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Monday, January 19, 2009

The Pittsburgh Steelers and the Arizona Cardinals have won their respective conference championship games to advance to Super Bowl XLIII, the championship game of the National Football League. The game is scheduled to take place on February 1 in Tampa Bay at Raymond James Stadium. The Steelers were the American Football Conference champion, defeating the Baltimore Ravens by a score of 23 to 14. Meanwhile, the Cardinals became the National Football Conference champions by defeating the Philadelphia Eagles 32 to 25.

Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco was the first rookie quarterback in the history of the NFL to help lead his team to two straight playoff victories, defeating the number 3 seeded Miami Dolphins to win the Wild Card round, and the number 1 seeded Tennessee Titans in the divisional round. They came in to the game against a number 2 seeded Steelers team that had already defeated them twice during the regular season. Early in the game the Steelers defense dominated the field, forcing him to only complete 3 out of 14 pass attempts and end the half with a lowly 9.8 quarterback rating and his team losing 13 to 7. By the beginning of the second half, snow was beginning to fall. Early in the third quarter, Flacco threw a 16 yard pass to wide receiver Derrick Mason, only to be sacked by safety Troy Polamalu for an 8-yard loss on the next play, forcing a punt for the Ravens. The Steelers were held on their next possession, forcing another punt. After the Ravens got the ball back, Flacco led the team down the field in what ended as a 58-yard touchdown drive to put the team up 16 to 14. However, near the end of the game, Flacco threw an errant pass intended for Mason that was intercepted by Polamalu and returned for a 40-yard defensive touchdown. This made the score 23 to 14, and essentially knocked the Ravens out of the game.

With 3:19 remaining in the game and the Ravens in possession of the ball for one last chance, a passing play was called. Flacco dropped back into a throwing position, and threw a short pass to running back Willis McGahee, who caught the ball and turned upfield. Going full speed up the field, Steelers safety Ryan Clark collided with McGahee, also running at full speed. The two made helmet-to-helmet-contact, knocking both players to the ground and knocking the ball out of the hands of McGahee. Ray Rice, another running back, commented “It was tough to watch. He’s like a brother to me.” Clark was helped off of the field by the Steelers medical staff, but McGahee remained down on the field with movement in only his legs and arms. He told team doctors that he had significant pain in his neck, and was taken off the field on a cart and taken to a nearby hospital. It is unknown how severe the injuries are at this time.

After the game, Ravens coach John Harbaugh said in a statement “I’m not going to sit here and say Joe played a certain way. Joe went out there and competed and battled and fought and tried to find a way to win the football game. So I certainly have no complaints about that.” Flacco completed only 17 out of 30 pass attempts for 141 yards passing. He was also sacked 3 times and threw 3 interceptions. “I’m not blaming it on any rookie-wall stuff. I don’t believe in any of that stuff,” said Flacco.

In the NFC championship, the Arizona Cardinals had not made it to a Super Bowl in the past 60 years. They were matched up against the high-powered offense of the Philadelphia Eagles, who were the number 6 seed in the NFC. The Cardinals were the number 4 seed, defeating the number 5 seeded Atlanta Falcons on Wild Card weekend, and the number 2 seeded Carolina Panthers in the NFC Divisional playoff round. The Cardinals were led by quarterback Kurt Warner, who became the second quarterback in NFL history to lead two different teams to a Super Bowl, the other being the St. Louis Rams. During the first half, the Cardinals quickly took the lead. By halftime, their lead was extended to 18 points in what looked like an easy win for the team. However, in the third quarter, Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb threw three touchdown passes, two of them being to tight end Brent Celek. After kicker David Akers missed an extra point attempt after the third touchdown pass, the score was 25 to 24 in favor of the Eagles. After the Cardinals received the ball, they drove up the field. With just under 3 minutes remaining in the game, Kurt Warner completed a game-winning touchdown pass to running back Tim Hightower, making the score 32 to 25,. and sealing the game for the Cardinals.

