Amarillo Globe News from January 6th.
Anti-litter campaign gets a flashy new look
TxDOT using star power to get message across to young people
By Michael Smith
michael.smith@amarillo.com
A Texas Department of Transportation pickup rests in an emply lot littered with trash on Thursday near Gem Lake Road and Amarillo Boulevard. On the truck's rear quarter panel is Texas' 20-year-old anti-litter slogan "Don't Mess With Texas."
Michael Lemmons / michael.lemmons@amarillo.com
"[Dalhart Cheese Factory] Not a good move. Population in Dalhart is around 7,500. How will that equate to return on investment from sales taxes? Money could be better invested by giving tax breaks on energy for the 160,000+ in Amarillo." - From dblwing1
[Join this discussion]
Star Power: Celebrities such as Lance Armstrong appear in ads for TxDOT's anti-litter campaign, aimed at the state's youngest generation.
Courtesy Photo
Texas Department of Transportation officials wrote the curriculum for statewide litter prevention 20 years ago and now think the state's youngest generation could use a refresher course.
TxDOT is reinforcing its "Don't Mess With Texas" anti-litter push with the "Real Texans Don't Litter" campaign it launched during the Cotton Bowl on New Year's Day.
Returning to its original use of star power mixed with catchy television ads and jingles, TxDOT is targeting Texans under 25 - who are twice as likely to litter than their grandparents' generation, department studies show.
Keep Amarillo Beautiful coordinator Dusty McGuire said now is the right time for a renewed push. Children aren't taught about littering in public schools like they once were, McGuire said.
"I don't like Amarillo to be littered, it bothers me," she said. "I think it's going to be fabulous."
Aided by stars such as Willie Nelson, Stevie Ray Vaughn and Jerry Jeff Walker when it began in 1986, the phrase "Don't Mess With Texas" was an instant hit, program spokeswoman Brenda Flores-Dollar said.
"People just loved the idea," Flores-Dollar said. "Not only because it means don't litter, but it's a Texas pride thing."
Other states have since copied the idea.
The newest campaign features a list of Texas celebrities including singers Erykah Badu, Los Lonely Boys and Lee Ann Womack, and seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong.
Dallas Cowboys running back Julius Jones has also joined the campaign.
On the Net:
www.dot.state.tx.us/
The lineup is more identifiable for younger Texans, which was the magic that helped the initial campaign with adults, McGuire said.
"I'm thrilled, and I'm hoping the people in Amarillo will pay attention and stop littering here because we've become real sloppy," she said.
The department's other litter campaign, the Adopt-a-Highway program, began 21 years ago.
In the 17-county Panhandle area, 159 groups are active in the program and responsible for 347 miles of state roads, said Brenda Lowe, TxDOT Amarillo Adopt-A-Highway coordinator.
Groups, families and individuals sign two-year contracts with the department promising four trash pickups per year. The program remains popular, and works as a soft deterrent, Lowe said.
"When somebody sees it clean, they want to keep it clean - hopefully," Lowe said.
A cleaner Amarillo is in the community's best interest, McGuire said.
"A clean town, you need to have pride about it," McGuire said. "People pay attention when they're passing through or coming to move here."
http://www.amarillo.com/stories/010606/new_3655183.shtml
Six new fires break out in Texas
One home destroyed
The Associated Press
Flames Return: Members of the Bulverde Volunteer Fire Department work a brush fire Thursday near San Antonio. Residents of the Fossil Ridge subdivision, south of the fire, were asked to evacuate.
AP Photo
"[Dalhart Cheese Factory] Not a good move. Population in Dalhart is around 7,500. How will that equate to return on investment from sales taxes? Money could be better invested by giving tax breaks on energy for the 160,000+ in Amarillo." - From dblwing1 [Join this discussion]
Firefighters were battling six new blazes that flared Thursday throughout Texas, destroying one home and threatening dozens of houses and buildings.
