Aus PM’s anger over Robin Williams ‘rednecks’ jibe

Kevin Rudd, you really do need to lighten up. Robin Williams is a comedian, and a very good one at that. If you’re wound so tight that you can’t take a joke then it’s really your problem; go see a shrink (psychiatrist).

By the way you’re right, the United States is full of Rednecks. They populate many states but mainly thrive in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, South Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia. TGO

Refer to brief story below. Source: Associated Press

SYDNEY (AFP) – Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has lashed out at US comedian Robin Williams for calling Australians “rednecks”, suggesting the star should look closer to home before bashing Aussies.

Rudd hit back at the Oscar-winning actor during a radio interview after Williams told US talk show host David Letterman that “Australians are basically English rednecks. You down there, ‘how are ya? Good to see you. Hello.’”

“I think Robin Williams should go and spend a bit of time in Alabama before he frames comments about anyone being particularly redneck,” Rudd said on Melbourne commercial radio on Wednesday.

The comedian went on to say: “I realised that if Darwin had landed in Australia, he would have gone: ‘I’m wrong’.”

In fact Darwin, the father of the theory of human evolution, did spend time in Australia in the 19th century.

Williams made the irreverent cracks following a recent visit to Australia, but the joke appeared to have bombed Down Under, at least with the prime minister.

Counting a billion: India begins new census

Amazing as it sounds, China and India collectively account for over one third of the entire population on earth. We’re talking of 6 billion plus people on the planet and close to 3 billion of these people live in China and India.

The article below isn’t really about total world population, but the statistics noted above are interesting nonetheless. TGO

Refer to story below. Source: Associated Press

by Elizabeth Roche Elizabeth Roche

NEW DELHI (AFP) – India launches Thursday the task of counting its teeming billion-plus population, with 2.5 million people set to fan out over the chaotic south Asian giant to begin work for the 2011 census.

The exercise has formidable challenges — coverage of a vast geographical area, left-wing rebels and separatists, widespread illiteracy, and people with a bewildering diversity of cultures, languages and customs.

“The census is a means of evaluating once in every 10 years, in a dispassionate manner, whether government programmes are reaching their intended target and plan for the future,” Census Commissioner C. Chandramouli told AFP.

Adding to the complexity of counting and classifying the world’s second biggest population will be a simultaneous process of collecting biometric data on every person, to be used in a new National Population Register.

“It is also a challenge to see that the 2.5 million enumerators carry out the instructions we have given them without error,” Chandramouli said from his New Delhi office.

Officials will collect fingerprints and photograph every resident for the first time for the register — a process described by Home Minister P. Chidambaram as “the biggest exercise… since humankind came into existence.”

Along with census details, “personal attributes” will be recorded, such as declared nationality and marital status, and details on the proportion of bank account holders and cellphone users.

The twin census and population register processes will stretch over 11 months, consume 11.63 million tonnes of paper and cost 60 billion rupees (1.25 billion dollars).

“India has been conducting national census since 1872,” said Chandramouli. “Nothing — floods, droughts, even wars — has been able to stop it.”

The basic census will start with officials visiting Indian President Pratibha Patil for her signature during the first leg of the process called “houselisting.”

“Enumerators” will then fan out over the country to begin houselisting, which records information on homes, such as the construction material used or the availability of electricity and water.

The physical count of residents will be made between February 9-28 next year and the completed census will be released by mid-2011.

“The trick is to get things right the first time. There is no question of a re-census,” Chandramouli said.

This time, to minimise the 2.3-percent margin of error recorded in the 2001 census, officials will be armed with satellite maps of India’s 608,786 villages.

“I have instructed enumerators to ensure they reach out to the women, the elderly, the disabled, nomadic communities and migrants — usually left out in the census process,” said Chandramouli.

But Ashish Bose, a retired professor of Indian and Asian population studies at Delhi University, warned of mistakes creeping in despite the best efforts.

“Uneducated people in villages never know their ages correctly. It is never a ’51′ it always 50 or 55. But overall we conduct a good census — no doubt about it and the vast majority of people are keen to participate,” he said.

S. Parasuraman, a demography professor at the Tata Institute of the Social Sciences in Mumbai, said the new population registry will provide a valuable database.

“In a disaster for instance, one will be able to pinpoint how many people were living at a place before and after the catastrophe struck. It will be a compilation of useful information enabling proper governance,” he said.

