YOUTUBE VIDEO STILL UNPOPULAR, LAMENTS AREA MAN

West Hollywood, CA - 5/17/08 Three years ago, on the day aspiring filmmaker Caleb Collins bought his first video camera, he asked himself, How much drama can you squeeze into one minute? “I was intrigued by the idea of working within such strict parameters,” Collins said in a recent interview in a West Hollywood café. “Plus, the cheap camera I bought only allowed for 60 second video clips.”

Collins says it took him two years to perfect a short-film concept. But in a fortuitous turn he managed to film the movie in just one take. Then he posted it on Youtube where it has been a total failure.

“Its discouraging,” conceded Collins one year on. “I put my heart into this project and I’m not getting any hits. My parents and my sister watched it (the film) once each. I’ve seen it a zillion times and it keeps getting better for me. But I don’t think anyone else has clicked on it. Not even my friends.”

Collins’ film, entitled ‘Milkbone Underwear,’ opens with a close up of someone slicing vegetables on a cutting board. The action culminates in an erotic scene in which a hand, apparently imitating a dog, rubs itself against a carrot. In the process a voice, presumably the cook’s, is heard making unappealing noises.

Collins' film, which he says contains all the dramatic elements of a hit, could yet land some visits on Youtube

Internet films abound on-line and only a handful of them ever gain notoriety. But the chances of Collins’ film attracting attention are even slimmer, says media analyst Brett Hunkenbauer of Disney’s Medialand Entertainment magazine.

“The competition out there is fierce, and there’s still no real way for small players to do marketing, except via word of mouth,” said Hunkenbauer. “Also, I’ve watched Collins’ short film and its horrible from every conceivable point of view. When it ends you’re left with no desire whatsoever to know who this Collins is, or what his next project might be.”

Several other film critics contacted for this story refused to watch the film in its entirety, or to comment on it.

But Collins said he’s not discouraged. “Online films are a tough one,” he said. “But I’ve got some more ideas, using more or less the same cast and concept. I didn’t come to Hollywood to fail.” Collins said he also entered ‘Milkbone Underwear’ in a handful of short-film festivals. And although a year has passed he says he’s hoping an acceptance letter may have been lost in the mail.

Collins initially told a reporter that he had received one positive comment on his Youtube post – ‘Milkbone Underwear is the must-see film of the summer!’ - allegedly from famed critic Roger Eebert. But an investigation uncovered Collins himself as the comment’s author. It has since disappeared from his post.

FRENCH POLICE RAID ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT HANG-OUTS

Hundreds Arrested in Paris Sweep, Deported Overnight

Detainees Mostly North Africans, Asians and Deadbeat Americans posing as Writers

French police arrest an undocumented American 'writer' in Paris. In his pocket authorities found a poorly-written poem entitled "The Stain of the Yak."

Paris – 5/17/08 On Tuesday morning 23 year old American college drop-out Lyle Ginsberg was sitting outside Paris’ renowned Café Flor, in the Latin Quarter, drinking an espresso and pretending to write with a number 2 pencil on a yellow block of notebook paper. By Tuesday night the dishevelled, beret-wearing youth was back at his parents’ house outside of Lancaster, PA.

“I don’t know how it all happened,” said the allegedly aspiring writer, reached by telephone just hours after his deportation and whose parents could be heard in the background reprimanding him to get a job. “I was writing something grand, something true, and it was raining and the rain was pounding the leaves and that was the most real thing about that day in Paris, that grey city of men all with their swell arguments and the women who always came along to wreck it all. And I was drinking to start the day and thinking about going to watch the horses with Pierre who also loved a drink if you were inviting when the police came and dragged me away.”

Ginsberg, who says he has an original prose voice and lots of ideas for novels, is one of over a hundred American ‘writers’ who the French police say they’d been monitoring for months as part of a larger operation against illegal immigrants and posers.

Yesterday French Interior Minister Michele Alliot Marie told reporters such raids would continue until “the obnoxious blight is eradicated."

"The French people do not feel safe,” she said in comments to French radio EuropeOne. “Paris has become a city where just for walking home alone at night you can be mugged, harassed or exposed to exaggerated purple prose from impromptu ‘literary’ events.”

Listen to live reading of "The Stain of the Yak"



The Americans were deported under a new immigration law that prohibits foreigners from, among other things, dressing like Gertrude Stein or loitering near the Shakespeare and Company bookstore. The law also bans the suspicious practice of ‘accidentally’ leaving behind signed poems in bars and cafes or pretending not to be American when lost tourists ask for directions. Some crimes - for example ostentatious or extended displays of ennui - could also come with a 3 month prison sentence prior to deportation.