One home was lost when a fire in Hunt County scorched about 300 acres and continued growing. And a fire burning 8 miles west of Springtown, in Parker County, threatened up to 20 homes and burned 40 acres. Another blaze in Bexar County consumed some 150 acres and caused the evacuation of 30 homes, according to the Texas Forest Service.
Swirling winds of up to 20 mph spread the fire across grass and scrub land in northern Bexar County. Late Thursday afternoon, the blaze was about a mile from the nearest subdivision, said Randy Jenkins, spokesman for the San Antonio Fire Department.
Military helicopters rigged with large water buckets were dispatched to help fight the fire, which was moving southeast toward San Antonio city limits, Jenkins said.
Crews were able to control a 250-acre blaze about two miles south of Killeen in Bell County that had threatened 12 structures, said Bill Sweet, a Texas Forest Service spokesman.
Firefighters were also working small fires in Clay County and another blaze in Hale County, Sweet said.
http://www.amarillo.com/stories/010606/new_3655540.shtml
Seewald: New Orleans needs to know where it stands
By William H. Seewald
Opinion
"They put new lights in downtown. All well and good, but they screwed up the timing on one. Where you used to drive straight through, now you have to stop and wait at 8th street on Fillmore. Then, once it releases you, you catch the yellow at the next light, if you are quick..." - From James [Join this discussion]
NEW ORLEANS - New Orleans remains a city in suspended animation even though more people have filtered back into town.
As of year's end, electricity, gas and water have been largely restored to the parts of the city without significant flooding. Phones are another matter. Responding for months that they had no idea when they'd restore service, the phone company's lately taken to tentative promises of March.
The school system has just two schools open. The state has taken over most of New Orleans' dysfunctional schools. Except for the knockout punch to school buildings already reduced to little more than tenements by years of neglect and corruption, Katrina's kindest blow may have been tolling a death knell for the city's failed schools.
There's plenty of blame to go around for the inadequate, tentative and often non-existent effort to restore New Orleans to reasonable function as a city. But New Orleanians must accept primary responsibility for the abject failure of their schools.
If New Orleans is to regain its footing, the daunting list of tasks is overwhelming. But other than levees that will protect the city, there isn't much to top the need for schools if families are going to be able to return to make their homes there.
Boosterish notions of New Orleans' great opportunity to reinvent itself are surfacing. And while those of us who love it no doubt prefer it largely as it was, unquestionably the city now has an opportunity that it simply can't afford to flub. There has to be aid to repair school buildings. But New Orleans must find the political will and the leadership to make that investment yield education instead of incompetence and corruption.
Blooming here and there are hopeful tidings. A committee of the mayor's rebuilding commission appears poised to recommend significant changes in the way the city is governed, streamlining bloated, bureaucratic fiefdoms in parish government and merging the duplicative civil and criminal court systems.
Most of the city's universities will reopen this month. There's a promised contract to remove the more than 30,000 abandoned vehicles that litter medians and the shadows of freeways. They, like the ubiquitous piles of debris, are grim reminders of the devastation, with their grimy water rings encircling and demarcating the various stages of their submersion and ruination. The same striations on the sides of homes and businesses throughout the city will not be so readily dispatched.
The New Orleans Levee Board unanimously endorsed a constitutional amendment that would create a new regional levee district. With the legislature's failure to pass the consolidation legislation, and given the governor's somewhat lukewarm support for the idea, local business leaders and citizens demanded reform, gathering nearly 50,000 signatures in a month.
But there's still no commitment to levees that will protect the city from storms worse than Katrina, now estimated to actually have been a Category 3 when it hit the city. Significant rebuilding or repopulation almost certainly will stagnate until people and businesses know the levees will be adequate. Neither your insurance company nor your dry cleaner can be expected to commit to the city in the absence of protection from the Gulf, which was visited by more Category 5 storms this season than all the rest of the previous hundred years combined.
The horrendous damage should've produced a reallocation of national priorities sufficient to pay for a sensible reconstruction plan. There's no plan. Without leadership, the dispiriting attitude of people all over the country is that somehow the problems and solutions are all up to the city.
