The longest win streak in college basketball history is history. Top-ranked Connecticut lost 71-59 to ninth-ranked Stanford to end UConn’s record 90-game winning streak. Jeanette Pohlen led Stanford with a career-high 31 points. (Dec. 31)
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Chubbiness in babies may be a sign of good health, but it may also be a warning sign of obesity in early childhood, new research suggests.
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Article by WN.Com Correspondent Dallas Darling. “We lost thirty thousand dead in Korea to save face for the United States and the Untied Nations, not to save South Korea for the South Koreans, and it was undoubtedly worth it. Soviet expectations about the behavior of the United States are one of the most valuable assets we possess in world affairs.” -Thomas Schelling (RAND) in Arms and Influence Unlike most Western Powers, the United States is unfortunately still seduced by the idea that it can fix something after the fact. This might be a comforting and visceral concept, especially when a nation is confronted with nearly insurmountable odds, or with something that is insolvable, like an…
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“Darkspore,” the follow-up to Will Wright’s 2008 “Spore,” ups the battling and adventure but keeps those powerful creature creators. AP’s weekly Video Game Video offers a preview. (Dec. 31)
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A pregnant cow had to be rescued after falling into a 12-foot well in Castro Valley, California. Officials had to drain the water from the well and then use a crane to lift the animal out. (Dec. 30)
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Celebrity chef Paula Deen, grand marshal of the Rose Parade, practices her on-float wave and talks about why she doesn’t do New Year’s resolutions. (Dec. 30)
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enlarge Vietnam in 1964 – a half serious aside the war could go on for 2,000 years. Click here to view this media Continuing our week of year-enders past. 1964 as seen by a group of correspondents from ABC Radio News. The view from Southeast Asia was pessimistic, and for good reason; we were slowly sinking into the quicksand of a protracted war and no one had much idea what the outcome would be. There was fear of a major confrontation with China because of Vietnam, and naturally the hawks were adamant that a war was inevitable because it was the only way to thwart Chinese domination of the region (aka: Domino Theory). Russia didn’t figure so prominently, probably because there was a huge power shift going on in the Kremlin, with Khruschev’s ouster and Brezhnev’s entrance. It was too early to tell how it would go with a new leader. But China was a big concern, since they had exploded their first Atomic bomb earlier in the year and they were accused of heavily aiding the North Vietnamese. The subject of German reunification was brought up, with thoughts that most of the former Allied nations would be in favor, but the major stumbling block was the Soviet Union and several of the Warsaw Pact satellites who were most severely affected by German occupation during the war. Speculation that 1965 would be a better year than 1964 were cautious everywhere except Vietnam. That was going to be the problem. And it was. This year-end report, A Look At The Year 1965 , was originally broadcast on December 28, 1964.
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La Paz, Bolivia (CNN) — Bolivian President Evo Morales on Thursday defended his decision to end fuel subsidies, a move that caused gasoline and diesel prices to spike and led to protests in major cities since it was announced over the weekend. The country’s subsidies led to an artificially low price for diesel and gasoline, which resulted in widespread smuggling of those products to neighboring countries, where smugglers sold it for a profit, Morales told CNN en Español. “There’s a tremendous amount of smuggling (to Peru and Brazil) and the state loses.” For example, Bolivia will spend $660 million this year…
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Click here to view this media Last night, with Dana Perino filling in for Greta Van Susteren, Fox aired a genuinely creepy bit of fluff journalism from Griff Jenkins, heretofore best known for his Tea Party cheerleading schtick as well as his lame-ass ambush-journalism stunts . This time, he decided to tackle a story about vigilante border watchers in Arizona with the same kind of cheerleading zeal: GRIFF JENKINS, FOX CORRESPONDENT: Here along Arizona’s southern border, outside of Douglas (ph), Arizona, one of the nation’s most trafficked areas for illegal human and drug smuggling, one man, Lynn Kartchner, an Army veteran from Vietnam, a retired civil servant, keeps a watchful eye day and night, using only his resources. He’s not a part of any militia or any affiliated group. He’s not a part of the border patrol. He simply goes out with a few of his colleagues and tries to find illegal activity and report it to the authorities. So we traveled with only a camera to follow him on patrol to see what he could find. Tell me, what do you do out here, and why are you doing this? LYNN KARTCHNER, VOLUNTEER BORDER SECURITY: Well, there are a lot of gaps in the border patrol surveillance out here because they know they’ve driven most of the illegals, especially the drug smugglers, onto the ridgelines on both sides of the valley. And we’re here to maintain surveillance over the bottom of the valley and to keep the people herded into those narrow corridors where they can — where the border control can really concentrate on them. We watch them parade around with night-vision scopes mounted atop .50-caliber rifles, watching for anyone their searchlight beam turns up. Of course, no one is caught using these tactics, so the report concludes: JENKINS: It’s a few hours from dawn now. Lynn realizes that his bright beam certainly gives away his location of surveillance. However, after spending several hours through the night surveilling things, even with the border patrol actually on operation not far from here, he’s pretty sure that his light will serve as deterrent for any other foot or drug-smuggling trafficking in the area. Lynn, we didn’t see anything tonight. It’ll be dawn soon. What do you make of it? KARTCHNER: I think we’ve lit up and beat up the area enough here that we’re not going to see anything else. So it’s time to pack it up and go home. But we can say that at this place tonight, no criminal activity happened. JENKINS: What’s your message to the cartel guys on the other side of that border may be watching us? KARTCHNER: Well, this is our country, and we’re not giving it up, not without a fight. Makes you wonder if this crew had anything to do with those shootings of border crossers earlier this year, in an area about a hundred miles west of where Jenkins shot this segment: Tuesday, local Arizona news stations began reporting that a group of undocumented immigrants were shot at in an area of Parker Canyon located near Rio Rico Arizona on Friday. According to reports, a group of undocumented border crossers were shot at by two men wearing camouflage using high-powered rifles. One of the five immigrants was hit by a bullet in the forearm and treated at an area hospital for his wounds. The migrants also told authorities that they came across two dead bodies. … While little is known about the attackers, Sheriff Antonio Estrada has stated that “[i]t’s perturbing to hear of people with high-powered rifles and camouflage. It raises some real red flags.” He also told KVOA that the shooters might have been U.S. citizens. “I hate to think that is what we’re looking at but we’re not going to dismiss any possibilities,” Estrada stated. “They may be individuals who may be hunting illegal border crossers. That’s really a big concern for us.” Indeed, it’s been ironic how Arizonans have gotten worked up over supposed border violence , particularly the Bob Kercher case, when in fact the chief suspect in that murder is believed to be a U.S. resident — while ignoring the deaths of Lartinos on their border in increasingly mysterious circumstances. Especially in a state that’s developing a real white-supremacist problem. Makes you wonder, though, why Jenkins didn’t bother to profile that other group of vigilante border watchers down in Arizona — namely, J.T. Ready and his not-so-merry band of neo-Nazis. Guess they were a little harder to fluff. But it’s always worth remembering that we’ve already seen, with the case of Shawna Forde and her band of killer Minutemen, where this kind of vigilantism leads.
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Click here to view this media Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi discusses Wall Street’s recent whining about how terribly the Obama administration is supposedly treating them that John wrote about here — Wall Street Masters still Whining about Obama’s words even after the bail out. It’s all GOP for them now . Since the story is as mutually beneficial to the administration as it is to the thieves on Wall Street, Taibbi thinks it easily could have been either of them that decided to plant the story with the hacks at Politico.
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