When asked about the hundreds of Algerians and Chinese also deported in the immigration crackdown, Interior Minister Alliot Marie said, “Oh yes, they were caught up in the sweep as well.”

MEXICO, SHORT ON CASH, TO TAX BRIBES

Money Will Help Fund New Anti-corruption Ministry

MEXICO CITY - 5/19/08 Mexico has announced a shock plan to revitalize its weak economy by channeling billions of ‘bribery’ dollars back into the mainstream economy.

“Bribes, pay-offs and ransoms are Mexico’s three most important sources of income," said Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon during a press conference at Los Pinos, Mexico’s presidential residence. "Though each individual illegal payment may be small, together they form the grease that keeps our economic engine rolling. For too long such payments, usually forked over by panic-stricken tourists and trembling grandmothers, have remained in fiscal limbo. From now on the government will force bribe takers to declare these earnings and pay income tax - just like the other two percent of Mexicans who actually file returns.”

The details of Mexico’s proposed bribe tax have yet to be worked out. But Calderon outlined several broad points in today’s address. They include:

* A 10 percent tax on all bribes slipped to traffic cops who pull over motorists for no reason and then threaten them with fines, jail time, burial up to their necks in the desert or rape.

* A 15 percent tax on ransoms received by kidnapping gangs. This tax contains a loophole that would allow more sophisticated gangs with high overhead costs to deduct certain operational expenses, such as pay-outs for weapons purchases and costly long-term surveillance of potential victims.

* A 3 percent tax on the income of librarians, public health workers, toll booth operators, parking lot attendants, priests, teachers, firemen, judges, plumbers, chimney sweeps, dog-walkers, baby sitters, taxi drivers and dozens of others who by custom won’t lift a finger to perform their duties until a sufficiently thick wad of illicit pesos finds its way into their pockets.

A policeman checks a man's armpits for money.

Calderon’s plan drew immediate criticism from police unions, low level government functionaries and kidnappers. Mexico City Police Federation chief Alfonso Chayutl Xtitloc said at a public demonstration today that bribes amount to 11 times a cop’s average monthly salary of 300 US dollars.

“This is classic state interventionism,” he told a crowd of 3 thousand uniformed officers who fired their weapons in the air and appeared visibly drunk. “To tax the money we earn by scaring the shit out of locals and tourists by insinuating that we can make their lives hell is to single out an honest hard-working sector for punishment.”

Veteran kidnapper Juan 'Cactus Thighs' Espinoza said the draft of the law was confusing. "It remains unclear who would pay this tax under certain circumstances," he said by phone from his seaside fortress in Ensenada. "For example, I kidnap a cop. His fellow officers then extort an entire village, under threat of extinction, to pay my ransom demand. Can the police then deduct the ransom from their income tax? And if they wipe out the village anyway, is that deductable?"

But victims groups are applauding the measure. Many ordinary Mexicans say they’ve lived with fear and oppression for too long. 65 year old Guadalupe Mendoza, who’s son Jose owns a tortilla stand in violence ridden Sinaloa State and has been kidnapped seventy three times, said “In the future I’ll feel much better when I have to sell my home and beg my extended family for their life’s savings in order to pay Joselito’s ransom, knowing that those hijos de puta kidnappers will have to file more forms come tax time.”

'Joselito' Mendoza has been kidnapped 73 times. He counts them out on his fingers for a reporter.

To make that paperwork easier for the estimated millions of people affected by the new tax, the government will establish a free ‘bribe tax’ telephone help line. Calls will be recorded for quality control purposes.

President Calderon said in his address that bribe taxes could raise up to 7 billion dollars a year for the federal government. That money would fund the proposed Ministry Against Corruption and its team of hundreds of investigators whose job would be to root out the graft that has hobbled Mexico’s economy.

SINGER LISA STANSFIELD STILL HASN’T FOUND HER BABY

Exhausted British pop stars continues to travel around the world, worries mentally retarded fan

LONDON – 12/14/07 Despite 17 years of non stop traveling around the globe acclaimed pop singer Lisa Stansfied has yet to find her baby, warned a mentally retarded man and self-proclaimed Lisa Stansfield fanclub president Thursday.

“I love her. Find baby. Find baby,” wrote 42 year old Briton Ian Limber in a statement published on his website dedicated to the life and music of Stansfield, www.gottagetmesomestansfield.com. "Find baby. Find baby," the statement continues for several pages.

Limber, who lives in an assisted living facility in Gravesend, England, has the mental capacity of a very alert goat and cannot eat or get dressed without a nurse. His plea to help Stansfield has taken the music world by storm.

At a weekend benefit concert marking the 6th anniversary of the death of American comedian Don Rickles to shoe cancer, Sir Elton John and other luminaries appeared to throw their weight behind the cause. “If Lady Di is a candle in the wind,” Sir John told fans during the sold out Wembley Stadium show, “then Stansfield is like a leaf borne on that same wind. Hold on. Like a leaf in the wind…help me out, what rhymes with wind?”