Kurt Warner completed 21 passes out of 28 pass attempts, for a total of 279 passing yards. Wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald caught three touchdown passes of 9, 62, and 1 yard, building on his record-breaking playoff performance of 23 catches, 419 yards, and 5 receiving touchdowns over 3 games. “It really set in when I saw the confetti. I always dreamed of being in the confetti. This is beyond my wildest dreams,” said Cardinals linebacker Bertrand Berry after the game. On the other side, Donovan McNabb remarked on not making it to the Super Bowl again. “You never want anything to end. It’s tough when you’re that close to making it to the Super Bowl,” he commented.

Saturday, April 28, 2012

Monday, February 16, 2009

The United States military Strategic Command (STRATCOM) has said that the ‘fireballs’ spotted over areas of Texas in the United States on Sunday February 15, are not related to the collision of a U.S. and Russian satellite in space. According to spaceweather.com, NASA says the object was a meteor.

“There is no correlation between the debris from that collision and those reports of re-entry,” said STRATCOM military spokeswoman Major Maj. Regina.

“It’s a natural meteor, definitely,” said Bill Cooke, an astronomer at NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office.

On Tuesday, February 10, the American civilian communications satellite Iridium 33, launched in 1997, and the defunct Russian military communications satellite Kosmos-2251, launched in 1993, collided over Siberia. On Friday February 13, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) issued an alert for falling debris from the satellites, following reports of “explosions and earthquakes” along with “flashes in the sky” in Jackson and Louisville, Kentucky.

Then again on Sunday, calls to 9-1-1 began to come in to Williamson County, Texas sheriff’s office around 12:30 p.m. (Central time) that burning debris and fireballs were seen falling from the sky onto parts of Austin, Houston, Waco and San Antonio.

“The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reported to local law enforcement on Friday that these events are being caused by falling satellite debris. These pieces of debris have been causing sonic booms, resulting in vibrations felt by some residents, as well as flashes of light across the sky,” said the NOAA on Friday in an public information alert posted on their website. The FAA says the burning material over Texas is not related to this alert.

“We don’t know what it was [over Texas],” said Roland Herwig, a spokesman for the FAA on Monday. The alerts still remain in effect in Kentucky until further notice.

Residents in Texas reported their homes and windows shaking and large explosions on Sunday morning. After a search of several areas, the Williamson county sheriff’s office reported that no debris or impact sites were found. Earlier unconfirmed reports had said the debris could have been the result of a small plane exploding.

There was previous speculation was that the object in Texas could have been a meteor. Doctor Marco Ciocca, a professor at Eastern Kentucky University told WKYT on Sunday that it’s too early for the debris from the satellites to be reentering the planet’s atmosphere. “[It could] be months” before any of the satellite wreckage enters the earth’s atmosphere. “The debris doesn’t simply fall out of its orbit. It will either vaporize or stay in orbit for some time before falling into earth’s atmosphere.”

However, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) said on February 12 that the debris could have taken 10 days or less to reenter over portions of the planet.

“Within 24 hours of the collision, the U.S. space tracking system had identified 600 pieces of debris. This large number suggests that the collision must have been relatively head-on. If the two satellites hit head-on, rather than a glancing blow, the energy of the collision would completely disintegrate both satellites into clouds of debris,” said the UCS in a statement on their website who also added that the collision took place in “the same region of space where China destroyed a defunct Chinese weather satellite with an anti-satellite (ASAT) weapon” in 2007. “That January 2007 test created a massive amount of debris.” There have been at least eight major satellite collisions since 1991.

The satellites, both of which had a mass in excess of 450 kilograms, and were traveling at approximately 17,500 miles per hour (28,150 km/hour), collided 491 miles (790 km) above the earth. Scientists say the explosion caused by the collision was massive. They are still trying to determine just how large the crash was and how the earth will be affected. STRATCOM continues to track the debris. The results of a plotting analysis will be posted to a public website.

A compilation of brief news reports for Saturday, December 13, 2008.

The Presidential Inaugural Committee says it is “taking unprecedented steps to insure transparency in the public reporting of donors” by listing the names of individuals or organizations who donate over $200 towards President-Elect Barack Obama’s upcoming inaugural.

