who appeared to deteriorate mentally in recent years as he ran up a record of minor crimes and posted conspiracy theories about the government on the Internet. |
Illinois governor‘s race: Sen. Bill Brady accepts GOP nomination
More than a month after one of the closest statewide elections in Illinois history, state Sen. Bill Brady accepted the Republican nomination for governor Friday and vowed to focus on a pair of issues.
"For me, this campaign is about two things: jobs, job, jobs and reform, reform, reform," said Brady, flanked by his wife, Nancy, and three children.
The veteran lawmaker from Bloomington got to officially kick off his fall campaign hours after the Illinois State Board of Elections certified his 193-vote victory in the Feb. 2 GOP primary over state Sen. Kirk Dillard, of Hinsdale, who opted against a recount Friday. |
Delahunt says decision was personal, not political
QUINCY -- An emotional US Representative William D. Delahunt announced today that he will not run for re-election, speaking to a hushed audience of about 100 friends, family, colleagues, and supporters at Quincy City Hall.
The seven-term congressman, whose district stretches from Cape Cod to the South Shore, said his decision was a personal one, not based on political calculation.
"It has nothing to do with the current political climate. It's simply time for me to chart a new course," he said. |
'Word Is Out': A Love That Dared Speak After All
The '70s: Between the Stonewall riots and the emergence of AIDS, it was one of the last moments in mainstream American society when homosexuality was still "the love that dare not speak its name." Yet one pioneering movie managed not just to investigate the lives of more than two dozen "out" gay men and lesbians, but to allow them to tell their own stories in their own ways.
The documentary, called Word is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives, is widely appreciated among film scholars, but it's been relatively inaccessible to the general public since its theatrical release in 1978. That changed this winter, when a newly restored print from the UCLA Film and Television Archives hit theaters; a DVD release is set to follow soon. |
Police confirm they are investigating Roethlisberger
Geogia police confirmed Friday evening they are investigating Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger in connection to a sexual assault complaint.
The assault allegedly took place Friday morning at the Capitol City night club in Milledgeville, Georgia. The police confirmed that Roethlisberger was with three friends at the time and they interviewed Roethlisberger at the club shortly after the alleged incident.
The victim was treated and released from a local hospital, according to a police spokesman. She's a Georgia College & State University student. |
Firm ties will survive genocide row
The centuries of bitterness that divide Christian Armenians and Muslim Turks have spilled onto many battlefields, and it seems strange that they should now be played out in the murmuring corridors and committee rooms of the US House of Representatives.
But there is no doubt that the proceedings of the House Foreign Relations Committee in Washington have become the most important modern theatre of conflict in an ancient dispute. |
Powerful aftershocks hit central Chile
SANTIAGO, March 5 (Xinhua) -- A strong 6.6-magnitude aftershock struck the Bio bio region in central Chile Friday morning, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said.
The USGS earlier reported it was a 6.8-magnitude aftershock. The aftershock, which struck at 8:47 a.m. (1147 GMT), was the strongest since last week's deadly 8.8-magnitude megaquake.
The Chilean navy did not issue a tsunami alert after the aftershock, which took place offshore about 30 km northwest of Concepcion, Chile's second largest city.
According to the USGS, Chile has suffered seven aftershocks above 5-magnitude in the past 12 hours. Chilean media had reported two aftershocks that were felt before 10 a.m. (1300 GMT). |
'Tis the 'Season' for Vivaldi on Google's homepage
In months past, Google has dressed up its search engine logo in a range of guises – a Norman Rockwell painting, a confusing barcode design, even a tableau featuring UFOs. The latest Google "doodle," which appeared this morning on the Google search page, is an expressionistic sketch of four violins, each colored to represent the passing of the seasons, from spring to summer, fall to winter. |
Is chasing cybercrooks worth it?
(CNN) -- This week's arrests of three men in connection with one of the world's largest computer-virus networks may seem like great news -- perhaps even a sign authorities are starting to win the war against cyberthieves.
But the real situation is more complicated.
Internet crime is up, but arrests of "mastermind" hackers are rare. And the whole get-the-bad-guys effort, while it makes for good drama, is a futile way to secure the Internet, some computer security experts say.
"The virus writers and the Trojan [horse] writers, they're still out there," said Tom Karygiannis, a computer scientist and senior researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. "So I don't think they've deterred anyone by prosecuting these people." |
Android Phone Grows Up, Becomes Brain for Real Robot
Playing with apps on an Android phone is fun. Building your own apps, even more so. But what about using the phone to operate a moving, talking bot? Tim Heath and Ryan Hickman have done exactly that.