A visibly upset Stansfield, with letters floating near her head, apparently won't give up on her baby.

Stansfield first reached out for help in 1991 with her number one hit song, "Can't Find My Baby." U2 front man turned activist Bono said the world had waited too long to act. He then sang a duet of “In the Name of Love” with famed impersonator Richard Little whose imitation of Stansfield silenced the audience. Some people were seen leaving the stadium before the song was finished.

Meanwhile music industry officials, under pressure now, insist much needs to be resolved before concrete measures to help Stansfield can be enacted.

“It remains unclear who her ‘baby’ is,” said Lech Mordechai, founder of Mordechai records and later Mordechai Airlines. “If Stansfield gave birth back in the spring of 1991 and literally lost her baby, then we’re dealing with a very different kind of emergency,” he said. “Stansfield or her doctors could be looking at criminal charges.”

Others speculate the term ‘baby’ refers to a lost love interest.

For Limber the debate is a pretext for inaction. Writing on his website this week he said, “Lisa help when down. I like ice cream.”

Contacted by phone, Lisa Stansfield’s current agent, Derrick Wales of ICM Talent, London, said enigmatically, “Leave my client alone.”

Meanwhile Scotland Yard forensics artists have released several sketches of the presumed ‘baby’ ranging in age from just a few days to 78 years old. Citizens who spot anyone even remotely resembling any of the 19 drawings are urged to contact some authority or another.

IRAQI BATTALION, ACCUSED OF COWARDICE, CLEARED

Iraqi Commander Ordered Confusing War Games Manuever During Pitched Fight

BASR, IRAQ - 4/13/08 When US Army Rangers discovered six thousand missing Iraqi soldiers and their commander hiding behind a hill outside of the battle torn southern city of Basr on Sunday it seemed another disheartening case of Iraqi ‘cutting and running’ under fire. But a Pentagon investigation underway since then suggests poor lines of communication, and not cowardice, were to blame.

US Army personnel first discovered the men missing after coming under heavy mortar fire at dawn Sunday. The Iraqi Army’s 10th Battalion should have responded to the fire from their forward positions within moments. But US radio operator Corporal Lance Wilson said he couldn’t raise his Iraqi counterparts via established channels.

“I called several times, indicating a ‘Code 7’,” Wilson said. “A ‘Code 7’ is a critical situation whereby you are coming under enemy fire. It’s worse than a ‘Code 6’, danger-wise, but not nearly as bad as a ‘Code 8.’”

“Each time I called all I could here was whispering,” Wilson said. “Like, Shhhhhhhhhhhh. Shhhhhhhhhhh. Then nothin’.”

An American patrol moved forward and found the Iraqi positions empty. Drone planes soon spotted an unusual concentration of people behind the nearby hill, more than 1 kilometer, or half a mile, from the area of intense fighting.

US Army Major Buck Talward sped to the scene. “This was their fight and I was furious.,” he later told a reporter. “I found them all behind the hill, six thousand men covering their eyes with their hands. It was disgusting. You could see that many of them were peaking a little between their fingers.”

“Just what in the fuckin’ hell of this fuck-shorn desert of a fuck do you think you’re doing?” Talward recalls asking his Iraqi counterpart, Commander Tafik Kili. “And Kili looks me square in the eyes and says, ‘You’re it!’ and tags me on the arm. I nearly fell off the shitter. They were playing war games. But they’d got all the rules messed up.”

Pentagon spokeswoman Nancy Wells tried to shed light on the mix up from Washington today. She said the incident made it clear that Iraq’s fledgling army still has not been adequately trained in how and when to engage in war games, those periodic exercises designed to improve fighting readiness.

“Since 2004 Iraq Army soldiers have been training in various war games, including Beach Invasion, Jungle Attack and Tag. Some units have received further training in Hide and Seek, Man Hunt and Ghost in the Graveyard. Iraqi troops under British control have emphasized Red Rover, Red Rover and British Bull Dog.”

Referring to Sunday’s incident Wells said, “It appears the Iraqi Command inappropriately mixed two games, Hide and Seek and Tag. That would explain both the hiding and the universally accepted ‘you’re it’ phrase associated with Tag. What Iraqi leadership must understand,” she added, “is that if you’re caught hiding you don’t tag the other party, they tag you. Also, in the case of hide and seek the hiders don’t generally cover their eyes. And if the seeker peeks between his fingers while counting to 10 that is considered cheating.”