Logging onto http://www.pic2009.org/page/content/donors/ will show you a current list of over 169 current donors who have given at least that amount, and for most of the donors, much more. Donors include movie stars, real estate moguls, and sports stars, many of whom also contributed to Obama’s presidential campaign.

The Presidential Inaugural Committee states that it has raised almost $10 million dollars to cover the inaugural; and while that may seem like a large amount, the spending record for an inaugural is held by the current president, George W. Bush, with $42.8 million spent on his 2004 inaugural.

• Nikita Stewart. “Inaugural Donations to Be Listed Online” — The Washington Post, December 13, 2008
• Emily Cadei. “Obama Has Raised $10 million” — CQ Politics, December 12, 2008

American and German astronomers have detected and confirmed that there is a ‘super-massive’ black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. It is approximately 27,000 light years from Earth, and four million times bigger than the Sun. Scientists say it plays a significant role in forming all galaxies.

The 16-year study was performed using two telescopes located in Chile. They discovered it by tracking the movement of over two dozen separate stars. The study will be published next month in The Astrophysical Journal.

Sources

• Matt Schofield. “Massive black hole confirmed at heart of our galaxy” — Kansas City Star, December 10, 2008
• Pallab Ghosh. “Black hole confirmed in Milky Way” — BBC News Online, December 9, 2008

An ally of Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe, Information Minister Sikhanyiso Ndlovu, has said that a cholera epidemic in the country, which killed hundreds of people, was caused by the United Kingdom.

Ndlovu said of the outbreak that it was a “genocidal onslaught on the people of Zimbabwe by the British.” It was compared to a “serious biological chemical weapon”.

This comes just a day after President Mugabe announced that the cholera epidemic had been stopped, contradicting aid workers saying that the crisis was only getting worse.

Mugabe has already accused Western powers of planning to use the epidemic as a reason to oust him.

Sources

• “UK caused cholera, says Zimbabwe” — BBC News Online, December 12, 2008
• DPA. “Zimbabwe says Britain ‘planted’ cholera in ‘genocide’ bid – Summary” — The Earth Times, December 12, 2008

File:Dondiegomontoya.png

Diego Montoya, who is alleged to be one of the Colombia’s most powerful drug lords, has been handed over to the United States authorities by Colombia to face trial. Montoya will face 12 charges, including those of murder, money laundering, and the trafficking of drugs. If convicted, he will serve no less than twenty years in prison.

Montoya was the leader of the Norte del Valle cartel, which is reported to have exported 70% of all the cocaine sold in both the European Union and the United States at its height. He was on the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation’s “Top Ten” most wanted fugitives.

Sources

• “Colombia hands ‘drug lord’ to US” — BBC News, December 12, 2008
• “Colombia extradites top drug suspect Diego Montoya to US” — dailypress.com, December 12, 2008

Snow has started falling in some southern states of the US, including Louisiana and Mississippi. As much as eight inches of snow were recorded, and thousands of people were left without power – one of Louisiana’s largest power suppliers, Cleco Corporation, reported ten thousand outages. Forecasters warned of dangerous driving conditions, and some flights at Louis Armstrong International Airport, located near New Orleans, were affected.

In New Orleans, snow fell today for the first time in four years. The largest snowfall amount for the city ever recorded is about 5 inches, on December 30, 1963.

Sources

• “Southern US hit by rare snowfall” — BBC News, December 12, 2008
• “Rare snow covers south Louisiana, Miss.” — Netscape News, December 12, 2008

Bettie Page, a model who became famous for her pin-up photos, has died at the age of 85. Page died of complications from a heart attack on Thursday, December 11.

She was born Bettie Mae Page on April 22, 1923 in Nashville, Tennessee. She was also one of the earliest Playmates of the Month for Playboy magazine.

Sources

• “50s pin-up queen Bettie Page dies” — BBC News Online, December 12, 2008
• “1950s pinup model Bettie Page dies in LA at 85” — Associated Press, December 12, 2008

The Parliament of Estonia has passed a law that will allow citizens to vote by mobile phone in the 2011 parliamentary elections. Voters will need free, authorized chips for their phones.

In last year’s elections, Estonians voted online. The country’s Reform Party proposed mobile voting in September 2007.

