LOS ANGELES — The trial of a group of alleged plotters who prosecutors said wanted to blow up Chicago’s 110-storey Sears Tower collapsed yesterday after a jury found one defendant not guilty and failed to reach verdicts on the remaining six. The mistrial represents a setback for the Bush administration in its self-proclaimed war on terror, particularly its intention to crack down on homegrown terrorist suspects. The jury in Miami found one defendant, Lyglenson Lemorin, not guilty of charges of conspiring to help foreign terrorist organisations including al-Qaida, and conspiring to blow up buildings and overthrow the US government. Article continues Following nine days of deliberation the jury sent a third note to the judge on Thursday saying: ‘We believe no further progress can be made’. After reading it in court, Judge Joan Lenard declared a mistrial. Prosecutors said that they would seek to retrial the six defendants next year, with jury selection set for January 7. The trial arose from the June 2006 arrests of the seven young men from the rundown Liberty City area of Miami. Prosecutors said the group boasted that it wanted to join al-Qaida on ‘a mission that would be […]
A gay soldier says he disclosed his sexuality to his superiors, even offering graphic proof, and was neither discharged nor reprimanded, despite the military’s ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy on homosexuality. Army Sgt. Darren Manzella appears in a Lesley Stahl report on gays in the wartime U.S. military to be broadcast on 60 Minutes this Sunday, Dec. 16, at 7 p.m. ET/PT. Manzella, a medic who served in Iraq for a year, currently serves as medical liaison for the 1st Cavalry Division stationed in Kuwait, where he says he is ‘out’ to his entire chain of command, including a three-star general. After leaving Iraq, he started receiving anonymous emails warning him about his openness that suggested he was being watched, so he went to his commander to head off an investigation he felt was coming. ‘I didn’t know how else to do it,’ he tells Stahl, acknowledging that he initiated an investigation of himself by violating the policy. ‘I felt more comfortable being the one to say, ‘This is what is real,” Manzella says. He then says his commander reported him, as he was obliged to do, and then ‘I had to go see my battalion commander, […]
CHICAGO — Infestations of sea lice at salmon farms on Canada’s west coast are threatening local wild pink salmon populations and could result in their extinction in another four years, Canadian researchers said on Thursday. They collected nearly four decades of data on the numbers of pink salmon in rivers along the central coast of British Columbia, comparing wild salmon populations exposed to salmon farms to those not exposed. ‘The results are striking. Overall the populations that were not exposed to sea lice disease are stable or increasing,’ said Martin Krkosek, a fisheries ecologist from the University of Alberta in Edmonton, whose study appears in the journal Science. ‘This is true even for populations with commercial fishing,’ Krkosek told reporters in a telephone briefing. ‘Overall, populations that were exposed to sea lice-diseased salmon farms are depressed and are declining quickly. This was true even though commercial fishing was closed on these populations,’ he said. The researchers believe their findings have implications beyond the region and fish populations they studied. They said their findings indicate that in certain situations fish farms can threaten wild fish populations by concentrating and spreading infectious diseases. Sea lice are […]
NUSA DUA, INDONESIA - The European Union threatened today to boycott President Bush’s climate summit in Hawaii next month if the United States doesn’t allow specific targets for carbon emission reduction to be included in a draft text being prepared at a summit here this week. The text is a road map for negotiations to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012, and it called for industrialized countries to reduce emissions 25% to 40% below 1990 levels by 2020. The U.S., however, has been adamant that the targets not be included. The Hawaii talks, known as the Major Economies Meeting on Energy Security and Climate Change, will be meaningless if no targets are included in the Bali text, said Humberto Rosa, chief negotiator from Portugal, which holds the rotating EU presidency. ‘No result in Bali means no Major Economies Meeting,’ said Sigmar Gabriel of Germany, a top EU environment official. ‘This is the clear position of the EU. I do not know what we should talk about if there is no target.’ Bush proposed the meeting of the world’s 17 biggest polluters in September when he skipped an assembly of 80 world leaders convened […]
At least since 2003, and especially after hurricane Katrina hit, the White House has broadly attempted to control which climate scientists could speak with reporters, as well as editing scientists’ congressional testimony on climate science and key legal opinions, according to a new report by a House committee. ‘The Bush Administration has engaged in a systematic effort to manipulate climate change science and mislead policy makers and the public about the dangers of global warming,’ said the report, which is the result of a 16-month probe by the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. ‘The White House exerted unusual control over the public statements of federal scientists on climate change issues.’ To some observers, the House investigation, which drew on 27,000 documents gathered from the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) and the US Department of Commerce, is notable as the most comprehensive assessment so far of alleged manipulation of climate science by this White House. It includes previously unknown elements – such as a 2003 incident in which it says top presidential environment adviser James Connaughton personally helped edit the Environmental Protection Agency’s draft legal opinion that denied the agency had authority to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions. […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