This is not the first time Iraqi troops have incorrectly deployed war games on the ground. Last year in normally quiet Mosul two platoons of Iraqi soldiers were mowed down by insurgent fighters in an exposed public square after the platoons’ leader ordered his men to ‘freeze’ during an impromptu game of Red Light, Green Light, 123.

The Pentagon is now reviewing whether to limit Iraqi war games to I’m Thinking of Something and Duck, Duck, Goose.

AS ELECTIONS LOOM, MATHMATICIANS, PUNDITS ASSAIL UNEXPECTED CANDIDATE

Carl Huff’s Bid Negligible, Disturbing Experts Say

KANSAS CITY, MO 5/1/08 - When Carl Huff announced his plans to become president of the United States last Saturday, the son of humble Kansas City tailors believed his own earnest words. Statisticians, probability experts and political analysts from around the world did not.

“I used to want to drive a truck,” Huff announced to classmates during a birthday party for fellow 1st grader Jane Haegglestrom in Kansas City’s Bourne Park. “But now I’m going to be president.”

The assembly of children quickly endorsed Huff’s bid for high office. But even before they’d polished off Haegglestrom’s chocolate birthday cake and made fun of Jeffrey Zeitlin for wetting himself the world’s top math minds were warning that Huff’s chances were slim. Some analysts have suggested Duff’s surprise bid is irresponsible.

“The odds of some snot-nosed, poor-boy from Backwater, USA, rising above his lower middle class background, being embraced by the country’s political elite and raising hundreds of millions of other people’s dollars to become an American president at some point in some unnamed future are basically null,” said Hans Wilder, Dean Emeritus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and widely considered the father of modern statistical analysis. “What the fuck was Duff on when he opened his cake-filled little trap?”Presidential Candidate Carl Huff yanks on Jeffrey Zeitlin's urine-soaked pant leg at Jane Haegglestrom's birthday party. Huff's bid for high office is controversial.

“Duff? President?” responded jailed Chinese mathematician Liu Hun in a phone interview from Beijing’s Xai Tao Prison. “It’s statistically more probable that I’ll be freed before my 80th birthday. And that ain’t gonna happen.” (Liu has been serving a life sentence since 1979 after he attempted to pass a Rubick’s Cube shortcut to US Embassy officials in Hong Kong.)

Inside the Washington DC beltway pundits have questioned the timing of Duff’s announcement. On CNN’s Crossfire liberal host Jeffrey Zorts said Huff’s entry into the race would only reinforce Republican John McCain’s bid. “We’ve seen enough bloodletting between Obama and Clinton. Now it’s a three way battle.”

Its presumed Duff would seek the Democratic nomination given that his parents are both registered Democrats. Although the child has not yet indicated he knows what a political party is.

Both Democratic contenders lost no time in attacking Duff’s record.

“Puny little fuck with stars in his eyes,” said Hillary Clinton during a stop in Missouri yesterday. “With zero foreign policy experience.”

Barak Obama was equally adamant against Duff entering the campaign. When a reporter pointed out that the minimum age for a US president is 35 Obama seemed to suggest that that wasn’t the point.

“Today the age limit may be 35 but if we elect a 6 year old what’s he gonna do? He’s gonna change the law. Small children do that. They change the rules right under your feet. Try playing kickball with 1st graders. You can’t win.”

Still, some say Duff’s youthful views on major issues such as terrorism, the economy and bed-time could bring a welcome sense of change to the White House. At a pro-Duff rally in Dayton, OH, over the weekend college student and activist Dale Sartre carried a poster reading “We’ve Had Enough. Vote for Duff.” In past elections Sartre has voted for Lyndon LaRouche.

Calls to the Duff family home this week were not returned. A reporter who knocked at the Duff’s door was received by two bleary eyed adults in pajamas.

“We have no comment,” said the woman. “It’s 3 in the fucking morning.”

BUSH HAILS IRAQ SUCCESSES

Washington, DC 7/14/07 - President George W. Bush proclaimed at a White House press conference today that the war in Iraq had a '90 percent success rate,' to date, based on 10 benchmark goals laid out in his Revised Long-Term Srategic Plan for Iraqi Reconstruction issued last November.

“I can stand here today and tell the American people that progress is being made,” the President said. “In Iraq today there are signs of life returning to normal.” The president went on to list areas where the US led coalition is earning 'satisfactory' marks based on assessments from both US military leaders on the ground and Iraqi political leaders.

1. Water. The Army corp of Engineers reports that while most dams and water purification plants have been destroyed since the war began, water continues to flow downhill in areas characterized by sloping ground.

2. Electricity. Engineers say power outages continue to plague Baghdad and the provinces but note that 3 million 220-volt Black and Decker extension cords that accidentally made it onto a medicinal supply frigate have been distributed to Iraqi citizens.