Sources

• Jari Tanner. “Estonia to vote by mobile phone in 2011” — Associated Press, December 12, 2008
• The Baltic Times staff and wire reports. “Lithuania ready for e-voting, but Estonia’s already onto m-voting” — The Baltic Times, September 27, 2007

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Fifteen deaths and over 680 injuries have resulted from clashes between Red shirt protesters and government forces in the Thai capital Bangkok.

The deaths of seventeen civilians, including a Japanese cameraman working for the Reuters agency, and four soldiers come after almost a month of protests. Since March 12 Red shirts, so called because of their wearing of red as an identifying symbol, have occupied public spaces and have held rallies and marches in Bangkok in an attempt to force fresh elections.

According to eye witness reports the deaths and injuries are as a result of the police use of rubber bullets and tear gas against the protesters. To which the protesters responded with missiles, pushing and shoving and it is alleged firearms and small bombs.

The current clashes follow an attempt by the security forces to clear key areas in the city. A move seen as an attempt to restore authority and dignity to the security forces lost when the Red Shirts succeeded breaking of a security cordon around the Thaicom satellite television station on Friday.

Despite the courts ruling that the occupation of public spaces as being illegal and the issuing of 27 arrest warrants for the movements leaders, the protests had until today hitherto been peaceful – if noisy – with Thai security forces showing restraint in the policing of the protests, reluctant to cause bloodshed.

The Red shirts consider the Abhisit Vejjajiva administration to be illegitimate having never won an election, and as an undemocratic one imposed on the nation after the Yellow Shirts toppled the elected government of now-fugitive ex-PM Thaksin Shinawatra, during the 2008–2009 Thai political crisis. Red Shirt leaders have called for Bhumibol Adulyadej, the King of Thailand, revered by both sides, to intervene and help end the stalemate.

In late 2009, the considerable continuing influence of the ex-PM saw him take a post with the Cambodian government. Despite being deposed in the 2006 coup, the ousted Thaksin has been in exile, mostly living in Dubai. He is still influential in Thailand, using protests by the Red Shirts, with the Thai government fearing Thaksin will use Cambodia as base to campaign.

However, Thaksin published a letter on his website last November indicating that he did not intend to “go to Cambodia to help Cambodia fight with Thailand […] As I travel to Cambodia to discuss poverty and the world economic situation, I will try to preserve Thai interests with our friends in Phnom Penh, despite the Thai government still hounding me wherever I go,” he stated.

Cambodia has made it clear that they will not extradite Thaksin. Cambodian foreign ministry spokesman Koy Kuong said that regarding the jail sentence they are “not concerned about these issues […] We already clarified this case because he is a political victim.”

Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Canadian gold-medalist Myriam Bédard is facing a January 5 extradition hearing from the United States, after she was arrested and charged with abducting her 12-year old daughter Maude. The Biathalon athlete is arguing she should be allowed to return to Canada on her own.

Bédard had taken her daughter to Washington D.C. with her new husband, Nima Mazhari, on October 2, violating the terms of her divorce settlement from Biathalon coach Jean Paquet. Mazhari, who is a sculptor, was charged with the unrelated theft of $100,000 worth of paintings last year.

Paquet filed a report with the Sûreté du Québec on December 8, stating that Bédard had violated the divorce terms, and an international arrest warrant was issued.

On December 20, the case was brought to the attention of Interpol, and two days later the United States Marshals Service announced her arrest in Columbia, Maryland, at a hotel celebrating Maude’s 12th birthday. Maude was taken into the custody of the Marshals Service for three days, before being returned to her natural father.

Defence attorney John Pepper is arguing that the United States should be obligated to release Bédard on bail as she hasn’t been formally charged with any crime, pending her extradition to Canada, where she faces two charges, child abduction and violating a custody order.

Pepper is also arguing that the three-time Olympic medalist was seeking refuge from “bureaucratic terrorism” in Canada, a claim that Bédard made in a letter she sent to the International Olympic Committee, Kofi Annan and US ambassador David Wilkins explaining why she was leaving Canada.