The bot they recently finished building — Truckbot — is still relatively simple. It‘s got an HTC G1 phone for a brain, riding on top of a chassis with some wheels and treads. All it can do is roll around on a tabletop, turn and head off in a specified direction. When I visit the workshop where they‘re building it, Heath and Hickman show how it can use the phone‘s compass to make itself point to the south. But the duo have much more ambitious plans in mind.
"I knew I could build this thing. I just needed a phone," explains Heath, a Python web engineer. He posted on various e-mail lists looking for one, including that of Hacker Dojo, a Mountain View, California, hackerspace. Hickman, who works for Google‘s Doubleclick division, but has no connections to the Android people, saw Heath‘s pleas. |
Which climate changes can be blamed on humans?
The conclusions of the last IPCC report were unequivocal: it said, with 90% certainty, that greenhouse gases released by human activity were warming the planet. That was then and this is now, and since the IPCC's report came out in 2007 climate science has come under some criticism - rather a lot of it in fact. So it's no surprise that when new papers confirm the IPCC's conclusions, climate scientists are not shy about advertising them.
The latest example of such a paper, in press in WIREs Climate Change, reviews a number of studies that have been done since 2007. It finds that there are definite human influences on a host of aspects of the climate, all of them driven by the rising temperatures. |
GM To Save 600 Of The 1,100 Dealerships It Had Planned To Close
General Motors said Friday it will reinstate 600 dealer franchises that were scheduled to close in October.
Details, including which dealers will be reinstated and whether any are in Connecticut, were not available.
Last spring, the troubled automaker told 1,100 dealers that it would not renew their franchises. Names of dealers were never publicly released, but it was believed that a dozen or more in Connecticut were affected. About 60 franchises were operating in the state at the time. |
French warship team destroys pirate boats
(CNN) -- Twenty-eight suspected pirates were taken into custody Friday by the European Union Naval Force after a handful of failed attacks on fishing vessels in the Indian Ocean, the EU mission said.
In the first incident, the mission intercepted the a mother ship and two skiffs early Friday in the southern Indian Ocean between the Seycelles and Mombasa, Kenya. The mission said the suspected pirates were in an area where an earlier attack had occurred. |
'Funeral' held for aging Web browser
(CNN) -- More than 100 people, many of them dressed in black, were expected to gather around a coffin Thursday night to say goodbye to an old friend.
The deceased? Internet Explorer 6.
The aging Web browser, survived by its descendants Internet Explorer 7 and Internet Explorer 8, was to be eulogized at a tongue-in-cheek "funeral" hosted by Aten Design Group, a design firm in Denver, Colorado.
The memorial service was to feature a coffin holding a "body" that has an IE6 logo for a head. Attendees were expected to eulogize the Microsoft browser by sharing remembrances, some of which have already been posted on the company's online funeral invitation. |
Bipartisan US financial reform deal uncertain-Dodd
WASHINGTON, March 5 (Reuters) - Key U.S. senators working on a financial reform bill have not reached agreement and it was uncertain whether a bipartisan deal could be struck, said Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd on Friday.
The chief negotiator for the Democrats in discussions that have gone on for months, Dodd said senators were in a position to develop "a good, strong bill." But on the prospects for bipartisan support, he said in remarks on the Senate floor, "I don't know if it will happen or not." (Reporting by Kevin Drawbaugh) |
Kids born via IVF mostly faring well into adulthood
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Young adults who were conceived through in-vitro fertilization are doing as well as the average young American as far as physical health, though their rates of certain psychological problems appear elevated, a new study finds.
The study, published in the journal of the Fertility and Sterility, is a follow-up of the first generation of U.S. children conceived via IVF. All were born between 1981 and 1990 through the IVF program at Eastern Virginia Medical School, where the first IVF baby in the U.S. was born, in 1981.
According to Dr. Sergio Oehninger and his colleagues at the university, there are "lingering questions" about the potential health effects of IVF on children. |
How Librarians Can Save The World
Say the word "librarian," and most people conjure up a frumpy, bespectacled woman shushing people — Marion the Librarian. The image is outdated, Marilyn Johnson argues in her impassioned celebration of librarians and archivists, cleverly titled This Book Is Overdue. Johnson is a former magazine editor and the author of The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries — another wittily titled appreciation of another underappreciated art. She is no stranger to research — and just how helpful a good librarian can be in navigating the overwhelming, "madly multiplying beast of exploding information." |