Data collected for the National Population Register will in turn facilitate the issue of the 16-digit Unique Identity Numbers to all Indian residents.

This will serve as a one-stop proof for all Indians to establish their identity, eliminating the current need to produce multiple personal documents.

The first identity numbers are expected to be issued by November this year.

Chile: 432 dead and 98 missing after earthquake

Compared with the loss of life in Haiti which is estimated at over 200,000 the death toll in Chile is negligible; even though the earthquake that struck Chile was significantly stronger than the one in Haiti. It goes to show just how shabby the construction in Haiti is. TGO

Refer to brief story below. Source: Associated Press

Wed Mar 31, 12:45 pm ET

SANTIAGO, Chile – Chilean officials have confirmed 432 people dead and 98 still missing after last month’s earthquake and tsunami.

The death toll has fluctuated in past weeks as officials struggle to find, identify and count victims across the region amid a change in government. The report delivered Tuesday is the latest but probably not the last attempt.

In the first week after the Feb. 27 quake, the estimated death toll rose above 800 due to double-counting among government agencies. By the March 11 inauguration, the outgoing government had set the count below 500.

The new administration has continued to refine the figure as remains are identified and causes of death are confirmed.

Police find body of Mexican missing girl at home

There are people on this planet that are so evil that they deserve to be thrown into a pit with hundreds of rats and just left to be eaten alive – slowly… TGO

Refer to brief story below. Source: Associated Press

TOLUCA, Mexico – Prosecutors say the body of a 4-year-old disabled girl has been found in furniture in her own bedroom 10 days after her wealthy parents grabbed the country’s attention with a public campaign to find her.

Mexico state prosecutors’ spokesman Alfredo Albiter says investigators found Paulette Gebara Farah’s body Wednesday inside a piece of furniture. He gave no other details.

Gebara Farah’s parents reported the girl missing on March 22 and posted billboards and flyers around Mexico City of Paulette in a princess dress. The child had trouble walking and talking.

Authorities on Monday detained the parents and two maids after they gave contradictory statements. No one has been charged in the case.

Atom smasher will help reveal ‘the beginning’

This is fascinating stuff! The experiments carried out yesterday are a truly a remarkable achievement and a testament to science. This machine and the brilliant scientists who operate it will hopefully one day solve the age-old question: How did the universe begin? TGO

Refer to story below. Source: Associated Press

By ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS and SETH BORENSTEIN, Associated Press Writers Alexander G. Higgins And Seth Borenstein, Associated Press Writers Tue Mar 30, 9:13 pm ET

GENEVA – The world’s largest atom smasher threw together minuscule particles racing at unheard of speeds in conditions simulating those just after the Big Bang — a success that kick-started a megabillion-dollar experiment that could one day explain how the universe began.

Scientists cheered Tuesday’s historic crash of two proton beams, which produced three times more energy than researchers had created before and marked a milestone for the $10 billion Large Hadron Collider.

“This is a huge step toward unraveling Genesis Chapter 1, Verse 1 — what happened in the beginning,” physicist Michio Kaku told The Associated Press.

“This is a Genesis machine. It’ll help to recreate the most glorious event in the history of the universe.”

Tuesday’s smashup transforms the 15-year-old collider from an engineering project in test phase to the world’s largest ongoing experiment, experts say. The crash that occurred on a subatomic scale is more about shaping our understanding of how the universe was created than immediate improvements to technology in our daily lives.

The power produced will ramp up even more in the future as scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, watch for elusive particles that have been more theorized than seen on Earth.

The consequences of finding those mysterious particles could “affect our conception of who we are in the universe,” said Kaku, co-founder of string field theory and author of the book “Physics of the Impossible.”

Physicists, usually prone to caution and nuance, tripped over themselves in superlatives praising the importance of the Large Hadron Collider and the significance of its generating regular science experiments.

“This is the Jurassic Park for particle physicists,” said Phil Schewe, a spokesman for the American Institute of Physics. He called the collider a time machine. “Some of the particles they are making now or are about to make haven’t been around for 14 billion years.”

The first step in simulating the moments after the Big Bang nearly 14 billion years ago was to produce a tiny bang. The most potent force on the tiny atomic level that man has ever created came Tuesday.