President Bush's reconstruction czar, one-time Amarillo banker Don Powell, was shoved in front of the cameras last month. Sounding every bit the used-car salesman, Powell proclaimed the levees will be "bigger and better" than ever before, delivering few specifics, much less plans for a redesigned levee system that actually would protect the city. He offered only strengthening of the existing levees and a pittance for wetland restoration, the critical first line of defense against approaching storms.
After four months, only about a third of Congress' original Katrina appropriation has been spent. But then the people of Iraq can offer firsthand testimony about the distance between the Bush administration's rhetoric about reconstruction and the benefits that actually trickle down from the vice president's corporate cronies like Halliburton.
The list of uncompleted tasks is immense - from piles of debris that won't disappear for three years at current rates, to the tens of thousands of families huddled in motels and facing eviction.
Longer-term recovery will depend on actual progress, as well as people's perception of what's happening. There must be confidence that the recovery is being well managed and the levees will be re-engineered. Neither the reality nor the perception is too heartening right now.
http://www.amarillo.com/stories/010606/opi_3649262.shtml
11 U.S. troops killed on same day in recent barrage of violence that has swept Iraq
BAGHDAD, Iraq — The U.S. military said Friday that six more American troops died in the recent surge of violence in Iraq, bringing to 11 the number of U.S. troops slain on the same day.
Thousands of Shiites, meanwhile, rallied in Baghdad to protest the bloodshed and denounce what they said was American coddling of some Sunnis who support the insurgency in order to mollify them and bring them into a broad-based government.
In new violence Friday, a suicide car bomber struck a police patrol in Baghdad, killing one officer, Col. Noori Ashur said.
Elsewhere, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw held talks in southern Iraq with local officials on forming a broad-based coalition government.
A U.S. Marine and soldier died in Thursday's attack by a suicide bomber who infiltrated a line of police recruits in Ramadi, killing at least 58 and wounding dozens. Two soldiers were also killed in the Baghdad area when their vehicle hit a roadside bomb, the military said Friday.
http://ap.amarillonet.com/pstories/20060106/3541102.shtml
Doctor to speak about Medicare Part D
Amarillo Globe-News
Medicare Part D has some senior citizens confused and concerned, but they can find answers at the next Texas Cooperative Extension Senior Seminar.
"Medicare Part D - Is it Right for You?" will begin at 1:30 p.m. Jan. 12 in the Amarillo Senior Citizens Association Meeting Room 115.
Dr. Ted Nicklaus, medical director for Ware Memorial Care Center, Heritage Convalescent Center and Jan Werner Adult Day Care Center, and Serena Cowart, benefits counselor with Area Agency on Aging of the Panhandle, will address questions such as: "Why is Medicare Part D so confusing?" "Should I join?" and "If so, what plan should I join?"
In advance of the seminar, seniors or their caretakers are encouraged to get a packet by calling Area Agency on Aging at 331-2227.
For more information, call 373-0713.
http://amarillo.com/stories/010406/fri_3604881.shtml
Refuge needs items to keep animals warm
Amarillo Globe-News
"[Dalhart Cheese Factory] Not a good move. Population in Dalhart is around 7,500. How will that equate to return on investment from sales taxes? Money could be better invested by giving tax breaks on energy for the 160,000+ in Amarillo." - From dblwing1 [Join this discussion]
Want to help some cold animals?
The Amarillo Wildlife Refuge is looking for blankets, sheets, towels, old clothing or bedding material to help keep the animals warm through the winter.
"It is for the animals here, mostly for the primates," refuge spokeswoman Paula Reams said. "It is for their bedding and they carry them around and wear them."
The refuge also is in need of cleaning supplies, including bleach, mops and brooms.
"We are in desperate need of this," Reams said.
To donate, call 371-0011 or 679-6919 and then drop the materials by the refuge at 4401 Redding Road.
http://www.amarillo.com/stories/010606/new_3655204.shtml
Editorial: Texas not making grade
Texas didn't make the grade in public education according to a study called "Quality Counts," released last week by Education Week.
