It just bought American International Group (AIG) for 85bn USD. In an election year, no less.

o..o

After six years' imprisonment, it turns out that the Guantanamo Bay detainees have the right of habeus corpus after all.It's worth noting that American legal precedent generally holds that it's better to let a murderer go free (for lack of evidence, or due to procedural error during trial) than to risk the possibility of imposing a sentence of ( Read more... )

If you've had any contact with the news media at all this month, you've doubtless heard or read that in the wake of cyclone Nargis, the junta that runs Myanmar has been refusing foreign aid & disaster relief workers. (They've even gone so far as to seize shipments of UN supplies, rather than allow foreign aid workers to operate in the country. Much ( Read more... )

I just had a very interesting conversation ( Read more... )

Some of you have noted an article saying that the Lakota have recently withdrawn from their treaties with the U.S. There seems to be a bit of a problem with this. As far as I can tell, Russell Means doesn't have the authority to speak for the tribal government. (He tried, and failed to become an elected part of it in 2001 and 2004.) I've read, but ( Read more... )

80-odd meat products recalled, after processing equipment was found to be contaminated with Clostridium botulinum. (Full list of recalled products.)

Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs: US will back Israeli strike on Iran

WTF? Okay, that wasn't the question, but if you can answer that, I'll take it as a nice bonus. The real question is, how reliable is this sort of report? (Israel Today having the obvious bias.)After some digging, the minister quoted looks to be a nutjob, allowed in for the ( Read more... )

Archives of Toxicology: Rat poison and food security in the People’s Republic of China: focus on tetramethylene disulfotetramine (tetramine) (2004)

After reading that, I'm glad that I've been steadily decreasing the amount of processed food I eat.

First off, this is one for breeder bingo. You don't need to read me ranting about that sort of thing. Suffice to say that it comes up from time to time ( Read more... )

National elections rundown: Democrats now control both houses of congress, so the major parties will have to work with eachother in order to get anything done ( Read more... )