The newly appointed president of Honduras, Roberto Micheletti, is warning that if ousted president Manuel Zelaya attempts to return here, he will be immediately arrested and sent to prison. “If he comes back to our country, he would have to face our tribunals and our trials and our laws,” Micheletti said in an interview with [...]
Archive for June, 2009
New Honduran President Warns Former Leader of Arrest
Posted in Conflicts and wars, tagged Honduras on June 30, 2009 | Comments Off
U.N. Backs Ousted Honduran Leader
Posted in Politics, tagged Honduras on June 30, 2009 | Comments Off
The deposed president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, addressed the United Nations on Tuesday. The United Nations marshaled an unusually broad effort on Tuesday to condemn the military seizure of power in Honduras, turning over the podium of the General Assembly to its ousted president and quickly passing a resolution sponsored by countries often at loggerheads, [...]
Sarkozy Comments on Israeli Minister Make Waves
Posted in Politics, tagged Lieberman, Sarkozy on June 30, 2009 | Comments Off
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel defended his ultra-nationalist foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, on Tuesday after reports emerged that President Nicolas Sarkozy of France urged that he be replaced with the leader of the centrist opposition, Tzipi Livni. Mr. Sarkozy made the statement in a private meeting last week at the Élysée Palace attended by [...]
Iran Moves to Preclude Further Public Defiance
Posted in Conflicts and wars, Politics, tagged Iran on June 30, 2009 | Comments Off
Police officers and militia forces crowded the streets of Tehran on Tuesday, setting up checkpoints and making clear that the government had zero tolerance for any further public expressions of defiance to the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a day after the powerful Guardian Council certified his landslide victory. The government made a series of [...]
Entertainment – June 30
Posted in Entertainment Today, tagged June 30 2009 on June 30, 2009 | Comments Off
Jackson Wrapped Video Before Death Two weeks before he died, Michael Jackson wrapped up work on an elaborate production dubbed the ”Dome Project” that could be the final finished video piece overseen by the King of Pop, The Associated Press has learned. Jackson was apparently preparing to dazzle concert audiences in London with a high-tech [...]
Daily ejaculation may be the best way to improve sperm quality Having sex every day improves sperm quality and could boost the chances of getting pregnant, research suggests. In a study of men with fertility problems, daily ejaculation for a week cut the amount of DNA damage seen in sperm samples. Speaking at a fertility [...]
Most complete Earth map published
Posted in Physical sciences on June 30, 2009 | Comments Off
The most complete terrain map of the Earth’s surface has been published. An image of Death Valley – the lowest, driest, and hottest location in North America – composed of a simulated natural color image overlayed with digital topography data from the ASTER Global Digital Elevation Model. The data, comprising 1.3 million images, come from [...]
How Long Is Long Enough?
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Law, tagged Mohammed Jawad on June 30, 2009 | Comments Off
No one seems to know how old Mohammed Jawad was when he was seized by Afghan forces in Kabul six and a half years ago and turned over to American custody. Some reports say he was 14. Some say 16. The Afghan government believes he was 12. What is not in dispute is that he [...]
Vince Lombardi Politics
Posted in Economy and business, Editorials and opinion, Energy and Environment, Health, Politics on June 30, 2009 | Comments Off
Freud said we’re forever changed by the traumas of our youth, and so it is with the Democrats and Clintoncare. Even as you watch the leading Democrats today in their moment of glory, you can still see wounds caused by the defeat of the Clinton health care initiative. You see the psychic reactions and the [...]
Today in History – June 30
Posted in This day in history, tagged June 30 on June 30, 2009 | Comments Off
Today is Tuesday, June 30, the 181st day of 2009. There are 184 days left in the year. Today’s Highlight in History On June 30, 1859, French acrobat Charles Blondin (born Jean Francois Gravelet) walked back and forth on a tightrope above the gorge of Niagara Falls as thousands of spectators watched. On this date: [...]