It should come as no surprise that one of the reasons for the state's below average performance was inadequate funding for school districts determined to be poor and wealthy.
Despite numerous legislative failures and court rulings, Texas still has no definitive plan to pay for public education.
The national study of public education gave grades to states in various categories.
Texas was below average in every category other than measuring standards and accountability, in which it earned a national average grade of B-minus.
Texas' neighbors fared much better.
Oklahoma ranked seventh in the nation for teacher quality and was above average in all categories except for school climate.
New Mexico received an overall B grade and a low grade of C in school climate.
How long can Texas continue to drag its feet on the future of public education before the quality of learning begins to deteriorate?
It is time the Texas Legislature did its homework and crafted a fair and reasonable public education funding plan before substandard grades in a national study are the least of the state's worries.
Sydney Morning Herald
One butt's toll: five homes, 20,000 sheep and firefighter
A fire that destroyed five houses and burnt out massive tracts of farm and bushland in south-western NSW was probably sparked by a discarded cigarette butt, investigators believe.
The blaze erupted west of Junee on New Year's Day and spread quickly, racing through paddocks towards dry bushland to the northeast of the town.
The fire raced across 25,200 hectares of land leaving it charred and killing an estimated 20,000 sheep and other livestock.
Volunteer firefighter John Heffernan, 21, suffered third-degree burns to 60 per cent of his body while battling the flames on his property near Junee.
He remains in a critical condition in Sydney's Concord Hospital.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/one-cigarette-butts-horrendous-toll/2006/01/09/1136771490273.html
Cyclone sparks evacuations
Communities in Western Australia's Pilbara region are braced for the arrival tonight of Cyclone Clare amid warnings of a flooding surge and destructive winds of up to 120kmh.
More than 1,500 people have been evacuated from low-lying areas along the state's north-west coast, with the category three storm intensifying as it heads towards land.
It is expected to hit the coast, possibly as a category four, between Dampier and Karratha tonight and has forced the closure of shipping ports, Karratha airport and some mining operations.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/cyclone-sparks-evacuations/2006/01/09/1136771484417.html
San Francisco Chronicle
Americans saving less than nothing
Spending could outstrip income in 2005, which hasn't happened since the Depression
When the Commerce Department recently tallied up consumer finances for November, it found that Americans shelled out more money than they took in. It was the seventh such month of red ink during 2005.
Kevin Lansing, an economist with the Federal Reserve Bank in San Francisco, tracks the personal savings rate -- the Commerce Department's measure of how much consumers have left after spending is subtracted from income. In November the savings rate was a negative 0.2 percent.
Given how much red ink households racked up in the first 11 months of last year, Lansing said the nation's personal savings rate could well be negative for all of 2005.
That, he added, would be "the first such occurrence since the Great Depression."
The term "savings rate" may be a misnomer. Keith Leggett, senior economist with the American Bankers Association, described the measure as a tally of all the income that isn't spent.
"Savings is the absence of consumption,'' he said.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/01/08/BUG7IGJHEK1.DTL
Schwarzenegger receives stitches after LA traffic accident
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger received 15 stitches in his lip Sunday after a traffic accident near his Los Angeles home, his spokeswoman said.
Schwarzenegger was riding a Harley Davidson motorcycle with his son Patrick, 12, when another driver backed into the street shortly after 3 p.m., spokeswoman Margita Thompson said in a statement.
"The governor was unable to avoid the vehicle in his path and collided with it at a low speed," she said.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2006/01/08/state/n193905S35.DTL
SPY POWERS
Can the president eavesdrop on private citizens without a judge's ok? The high court said 'no' in 1972 Wiretaps: Ruling requires warrants for spying at home
Thirty-five years ago, President Richard Nixon claimed constitutional authority to wiretap Americans' phone calls to protect national security without asking a judge -- the same assertion that President Bush is making today in the name of fighting terrorism.