3. Roads. The administration has pledged to try to find all roads, avenues, alleys and lanes buried beneath rubble by 2040.

4. Hygiene. US health officials say for the first time since the war began Iraq does not smell worse than Haiti.

5. Technology. The Bush administration announced it has a secured a pledge from Sony to donate 1,500 latest generation PlayStation video consuls to Iraqi children as soon as the electricity comes back on and their parents can find jobs and save enough money to buy televisions.

6. Culture. To compensate for the loss of Iraqi's priceless library and art collections looted under the gaze of US soldiers in 2002, the US Army has announced it will build a new 'Ice Hockey Hall of Fame' in Basra. In addition singer/film star Bernadette Peters will tour the country flashing her tits at both Sunnis and Shiites.

7. Medicine. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki says 1,000 new doctors began practicing family medicine around the country this year. This, after the Iraqi government put medical students on an emergency 'fast track' program in response to a doctor shortage. Surgeons now study for 3 weeks instead of the traditional 4 year progam, plus two years of residency. The crash course focuses mainly on limb retrieval and blood staunching.

8. Economy. President Bush said that contrary to popular belief, small businesses were starting to flourish in Iraq's major cities. He pointed to three thriving sectors as proof: Coffin subcontracting, traumatic nightmare therapy and taxi services that ferry people out of the country. And while there are no operational savings banks in Iraq, Iraqi finance officials say they're seeing success with a pilot program in which citizens bury their money.

9. Human Rights. Bush said US intelligence sources report that new born babies are no longer being whisked straight into torture facilities. Also, Iraqi free speech advocates are hailing a parliamentary pledge to allow the use of compound sentences on market day.

In his closing remarks on the White House lawn yesterday, President Bush conceded that security issues continue to be the main obstacle impeding Iraq's fledgling democracy. Specifically, he pointed to the thousands of innocent people the US continues to kill via inaccurate air strikes and poorly planned 'sting' operations against terrorists that often leave old people and children dying in pools of their own blood. In addition, he admitted that he's still concerned about widespread sectarian violence between minority Sunnis and Shiite Muslims, and the fact that the people of Iraq no longer speak to or look at each other.

NOTED WORLD WAR TWO COWARD RETURNS TO BATTLEFIELD HE ONCE SOILED

St. Eulion – France 7/30/07 Brushing away tears, retired dentist and former Army radio officer Abraham Kleindt gazed across these bucolic green hills where 63 years ago he ran from one of the most bloody and decisive battles of World War II, most certainly condemning many of his fellow soldiers to death.

“A lot of our boys fell here, never to get up,” said the grey haired Kleindt, who now walks with a cane. “I fell several times while running blindly, but luckily I always found my feet again.”

As a radio operator Kleindt was charged with calling in air support. But the Standstedt, FL, native says on August 11, 1945, when the first German tracer bullets flew over his head signalling the beginning of the Battle of St. Eulion, he promptly pitched his radio pack to a surprised medic, shit deeply into his fatigues and bolted from his trench like a terrified rabbit.

“I was young and green,” he told family members and a reporter on his visit to the battlefield where he had his first taste of war-time cowardice. “There were limbs and guts everywhere I assume. I suppose that the battle was fierce, with German mortars pounding our positions, ripping my friends literally to shreds, perhaps. I didn’t actually see any of the fighting.”

By the time the real fighting began Kleindt says he was already a mile behind allied lines, deep in the woods. “I lay under a log for a week. Could we look for that log?”

Kleindt has written a screenplay about his decision to abandon his post and the likelihood that he directly caused the death of dozens of his fellow soldiers whose heads were picked off by sniper fire or who had their guts run through by German bayonets as they waited for the back up that never came.

The screenplay, called “The Cowering Fields,” which has not elicited interest from any American or European studio, begins with Kleindt’s historic bail-out at St. Eulion, then takes viewers on what the veteran describes as a "2-year, hair raising tour of duty across half of Europe."

“At the Battle of Nimes I hid in a barn. It sounded terrible all around me. The screaming. At Gelsenkirchen I talked a sympathetic German baker into hiding me in her spetzle vats.”

A Normandy farmhouse with Radio Operator Abraham Kleindt, far right, disguised as a cow. He endured several allied milkings before rejoining his platoon for a rare week of R & R.

This past week at St. Eulion Kleindt paid homage to his slain comrades alone; the two men who survived the brutal massacre that Kleindt could have easily prevented by placing just a single call for help still hold a grudge, Kleindt acknowledges.

“I wish I could go back in time but I can’t,” he said, as his wife and two grown sons led him back to his car along a route not far from where his younger, yellow self ran to save his own ass. “Not all the way back in time,” Kleindt added, “ Just back to about 1946, to those gay post-war years when everyone was having a gas and no one was shooting at each other. That was the one part of military life I never got used to.”