Today’s papers – June 30
Posted in Today's Papers, tagged June 30 2009 on June 30, 2009 | Comments Off
Madoff Gets Life For “Evil” Crimes The New York Times and Los Angeles Times lead with, while the Wall Street Journal banners, Bernard Madoff receiving a 150-year prison sentence. The federal judge called Madoff’s massive Ponzi scheme an “extraordinarily evil” fraud and unexpectedly imposed the maximum sentence allowed, saying the length of the sentence should [...]
Why Did Madoff Get a Longer Sentence Than He Can Possibly Serve?
Posted in Law on June 30, 2009 | Comments Off
Disgraced financier Bernie Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison Monday morning for running a massive Ponzi scheme. Why give a 71-year-old man a 150-year term instead of just life or life without parole? In 2005, Daniel Engber explained that judges hand down impossibly long prison sentences for both practical and symbolic purposes. The [...]
The Law Triumphs in Honduras
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Law, tagged Honduras on June 30, 2009 | Comments Off
Many foreign observers are condemning the ouster of Honduran President Mel Zelaya, a supporter of Hugo Chavez, as a “military coup.” But can it be a coup when the Honduran military acted on the orders of the nation’s Supreme Court, the step was backed by the nation’s attorney general, and the man replacing Mr. Zelaya [...]
The health-care systems Democrats want to emulate don’t allow contingency fees or large jury awards. In his recent speech to the American Medical Association, President Barack Obama held out the tantalizing possibility of reforming medical malpractice law as part of a comprehensive overhaul of the U.S. health-care system. As usual, he hedged his bets by [...]
The ‘little red schoolhouse’ of legend, whatever its flaws, made more sense than the warehouse-schools of today. Tacked to my wall is a lithograph of the famous Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington. For many years, it graced my mother’s one-room schoolhouse in Lime Rock, N.Y. Antiquarian relic or enduringly relevant image? The same question [...]
Madoff’s Evil
Posted in Economy and business, Law, tagged Madoff on June 30, 2009 | Comments Off
Moral clarity on his crimes, but who else is guilty? On sentencing 71-year-old Bernard Madoff yesterday to 150 years, federal Judge Denny Chin said, “Here the message must be sent that Mr. Madoff’s crimes were extraordinarily evil.” “Evil” is a word that has fallen out of political fashion, suggesting as it does intent or action [...]
Obama’s Obsolete Iran Policy
Posted in Conflicts and wars, Politics, tagged Iran on June 30, 2009 | Comments Off
The audacity of hope gives way to the timidity of realism. President Obama’s Iran policy is incoherent and obsolete. Maybe David Axelrod should take note. On Sunday, Mr. Obama’s consigliere was asked about Iran by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos and NBC’s David Gregory. Mr. Gregory asked whether there “should be consequences” for the regime’s violent suppression [...]
A Green Way to Dump Low-Tech Electronics
Posted in Energy and Environment on June 30, 2009 | Comments Off
This month, Edward Reilly, 35, finally let go of the television he had owned since his college days. Although the Mitsubishi set was technologically outdated, it had sat for years in Mr. Reilly’s home in Portland, Me., because he did not know what else to do with it, given the environmental hazards involved in discarding [...]
The Birds of America
Posted in Birds of America, tagged 58, 59, 60 on June 30, 2009 | Comments Off
Catharus guttatus Grive solitaire / Hermit Thrush The Hermit Thrush nests in wooded peat bogs, areas undergoing forest regeneration, and mixed and conifer forests in Canada, mainly in southern Quebec and in the Maritimes. It is absent from its habitat during the winter period, but it comes back in early spring, when it reverts to [...]
Saving Species No Longer a Beauty Contest
Posted in Energy and Environment on June 30, 2009 | Comments Off
Homely Creatures Receiving More Help Are we ready to start saving ugly species? When it began compiling lists of threatened and endangered animals and plants more than 35 years ago, the U.S. government gave itself the same mandate as Noah’s Ark: Save everything. But in practice, the effort has often worked more like a velvet-rope [...]