Bédard gave testimony during the Sponsorship scandal, where she stunned the courts by alleging that advertising firms had been engaged in narcotics trafficking, that her current husband was responsible for the decision not to send the Canadian Forces to Iraq, and that Formula One driver Jacques Villeneuve had been paid $12 million to wear a Canadian flag, claims that were not verified by other sources.

Bédard is facing growing doubts about her mental state, which her attorney says are attempts to “belittle” her, due to personal grudges and her role in the scandal.

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Last night HBO premiered I Am An Animal: The Story of Ingrid Newkirk and PETA. Since its inception, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has made headlines and raised eyebrows. They are almost single-handedly responsible for the movement against animal testing and their efforts have raised the suffering animals experience in a broad spectrum of consumer goods production and food processing into a cause célèbre.

PETA first made headlines in the Silver Spring monkeys case, when Alex Pacheco, then a student at George Washington University, volunteered at a lab run by Edward Taub, who was testing neuroplasticity on live monkeys. Taub had cut sensory ganglia that supplied nerves to the monkeys’ fingers, hands, arms, legs; with some of the monkeys, he had severed the entire spinal column. He then tried to force the monkeys to use their limbs by exposing them to persistent electric shock, prolonged physical restraint of an intact arm or leg, and by withholding food. With footage obtained by Pacheco, Taub was convicted of six counts of animal cruelty—largely as a result of the monkeys’ reported living conditions—making them “the most famous lab animals in history,” according to psychiatrist Norman Doidge. Taub’s conviction was later overturned on appeal and the monkeys were eventually euthanized.

PETA was born.

In the subsequent decades they ran the Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty against Europe’s largest animal-testing facility (footage showed staff punching beagle puppies in the face, shouting at them, and simulating sex acts while taking blood samples); against Covance, the United State’s largest importer of primates for laboratory research (evidence was found that they were dissecting monkeys at its Vienna, Virginia laboratory while the animals were still alive); against General Motors for using live animals in crash tests; against L’Oreal for testing cosmetics on animals; against the use of fur for fashion and fur farms; against Smithfield Foods for torturing Butterball turkeys; and against fast food chains, most recently against KFC through the launch of their website kentuckyfriedcruelty.com.

They have launched campaigns and engaged in stunts that are designed for media attention. In 1996, PETA activists famously threw a dead raccoon onto the table of Anna Wintour, the fur supporting editor-in-chief of Vogue, while she was dining at the Four Seasons in New York, and left bloody paw prints and the words “Fur Hag” on the steps of her home. They ran a campaign entitled Holocaust on your Plate that consisted of eight 60-square-foot panels, each juxtaposing images of the Holocaust with images of factory farming. Photographs of concentration camp inmates in wooden bunks were shown next to photographs of caged chickens, and piled bodies of Holocaust victims next to a pile of pig carcasses. In 2003 in Jerusalem, after a donkey was loaded with explosives and blown up in a terrorist attack, Newkirk sent a letter to then-PLO leader Yasser Arafat to keep animals out of the conflict. As the film shows, they also took over Jean-Paul Gaultier‘s Paris boutique and smeared blood on the windows to protest his use of fur in his clothing.

The group’s tactics have been criticized. Co-founder Pacheco, who is no longer with PETA, called them “stupid human tricks.” Some feminists criticize their campaigns featuring the Lettuce Ladies and “I’d Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur” ads as objectifying women. Of their Holocaust on a Plate campaign, Anti-Defamation League Chairman Abraham Foxman said “The effort by PETA to compare the deliberate systematic murder of millions of Jews to the issue of animal rights is abhorrent.” (Newkirk later issued an apology for any hurt it caused). Perhaps most controversial amongst politicians, the public and even other animal rights organizations is PETA’s refusal to condemn the actions of the Animal Liberation Front, which in January 2005 was named as a terrorist threat by the United States Department of Homeland Security.

David Shankbone attended the pre-release screening of I Am An Animal at HBO’s offices in New York City on November 12, and the following day he sat down with Ingrid Newkirk to discuss her perspectives on PETA, animal rights, her responses to criticism lodged against her and to discuss her on-going life’s work to raise human awareness of animal suffering. Below is her interview.