SCIENTIST STUDYING ARCTIC ICE MELT MAKES STARTLING DISCOVERY

Stonnhafen Ice Shelf, Lapland - 04/12/07 As he’s done every day since 1994 Canadian meteorologist Per Larrson woke up at dawn on a recent Saturday, drank seven cups of instant coffee then headed out into the bitter cold to pull ice samples from this desolate ice shelf some 1,000 nautical miles from the Novia Scotian coast. In a telephone interview Larrson said he wasn’t expecting any surprises.

“I’ve been out here 13 frickin’ years, by myself, and haven’t observed anything,” he said, “Any-thing. Then all of a sudden I’m reeling in (ice sample) K-544 from its 6-meter deep shaft and wham, right there, right next to my foot, I see it. Just like that. The last thing on earth I - or any of my colleagues - would have expected to find out here. My pen.”

The discovery of Larrson's pen – lost 11 years earlier - has created controversy and turned conventional assumptions about global warming on their head, experts say. The pen has also become a political football in the ongoing debate over the severity of rising planetary temperatures.

The writing instrument, a Mont Blanc Meisterstuck Series Black-and-Platinum Homage to W.A. Mozart ball-point, had been a gift to Larrson from his father for having finished graduate school and for having cleaned his room and folded his laundry before going to the movies with friends.

“That pen meant so much to me,” Larrson said. “It was the only gift my father ever gave me if you don’t count his eyebrows. When I lost it on that vast ice sheet the scientific community basically agreed with my hypothesis that it would never be found. And that if it were found that it would be very cold. I’m happy to have the pen back, because of its weightiness and clean design, but it also calls my life’s work into question.”

Larrson is to publish the finding in the January edition of the prestigious Canadian science quarterly, Who’d a Thunk It! United Nations officials hope the report will cajole top greenhouse gas emitters like the United States to reduce polluting. U.N. Green House Gas Project Development Officer Moze Zubikwe brought up the startling find at the Global Conference on Global Warming underway this week in Bali.

“Whoever’s lost shit in the snow,” Zubikwe told conference attendees, “knows damn well that you almost never find it. My daughter lost a ferret in Tierra del Fuego. The snow does not give up her dead. Unless she is melting.”

In Geneva this week Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore refused to weigh in on the development, saying only that he’d never owned a Mont Blanc pen. He used his acceptance speech to urge people to recycle ink.

“By cutting out individual letters from junk mail, books and personal diaries and then rearranging them to form new sentences we can reduce ink consumption by 4 million pens a year. Those pens in turn can be used as straws or to build little model forts with glue recycled from livestock remains recycled from hot dogs.”

On Wednesday the Nobel Committee said it had no plans to take Gore’s prize back.

Larrson is to travel to a conference on rising sea levels in Miami next week where he’ll be given a research grant to follow up on his find plus a pocket protector. Accompanying him will be famed French ice sculptor Yves Leposte. Leposte’s work became the focus of another study on global warming after several of his statues showed up melted after being shipped to his home in Key West.

Weheeziem Buktr contributed to this report from Istanbul.

NEWS IN BRIEFS

Africa

Plane Plash Kills All One on Board

DAKAR – March 18, 2008
Senegalese rescue officials say they’ve found the wreckage of a private16-seat Piper ‘J’ Class aircraft strewn across an unpopulated stretch of desert outside the capital, Dakar. The plane, en route to Mauritania, disappeared from radar shortly after take off Thursday morning. All of the one passenger on board are confirmed dead.

Rescue workers who found the crash site describe a field of carnage. “It was like that movie, Zulu,” said Red Cross spokesman Charles Innocent. “There must have been about 10 pints of blood and 206 different bones scattered across the plain,” he added, referring to the exact amount of blood and bones in a single human adult body.

Forensic scientists must now begin the painstaking process of identifying all the victim by cross referencing thousands of DNA samples with the name as it appears on the passenger log. “We may never match all the pieces,” cautioned Senegalese Interior Minister Bruce Sundit. Meanwhile hundreds of people, reportedly all members of one extended family, have gathered at Dakar’s international airport on the gruesome hunch that their loved one could be among the one victim.

VATICAN DECLARES AREA MAN HARDLY A SAINT

The Vatican – 8/8/07 Pope Benedict the XVI made public today the Catholic church’s latest list of venerables, paving the way for their beatification and eventual sainthood. Among the candidates are martyrs and miracle performers, laymen and clergy alike, ranging across 3 centuries. Notably missing from the list is 31 year old Mamaroneck, NY, resident Christopher Ray Vorhees, according to a Vatican spokesman.