Two beams of protons were sent hurtling in opposite directions toward each other in a 17-mile (27-kilometer) tunnel below the Swiss-French border — the coldest place in the universe at slightly above absolute zero. CERN used powerful superconducting magnets to force the two beams to cross; two of the protons collided, producing 7 trillion electron volts.

It’s bizarrely both a record high and a small amount of energy.

It’s a record on the atom-by-atom basis that physicists use to measure pure energy, Schewe said. By comparison, burning wood or any other chemical reaction on an atom scale produces one electron volt. Splitting a single uranium atom in a nuclear reaction produces 1 million electron volts. This produces — on an atom-by-atom scale — 7 million times more power than a single atom in a nuclear reaction, Schewe said.

The reason this is safe has to do with the amount of particles in the collider. Tuesday’s success involved just two protons making energy, instead of pounds of uranium, Schewe said.

Kaku, a professor at City College of New York, described the amount of energy produced as less than the total energy made by two mosquitoes crashing.

The successful collision was viewed by scientists watching monitors, who cheered the results.

“That’s it! They’ve had a collision,” said Oliver Buchmueller of Imperial College in London.

Across the world at the California Institute of Technology in Los Angeles, researchers and students watched reports from Switzerland.

“It marks the beginning of a new era of exploration in a new range of energy,” said physics professor Harvey Newman.

“Experiments are collecting their first physics data — historic moment here!” a scientist tweeted on CERN’s official Twitter account.

“Nature does it all the time with cosmic rays (and with higher energy), but this is the first time this is done in Laboratory!” said another tweet.

Now the beams will become stronger, more densely packed with hundreds of billions of protons, and run daily for two years to give scientists many more chances to find elusive particles. Even then, the particles are so tiny that relatively few protons will collide at each point where the beams cross in front of cathedral-sized detectors.

The data generated is expected to reveal even more about the unanswered questions of particle physics, such as the existence of antimatter and the search for the Higgs boson, a hypothetical particle — often called the God particle — that scientists theorize gives mass to other particles and thus to other objects and creatures in the universe.

The collider also may help scientists see dark matter, the strange stuff that makes up more of the universe than normal matter but has not been seen on Earth.

Those particles are the missing piece from a “jigsaw puzzle with thousands of pieces” that explain the physics of the universe, Kaku said. It could help in the elusive theory that explains everything.

“In the past, every time we unraveled a force (of physics) it changed human history,” Kaku said. “Now we’re talking about all forces.”

He compared it to events such as the Industrial Revolution, the electric and the nuclear age. Such events followed breakthroughs made by Isaac Newton, Thomas Edison and Albert Einstein.

It won’t happen immediately, maybe centuries down the line, but it could answer questions about the Big Bang, alternate universes and whether time travel is possible, Kaku said.

“It would change people’s philosophy,” he said.

The atmosphere at CERN was tense considering the collider’s launch with great fanfare on Sept. 10, 2008. Nine days after its inauguration, the project was sidetracked when a badly soldered electrical splice overheated, causing extensive damage to the massive magnets and other parts of the collider some 300 feet (100 meters) below the ground.

It cost $40 million to repair and improve the machine. Since its restart in November 2009, the collider has performed almost flawlessly and given scientists valuable data. It quickly eclipsed the next largest accelerator — the Tevatron at Fermilab near Chicago.

Future experiments will follow over the objections of some who fear they could eventually imperil Earth by creating micro black holes — subatomic versions of collapsed stars whose gravity is so strong they can suck in planets and other stars.

CERN and many scientists dismiss any threat to Earth or people, saying that any such holes would be so weak that they would vanish almost instantly. In the universe, where black holes collide, this is nothing, Kaku said.

“From Nature’s point of view, she laughs and says ‘this is a peashooter’,” Kaku said.

Bivek Sharma, a professor at the University of California at San Diego, said the images of the first crashed proton beams were beautiful.

“It’s taken us 25 years to build,” he said. “This is what it’s for. Finally the baby is delivered. Now it has to grow.”

___

Associated Press Science Writer Seth Borenstein reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Frank Jordans in Geneva and John Antczak in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

New suicide blasts kill 12 in southern Russia

More death and destruction in Russia. There is no need to think too hard to figure out what group is responsible for this… TGO

Refer to story below. Source: Associated Press

By ARSEN MOLLAYEV, Associated Press Writer Arsen Mollayev, Associated Press Writer

MAKHACHKALA, Russia – Two suicide bombers including one impersonating a police officer killed 12 people in southern Russia on Wednesday, two days after deadly suicide bombings blamed on the region’s militants tore through the Moscow subway system.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Wednesday’s blasts in the province of Dagestan may have been organized by the same militants who attacked the Moscow subway.