The Supreme Court ruled unanimously against Nixon, saying the Constitution granted the powers he was claiming to judges, not presidents. If the current court eventually reconsiders that 1972 ruling, it may affect the fate of Bush's decision to authorize the National Security Agency to wiretap calls between Americans and alleged al Qaeda suspects in foreign countries.
Presidents have approved wiretaps without court orders since the 1940s, but the legality of the practice was thrown into doubt after the Supreme Court ruled in 1967 that electronic eavesdropping was a search, and thus covered by the prohibition on unreasonable searches in the Constitution's Fourth Amendment.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/01/08/MNGHGGK8OC1.DTL
Belafonte Calls Bush 'Greatest Terrorist'
The American singer and activist Harry Belafonte called President Bush "the greatest terrorist in the world" on Sunday and said millions of Americans support the socialist revolution of Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez.
Belafonte led a delegation of Americans including the actor Danny Glover and the Princeton University scholar Cornel West that met the Venezuelan president for more than six hours late Saturday. Some in the group attended Chavez's television and radio broadcast Sunday.
"No matter what the greatest tyrant in the world, the greatest terrorist in the world, George W. Bush says, we're here to tell you: Not hundreds, not thousands, but millions of the American people ... support your revolution," Belafonte told Chavez during the broadcast.
The 78-year-old Belafonte, famous for his calypso-inspired music, including the "Day-O" song, was a close collaborator of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and is now a UNICEF goodwill ambassador. He also has been outspoken in criticizing the U.S. embargo of Cuba.
Chavez said he believes deeply in the struggle for justice by blacks, both in the U.S. and Venezuela.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2006/01/08/international/i175901S16.DTL
Mouse Thrown Into Fire Sets Home Ablaze
A mouse got its revenge against a homeowner who tried to dispose of it in a pile of burning leaves. The blazing creature ran back to the man's house and set it on fire.
Luciano Mares, 81, of Fort Sumner said he caught the mouse inside his house and wanted to get rid of it.
"I had some leaves burning outside, so I threw it in the fire, and the mouse was on fire and ran back at the house," Mares said from a motel room Saturday.
Village Fire Chief Juan Chavez said the burning mouse ran to just beneath a window, and the flames spread up from there and throughout the house.
No was hurt inside, but the home and everything in it was destroyed.
Unseasonably dry and windy conditions have charred more than 53,000 acres and destroyed 10 homes in southeastern New Mexico in recent weeks.
"I've seen numerous house fires," village Fire Department Capt. Jim Lyssy said, "but nothing as unique as this one."
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2006/01/08/national/a131941S22.DTL
Pope John Paul's Shooter to Be Released
The man who shot Pope John Paul II in 1981 will be released from prison this week after a court decided he had completed his sentence for the attack on the pontiff and other crimes — a ruling that took the Vatican by surprise.
Mehmet Ali Agca was extradited to Turkey in 2000 after serving almost 20 years in Italy for shooting and wounding the pope in St. Peter's Square in Rome. His motive for shooting John Paul in the abdomen on May 13, 1981, remains unclear.
Agca, 47, was to be released on parole Thursday, his lawyer, Mustafa Demirbag told The Associated Press by telephone.
"He was eligible to be released on parole because he had no disciplinary problems," Demirbag said.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2006/01/08/international/i193950S75.DTL
SAN FRANCISCO
Jack London's lens on 1906 quake
Author's photos, never seen by public, get centennial show
It is still magic after all these years: Slowly the black and white image comes to life in the darkroom tray at the headquarters of the California Historical Society in San Francisco. The picture is from another time, but it is sharp and clear -- it is of a huge domed building, all in ruins, as if it had been bombed.