Term Limits and Constitutional Tinkering in Latin America
Posted in Politics, tagged Latin America on June 30, 2009 | Comments Off
There is a pressing topic President Obama may nonetheless avoid in his meeting today with his Colombian counterpart, Alvaro Uribe, for fear of seeming to meddle in another country’s domestic affair. But Obama might think about risking the topic of presidential term limits given the current climate in Latin America, where public sentiment is running [...]
Tibetan Monks and Nuns Turn Their Minds Toward Science
Posted in Living on June 30, 2009 | Comments Off
Jed Brody, a physics teacher from Emory College, lecturing to a class of Tibetan monks. Tibetan monks and nuns spend their lives studying the inner world of the mind rather than the physical world of matter. Yet for one month this spring a group of 91 monastics devoted themselves to the corporeal realm of science. [...]
Blink Twice if You Like Me
Posted in Natural sciences, tagged Fireflies on June 30, 2009 | Comments Off
In many fireflies, pairs stay coupled for hours while the male, lower, gives the female a protein package injected with sperm, called a nuptial gift. Sara Lewis is fluent in firefly. On this night she walks through a farm field in eastern Massachusetts, watching the first fireflies of the evening rise into the air and [...]
The Puzzle of Spaces That Soothe
Posted in Health on June 29, 2009 | Comments Off
Say you are living in less than optimal surroundings. Your upstairs neighbor routinely rearranges furniture at midnight. The dog next door is bored and lonely and loud. His owner snarls as you pass by. Your living room is the wrong shape, the windows are in the wrong place, and the paint color that seemed so [...]
Lions form prides to win turf wars
Posted in Animals, tagged Lions on June 29, 2009 | Comments Off
The bigger the gang, the more successful the lions are. Lions form prides to defend territory against other lions, not to improve their hunting success, a study reveals. In doing so, they act much like street gangs, gathering together to protect their turf from interlopers, says a leading lion expert. The bigger the [...]
Entertainment – June 29
Posted in Entertainment Today, tagged June 29 on June 29, 2009 | Comments Off
High court won’t block remote storage DVR system Cable TV operators won a key legal battle against Hollywood studios and television networks on Monday as the Supreme Court declined to block a new digital video recording system that could make it even easier for viewers to bypass commercials. The justices declined to hear an appeal on [...]
Mild and bitter
Posted in Health on June 29, 2009 | Comments Off
Depression may be linked to how willing someone is to give up his goals. CLINICAL depression is a serious ailment, but almost everyone gets mildly depressed from time to time. Randolph Nesse, a psychologist and researcher in evolutionary medicine at the University of Michigan, likens the relationship between mild and clinical depression to the one [...]
Today in History – June 29
Posted in This day in history, tagged June 29 on June 29, 2009 | Comments Off
Today is Monday, June 29, the 180th day of 2009. There are 185 days left in the year. Today’s Highlight in History On June 29, 1776, the Virginia state constitution was adopted, and Patrick Henry was made governor. On this date: In 1613, during a performance of William Shakespeare’s Henry VIII on this day in [...]
States Can Investigate National Banks, Justices Rule
Posted in Law, Supreme Court decisions on June 29, 2009 | Comments Off
The Supreme Court said Monday that state attorneys general could investigate national banks for lending discrimination and other crimes, but only with a court’s help. The justices ruled that a state attorney general could not on his own issue a subpoena against a bank that has branches in that state and others. But the court [...]
Pope Says Tests ‘Seem to Conclude’ Bones Are St. Paul’s
Posted in History, Religion, tagged St Paul on June 29, 2009 | Comments Off
Cardinal Andrea Cordero Lanza di Montezemolo, archpriest of the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, holds up pictures of a sarcophagus unearthed beneath the basilica during a press conference at the Vatican on Monday. The first scientific tests on what are believed to be the remains of the Apostle Paul, the Roman Catholic saint, [...]