“I don’t rule out that this is one and the same gang,” Putin was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying at Cabinet meeting. The powerful former president previously vowed to “drag out of the sewer” the terrorists who carried out the Moscow attacks, which killed 39 and injured scores more.

Bombings and other attacks occur almost daily in Dagestan, Chechnya and Ingushetia, provinces in Russia’s North Caucasus region where government forces are struggling against a separatist Islamist insurgency.

The Moscow subway bombings were the first suicide attacks in the Russian capital in six years and shocked a country that had grown accustomed to such violence being confined to its restive southern corner. Those attacks followed a recent warning from an Islamic militant leader that the militants would bring their struggle to the heart of Russia.

On Wednesday, a suicide bomber detonated explosives when police tried to stop the bomber’s car in the town of Kizlyar near Dagestan’s border with Chechnya, Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev said in televised comments.

“Traffic police followed the car and almost caught up — at that time the blast hit,” Nurgaliyev said.

As investigators and residents gathered around the scene of the blast, a second bomber wearing a police uniform approached and set off explosives, killing the town’s police chief among others, Nurgaliyev said.

Nine police were among the dead from both blasts, and at least 23 other people were injured, authorities said. A school and police station nearby were also damaged.

Grainy cell phone video footage posted on the life.ru news portal showed the moment of the second blast, with officials wandering past a destroyed building before a loud clap rings out and smoke rises in the distance.

Police and security services are a frequent target in part because they represent the Kremlin — the militants’ ideological enemy — but also because of their heavy-handed tactics. Police have been accused of involvement in many killings, kidnappings and beatings in the region, further alienating residents.

In January in Makhachkala, Dagestan’s capital, a suicide bomber blew up an explosives-packed car at a police station, killing six officers, and in August, 24 died and more than 200 were injured when a man crashed a bomb-laden van into the police station in Nazran, Ingushetia.

The violence has continued despite Kremlin efforts to stem it. President Dmitry Medvedev, who recently said the militants had spread through the North Caucasus “like a cancerous tumor,” this year appointed a deputy prime minister to oversee the troubled region and address the root causes of terrorism, including dire poverty and corruption.

Rebels from the North Caucasus were accused of masterminding the Moscow attack, but no claims of responsibility have been made. Speculation has been rife that the attacks were retaliation for the recent police killings of high-profile militants in the North Caucasus.

Monday’s subway bombings, carried out by two women, were the first terrorist attacks in Moscow since 2004.

The first blast struck the Lubyanka station in central Moscow, beneath the headquarters of the Federal Security Service or FSB, the KGB’s main successor agency. The FSB is a symbol of power under Putin, a former KGB officer who headed the agency before his election as president in 2000.

About 45 minutes later, a second blast hit the Park Kultury station on the same subway line, which is near the renowned Gorky Park. In both cases, the bombs were detonated as the trains pulled into the stations and the doors were opening.

___

Associated Press writers David Nowak in Moscow and Sergei Venyavsky in Rostov-on-Don contributed to this report.

Hearings scheduled for suspected militia members

These are the members of the Christian militia group that were preparing to fight the Antichrist. I realize that appearances are sometimes deceiving, but I believe it’s safe to say that this bunch probably doesn’t include any potential brain surgeons. These dumb-ass people are the ones who generally tend to be the most religious. They systematically talk about God, Jesus, the Bible and generally have a limited ability to use reason and common sense. People such as these in other parts of the world are just as fanatical and just as crazed with religion, the only difference being that they are obsessed with their own religious superstitions; Allah, Muhammad and the Koran. But in the end it’s all the same… Too much religion really does make people crazy. TGO

Refer to story below. Source: Associated Press

By MIKE HOUSEHOLDER and COREY WILLIAMS, Associated Press Writers Mike Householder And Corey Williams, Associated Press Writers

DETROIT – Several members of a Christian militia that prosecutors claim plotted to kill police officers were scheduled to be in court Wednesday to determine if they will be allowed to go free on bond.

Bond hearings are scheduled for the alleged ringleader, David Brian Stone, and other members of the Hutaree militia, a small group that was preparing to fight the Antichrist.