It is the wreckage of San Francisco's City Hall, destroyed in an earthquake a century ago this spring. It is a remarkable picture, but the photographer was even more remarkable. He was Jack London.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/01/06/BAGN3GI4NU1.DTL
The DNC
Corny? Perhaps. But they are making sure they are delivering on a promise
Delivering The FOIA Requests
Posted by Tim Tagaris on January 5, 2006 at 02:57 PM
Shortly after the New York Times publicized the president's domestic-spying-without-a-warrant program, over 160,000 Americans signed a Freedom of Information Act Request along with Governor Dean in an attempt to determine just why President Bush believed he had the authority to undermine the Constitution. Earlier today Joe Sandler, DNC attorney, delivered each and every one of those FOIA requests to the Department of Justice. Here are some of the photos:
http://www.democrats.org/a/2006/01/delivering_the.php
The New Zealand Herald
Iran prepares to remove nuclear seals
09.01.06 1.00pm
By Daniel Howden
Iran was last night preparing to remove United Nations seals at several nuclear research and development sites, despite warnings from nuclear watchdog Mohamed El Baradei that the international community was running out of patience with Tehran.
It would be the second time in five months that Iran, which insists its nuclear programme is peaceful, removed seals put in place by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
"We will remove the seals and we have announced that we are ready to start research from tomorrow," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said yesterday.
"It depends on the IAEA to announce its readiness as this will take place under the agency's supervision," he added.
However, Mr El Baradei, head of the IAEA, disputed Tehran's assertion that 90 per cent of issues related to the resumption of research had been solved.
"I am running out of patience, the international community is running out patience, the credibility of the verification process is at stake and I'd like come March, which is my next report, to be able to clarify these issues," he told Sky News.
"Everybody would like to see a regime by which the international community is assured that the Iranian programme is exclusively for peaceful purposes and there are still a number of issues we are looking at.
"There is also a consensus that enrichment in Iran right now is a matter of serious concern."
Uranium enrichment is the most sensitive part of the nuclear fuel cycle since it can be used to produce bomb-grade material as well as nuclear reactor fuel.
Iran has not publicly disclosed what activities it plans to resume on Monday.
Diplomats and analysts say atomic research and development could involve some laboratory tests of uranium enrichment and the assembly of enrichment centrifuges.
"R&D activities will be under the IAEA's supervision and there is nothing to be worried about," Asefi said.
IAEA officials say an Iranian team failed to show up for talks in Vienna last week to explain what activities Iran planned to resume.
Asked why the Iranian team flew back from Vienna without meeting the IAEA, Javad Vaeedi, deputy head of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, told state television on Saturday: "Holding any meeting has to be based on the attainment of an aim and a result. The cancellation of the meeting in fact took place in this light."
On Thursday a high-ranking Iranian delegation rebuffed El Baradei, reneging on a pledge to provide full details of its plans by not showing up for a scheduled meeting with him.
Russian officials in Iran, meanwhile, continued talks about Moscow's proposal that the two countries conduct uranium enrichment, a process that can produce nuclear fuel for reactors or atomic weapons depending on the degree of enrichment, on Russian territory.
The Russian proposal, backed by the European Union and the United States, was designed ease concerns that Iran would use the fuel to build a bomb.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10362937
UN peacekeepers chief in Haiti found dead
09.01.06 1.00pm
By Phil Davison
The Brazilian general in charge of United Nations peacekeepers in Haiti has been found dead on the balcony of his hotel suite with a bullet through his head.
He was found wearing only underpants and a white vest with his pistol still in his hand.
The general had been alone in his suite and suicide is presumed, according to UN officials and Haitian police.
But in the land of voodoo spells and zombies, and more recently violent political and gang killings, the death of General Urano Texeira da Matta Bacellar, 58, has rattled the international community.
He was described by colleagues as an extremely religious, happily-married man with two children he adored, and a soldier used, in 39 years of service, to pressure far worse than he had seen in his four months in Haiti.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10362928
US House Republicans face leadership battle
09.01.06 1.00pm
WASHINGTON - With US Rep. Tom Delay having bowed out as House of Representatives majority leader under an ethical cloud, a contest quickly emerged among Republicans to replace him in the key post.
Republican Rep. John Boehner of Ohio announced his candidacy for the job, now held on an acting basis by Roy Blunt of Missouri, who has been busy lining up support of his own.