Vorhees, a dental technician who was born Catholic but rarely attends mass, reportedly lacks nearly all of the qualifications for sainthood.

Vorhees is not a known martyr and, according to church investigators from the Congregation of the Causes of Saints, he has not performed any miracle since raising eyebrows by graduating from high school.

“I’ve never pretended to be an angel,” wrote Vorhees, after a reporter contacted him by electronic mail. “After all, only the good die young!:)”

That kind of comment, scholars say, is sure to keep Vorhees on the Vatican blacklist. Giancarlo Lombardo is a Vatican watcher at Rome’s Pious IV Institute for Religious Studies.

“Vorhees is the kind of uninspired wise guy who seems destined to never curry favor among the Cardinals,” Lombardo said, his eyes fixed squarely on the Vatican. “None of us who watch the Vatican were surprised to see Vorhees’s name absent from the list once again.”

This is the 12th straight year that Vorhees has failed to impress the Holy See. (Minors under the age of 18 cannot quality for beatification, except in the strictest cases and with parental permission. In 2005 little Jeremy Boles of Lancaster, PA came close. The 11 year old allegedly turned an aborted skunk fetus into blankets which he distributed to poor people).

When asked via electronic mail whether he might begin attending mass more regularly or perform acts of charity to improve his poor image at the Vatican, Vorhees responded, “Hey, only the good die young!:) ” Which was exactly how he’d responded to earlier questions.

NEWS IN BRIEFS

NEWS IN BRIEF

Italy

Police’s Key Mafia Plant Found Dead

Catania, Sicily 4/14/2008 – Italian organized crime prosecutors say their most valuable informant inside the Camorro crime organization, missing for days, has been found dead. Hikers discovered the body of Sven Hinskit on a remote trail outside this regional city. The tall, blonde-haired, blue eyed agent, originally from Finland, had been shot twice in the head, according to a local police report. Also, his underwear had been yanked well up above his waistline in what locals call a wedggino.

The killing is a major set-back to Italy’s central government which in recent months has made strides against the country’s largest organized crime families. In February police arrested Vince ‘The Squid-Stroker’ Bartoloni, the alleged head of the Bartoloni seafood Mafia, who’d been in on the run since 1993. Police found him trying to hide in a carp after a tip-off.

Then in May an informant – possibly Hinskit – filmed Palermo based strongman Giancarlo ‘Giancarlo’ Mascherpa tossing gum in the street. Police say that video, along with several corpses discovered in Mascherpa’s basement, helped them put Mascherpa behind bars for 18 years.

Investigators are at a loss to explain how Hinskit’s cover was blown. The 6 foot 8, pale Nordic agent, who spoke little Italian, had just recently infiltrated Italy’s deadliest crime gang, made up largely of short, squat swarthy killers with dark eyes and thick black hair.

“Hinskit was in deep,” said Captain Gregorio Valero of Rome’s elite Organized Crime Police Force. “He’d spent a long time working up his cover as the poor son of a fisherman from Puglia. We don’t know what went wrong.”

Hinskit’s death is especially damaging because Italy is suffering from a dearth of undercover agents, Valero said. “That’s why we recruited him (Hinskit) from the Finnish Secret Service,” he said. “Italians no longer want to do this kind of work.”

TURKS, FEELING INCREASINGLY 'EUROPEAN,’ THREATEN WEST WITH UNPRECEDENTED CARNAGE IF SHUNNED BY EU.

ANKARA - 07/04/07 A top Turkish diplomat on Thursday pointed to a new opinion poll suggesting that Turks overwhelming ‘identify themselves with the West and Western values’ as proof that his country should join the European Union. Deputy Foreign Minister Edin Kupor made his comments as he boarded a plane bound for Belgium and another round of accession talks Wednesday. Kupor added that if the EU misses its opportunity to bring Turkey into the fold, ‘The severed heads of EU leaders will rot on stakes under the hot Brussels sun.’

The opinion poll, carried out in Turkey’s four largest cities in June, suggests that the cultural and religious lines that once divided Turks from the West are eroding. For example, said Bora Arad, director of Istanbul's Proforma Agency which conducted the survey, more than 74 percent of Turks responded ‘Hand-outs’ to the question: Would you rather accept billions of dollars in EU hand-outs or continue raising goats?

Arad said his study weakens long-held stereotypes about Turkey as a sociallly conservative nation with its back turned toward the West and its more liberal values.

“And if this doesn’t convince Europeans, perhaps the tips of our swords will sway them," Arad said. ‘We Turks are an accommodating people. But push us too far and you’ll know no worse nightmare.” At a news conference held for the international press in Ankara, Arad gave a Powerpoint presentation on an ancient Ottoman technique for disembowling enemies. He said such techniques “were no longer in use, for the most part,” but resided in the Turks’ ‘collective memory” and could easily be employed to inflict the utmost suffering on occidentals, who, he said, really deserved it.