Stone, 44, of Clayton, was among nine members arrested after a series of raids in three Midwestern states, which federal officials said they carried out after monitoring the group since last summer and learning they planned to launch their attack next month.

Each of the suspects is being held without bond and each has requested a public defender.

It all started inside a trailer home in rural Michigan, where Stone’s family gathered before bed for prayer. Years later, the private devotions had evolved into the Hutaree, a name the group’s Web site says they created to mean “Christian warrior.”

The changes in Stone’s personal theology partly destroyed his marriage, his former wife says, and prosecutors claim they later led him to hatch a plot to kill police officers — a violent act the militia hoped would touch off an uprising against the government.

“The time had come that we needed to arrest them and take them down,” U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade said Tuesday in an interview with The Associated Press.

Donna Stone, 44, said her ex-husband created the legal problems now faced by her stepson, Joshua Matthew Stone, and her 19-year-old son, David Brian Stone Jr., by involving them in a militia that grew out of his faith.

“I honestly feel, and think, their dad never told either of those boys what they were getting into,” she said. “This a bunch of garbage, these charges. There is no way my son would do these things.”

Donna Stone said she met David Brian Stone in the late 1990s in a grocery store where she worked. He courted her and soon afterward, she and her son, Sean Stetten, moved into his small trailer in Lenawee County, near the Ohio state line. The boys were raised as brothers, and David Brian Stone legally adopted Sean, whose name was changed to David Brian Stone Jr.

Both boys were home-schooled and at night, the family would pray together.

“David would preach out of the Bible,” said Donna Stone, who said she was married to David Brian Stone for about six years. “He would start at the beginning of Genesis and go to Revelations. He didn’t get into Revelations because we didn’t agree on it. David said it was supposed to be different. He had his own views. That’s when I thought it was time for me to go.”

The Hutaree Web site quotes several Bible passages and declares: “We believe that one day, as prophecy says, there will be an Anti-Christ. … Jesus wanted us to be ready to defend ourselves using the sword and stay alive using equipment.”

McQuade downplayed the role religious ideology played in the group’s alleged plans, saying the “most troubling” finding of their investigation into the Hutaree were the details of their alleged plot. Prosecutors have said the militia planned to make a false 911 call, kill responding police officers and then use a bomb to kill many more at the funeral.

“What we were focused on here is their conduct, not on their religion. And what they have talked about is being very anti-government,” McQuade said. “They fear this `new world order’ and they thought that it was their job to fight against government — the federal government in particular.”

The group was preparing to carry out an attack sometime in April, prosecutors said, after months of paramilitary training that began in 2008 and included learning how to shoot guns and make bombs. Authorities seized guns in the raids but would not say whether they found explosives.

McQuade declined to discuss other specifics, including how the group originally came to the attention of authorities or how agents learned about the alleged plans for an attack in April.

___

Associated Press writers Jeff Karoub in Detroit, and Devlin Barrett and Eileen Sullivan in Washington, contributed to this report.

Vatican defends pope in US lawsuit

Of course the Vatican will defend the Pope, that is until it gets to the point where he can no longer be defended; should that improbability ever occur. If it does get to the point where there is enough evidence and political pressure against Pope Benedict XVI that he is deposed and/or forced to stand trial, then and only then may Vatican officials decide to “throw him under the bus” and force him to resign.  This of course would  be a pitiful attempt on the part of the Holy See to save face by “demonstrating” that theirs is an honest and reputable institution and that no individual is exempt from discipline, including the Pope himself.

Whether any of the current affairs and corresponding bad publicity facing the Roman Catholic Church negatively affects the church’s popularity or following is doubtful. Yet at the very least maybe members of the clergy will be humbled if not just plain frightened enough to prevent them from committing crimes against children; an activity they’ve been practicing for centuries. TGO

Refer to story below. Source: Associated Press

By NICOLE WINFIELD, Associated Press Writer Nicole Winfield, Associated Press Writer

VATICAN CITY – Dragged deeper than ever before into the clerical sex abuse scandal, the Vatican is launching a legal defense that the church hopes will shield the pope from a lawsuit in Kentucky seeking to have him deposed.

In court documents obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press, Vatican lawyers map out a three-pronged strategy — to be formally filed in coming weeks — seeking to dismiss the suit before Benedict XVI can be questioned or secret documents subpoenaed.