"We must come together and renew our commitment to creating a better America based on freedom, opportunity, fiscal and personal responsibility, empowered citizens, and restored trust," Boehner, 56, said in a statement announcing his candidacy.
While Blunt, 55, has not made a formal announcement, an aide said he began reaching out to fellow Republicans for support on Saturday after DeLay announced his decision not to try to get the leadership job back.
The aide, Jessica Boulanger, said: "He (Blunt) hopes to have the votes" by the time the election is held.
"He is encouraged by the support he has seen so far," she said. "He started making phone calls yesterday after a private discussion with Tom DeLay."
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10362942
Powerful quake rattles Greece
09.01.06 8.20am
ATHENS - A strong earthquake shook Greece and most of the eastern Mediterranean early today NZT but caused only minor damages and no casualties.
The quake off the southeastern tip of Greece's Peloponnese peninsula measured 6.9 on the open-ended Richter scale, with its epicentre at a depth of 70 km near the island of Kithira, the Athens Geodynamic Institute said.
"We were extremely lucky this was an underwater quake," institute chief Giorgos Stavrakakis told reporters. "If it had happened on land it would be a mess."
Police said there were no reports of casualties after the tremor, which drove people out of their homes in cities across most of the country.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10362908
The Big Chill in Delhi
09.01.06 6.20am
Millions of people in the Indian capital woke up to the coldest weather in 70 years, as the death toll from northern India's cold spell rose to 116. The temperature dipped to 0.2C in New Delhi, the lowest recorded in the past 70 years and seven degrees below normal, the Meteorology Department said. The previous lowest temperature was minus 0.6C in 1935.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10362909
New toxic spill in China
09.01.06 9.20am
China's third major toxic spill in as many months has threatened the water supplies to millions of residents of two central cities.
A clean-up accident last Wednesday allowed the industrial chemical cadmium, which can cause neurological disorders and cancer, to flood out of a smelter and into the Xiangjiang River in Hunan province.
The river supplies tap water to Changsha, which has about six million people, and Xiangtan city, with 700,000 inhabitants.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10362910
Human bird flu cases reach Turkish capital
09.01.06 1.00pm
ANKARA - Three Turks tested positive for a deadly strain of bird flu in the capital Ankara on Sunday, a new stage in the westward sweep of the disease from its east Asian origins towards major economic centres in Turkey and Europe.
The first case of the virus jumping from birds to humans outside China and southeast Asia occurred last week in rural eastern Turkey, where three children from the same family died after contracting the highly potent H5N1 strain.
As doctors confirmed that two children and a 60-year-old man were being treated in Ankara for the virus, Russia raised fears of the disease impacting Turkey's economy by warning its citizens against visiting the popular holiday destination.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10362943
Boffin sees future space travel as domain of 'adventurers'
09.01.06 1.00pm
By Steve Connor
He is Britain's top scientist.
The new president of the Royal Society is also Astronomer Royal, master of Trinity College, Cambridge and renowned cosmologist whose deep thoughts frequently turn to deep space, dark matter and the dawn of creation.
Lord Rees of Ludlow, known to the many readers of his science books as Martin Rees, is also something of a thought-provoking populariser.
He believes that a butterfly poses more daunting scientific problems than a star and that the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is well worth the effort.
He has advocated the exploration of space by a new generation of adventurers willing to take risks by travelling cheap, and is against the kind of costly manned exploration funded by risk-averse governments.
He favours fleets of miniature robotic probes to explore the planets rather than a manned mission to Mars and thinks the multibillion-dollar International Space Station is a "turkey in the sky".
Lord Rees the cosmologist has proposed our universe may be just one of zillions, each with its own set of physical laws, and that the universe we find ourselves living in may, in fact, be a mere computer simulation built by a race of super-intelligent beings.
He believes there is a 50 per cent chance that human civilisation may not survive in its present form by the end of the 21st century, and has warned that a major environmental collapse within the next hundred years carries the same sort of probability as tossing a coin.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=5&ObjectID=10362938
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