Europe is divided over the Turkey question. England, Spain and rotating EU president Portugal argue for accepting Turkey. They say snubbing the Muslim nation of some 80 million people would cause a radical backlash against the West. But France’s new president, Nicolas Sarkozy, believes Turkey’s values and traditions are not European.

In a parallel debate, human rights groups are questioning Turkey on its treatment of minorities and women. Before departing Ankara, minister Kupor said that Turkey was making progress on the issue of gender equality. But, he warned, “Do not talk about our women. Or we will take yours.”

Meanwhile on the streets of Istanbul signs of Europe's influence are increasingly pervasive. Women dressed in designer clothes drink coffee at shi-shi outdoor cafes. Men with ipods peck at laptops. Men with laptops peck at ipods. 28 year old resident and schoolteacher Ilzik Tusch, sipping a Starbucks double mocachino, said young Turks aspire to the same things as their counterparts in Europe.

“I wan nu go thu Amthterdam an thmoke pot,” he said. Tusch, speaking with the aid of a speech therapist, had his tongue cloven in two recently by police after they found hashish in his pants.

Turkey began its application for EU membership 5 decades ago. And some Turks are losing patience despite their deepening identification with the West. Iskel Han, a nightclub DJ in Istanbul, said after a recent concert at which young Turks writhed til dawn to the thump of Western techno music that joining the EU was a de facto formality.

Young people already ‘feel occidental,’ he said, "Just look at us." But he warned a journalist, “It is a delicate moment in history. I could have you enslaved on a galley ship before dawn and sold to the highest bidding homosexual sheik on the Caspian Sea if you're not careful." He said such unpleasantness could easily be avoided by putting Turkey on a fast-track to EU membership.

UNITED STATES TO SIGN GLOBAL ANTI-MINE ACCORD

Landmark agreement to Ban so-called ‘Cluster Bombs’ also in the Works

Rights groups worry about next generation of weapons

Washington, DC – 5/13/08 President George W. Bush told reporters Monday that the United States, the world’s largest producer of anti-personnel mines, would veer course dramatically and support an immediate, global ban on the devices. The decision marks a sharp reversal in U.S. foreign policy and is seen as an effort by the administration to soften its bellicose image resulting from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. However the president warned that America would not accept a ban on the horrific types of injuries land mines can inflict.

“America will no longer make mines,” the President told reporters at the White House. “It’s that simple. One day we’ll be able to say, ‘Mines? Not mine’.”

Surrounded by child victims of mine explosions from Bosnia to Vietnam, the president underscored that a complete ban on mines would radically reduce civilian casualties due to mines.

“You shouldn’t be here today,” Bush said, addressing his maimed and hobbled guests, some of them wincing due to their semi-healed wounds or chronic, unexplainable pains. “You, Thin Woh, you should be playing soccer with your friends. Or hunting termites. And Junko Stavic, my new friend, I can see you flying dirigibles. America is going to see to it that not one more person joins your ranks due to mines. But that does not include other forms of weaponry that target civilian populations in order to induce generalized terror.”

The president’s remarks were warmly received by the UN-backed End the Mines Treaty campaign. So far 128 nations haved signed the Treaty. Campaign spokeswoman Linda Evans said the president had taken a brave step “so that people everywhere can step bravely where before they could not step.” According to End the Mines there are some 6 million unexploded and unaccounted for mines in the world. Each year thousands of people are killed or injured by accidently setting them off, either by stepping on them or after adding them to stews.

During the president’s press conference he briefly ceded the microphone to Four star Army General and Assistant Chief of the Joint Staff Blake Woolsely. Woolsely underscored that the ban on mines would make the world safer from mines. But he said America would not let down its guard and let terrorists “run wild in our backyards, bedrooms and broom closets.”

“We continue to develop high technology, precision weapons systems to stay one step ahead of the bad guy,” Woolsely said. “If that means targeting the civilian populations where the terrorists may or may not be hiding then the weaponry will reflect that reality.”

Woolsely went on to describe several new weapons programs, including the Diaper Viper, a wall-penetrating, flaming projectile that can detect baby urine. He also made vague reference to ‘Operation We could Hear Them Screaming,’ a program rumored to involve chemicals that turn the soil into a hot, molten liquid. According to the Wall Street Journal, ‘We Could Hear Them Screaming’ has already been tested successfully in public markets in Eastern Europe.

“It’s a reality of war that innocent civilians will be maimed, burned and traumatized by weaponry dreamed up by the most creative military minds we can find,” President Bush said in his closing remarks. “But let it stand that America will not harm another child, even indirectly, with land-mines.”