Vatican lawyers plan to argue that the pope has immunity as head of state, that American bishops who oversaw abusive priests weren’t employees of the Vatican, and that a 1962 document is not the “smoking gun” that provides proof of a cover up, the documents reveal.

Three men claiming they were abused by priests brought the suit against the Holy See in 2004, accusing Rome of negligence in failing to alert police or the public about priests who molested children in Kentucky.

The preview of the legal defense, provided to the AP by a person familiar with the case, was submitted last month in the U.S. District Court in Louisville. Vatican officials declined to comment.

The case is significant because it’s the first among a handful of cases targeting Rome in the United States to reach the stage of determining whether the victims actually have a claim against the Vatican itself.

Previous cases attempting to implicate the Vatican have failed or are pending at more preliminary stages.

In the Kentucky suit, the men argued that U.S. diocesan bishops were employees of the Holy See, and that Rome was therefore responsible for their alleged wrongdoing in failing to report abuse.

They charged that a 1962 Vatican document mandated that bishops not report sex abuse cases to police. The Vatican has argued that there is nothing in the document that precluded bishops from reporting pedophiles to police.

Geneva atom smasher sets collision record

This is awesome!!! As religions continue to wallow in ignorance and superstition it’s good to know that science presses forward, always searching for a better understanding of the universe we live in and in doing so improving the human condition! TGO

Refer to story below. Source: Associated Press

By ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS, Associated Press Writer Alexander G. Higgins, Associated Press Writer

GENEVA – The world’s largest atom smasher conducted its first experiments at conditions nearing those after the Big Bang, breaking its own record for high-energy collisions with proton beams crashing into each other Tuesday at three times more force than ever before.

In a milestone for the $10 billion Large Hadron Collider’s ambitious bid to reveal details about theoretical particles and microforces, scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, collided the beams and took measurements at a combined energy level of 7 trillion electron volts.

The collisions herald a new era for researchers working on the machine in a 17-mile (27-kilometer) tunnel below the Swiss-French border at Geneva.

“That’s it! They’ve had a collision,” said Oliver Buchmueller from Imperial College in London as people closely watched monitors.

In a control room, scientists erupted with applause when the first successful collisions were confirmed. Their colleagues from around the world were tuning in by remote links to witness the new record, which surpasses the 2.36 TeV CERN recorded last year.

Dubbed the world’s largest scientific experiment, researchers hope the machine can approach on a tiny scale what happened in the first split seconds after the Big Bang, which they theorize was the creation of the universe some 14 billion years ago.

The extra energy in Geneva is expected to reveal even more about the unanswered questions of particle physics, such as the existence of antimatter and the search for the Higgs boson, a hypothetical particle that scientists theorize gives mass to other particles and thus to other objects and creatures in the universe.

Tuesday’s initial attempts at collisions were unsuccessful because problems developed with the beams, said scientists working on the massive machine. That meant the protons had to be “dumped” from the collider and new beams had to be injected.

The atmosphere at CERN was tense considering the collider’s launch with great fanfare on Sept. 10, 2008. Nine days later, the project was sidetracked when a badly soldered electrical splice overheated, causing extensive damage to the massive magnets and other parts of the collider some 300 feet (100 meters) below the ground.

It cost $40 million to repair and improve the machine. Since its restart in November 2009, the collider has performed almost flawlessly and given scientists valuable data. It quickly eclipsed the next largest accelerator — the Tevatron at Fermilab near Chicago.

Two beams of protons began 10 days ago to speed at high energy in opposite directions around the tunnel, the coldest place in the universe, at a couple of degrees above absolute zero. CERN used powerful superconducting magnets to force the two beams to cross, creating collisions and showers of particles.

“Experiments are collecting their first physics data — historic moment here!” a scientist tweeted on CERN’s official Twitter account.

“Nature does it all the time with cosmic rays (and with higher energy) but this is the first time this is done in Laboratory!” said another tweet.

When collisions become routine, the beams will be packed with hundreds of billions of protons, but the particles are so tiny that few will collide at each crossing.

The experiments will come over the objections of some people who fear they could eventually imperil Earth by creating micro black holes — subatomic versions of collapsed stars whose gravity is so strong they can suck in planets and other stars.

CERN and many scientists dismiss any threat to Earth or people on it, saying that any such holes would be so weak that they would vanish almost instantly without causing any damage.

Bivek Sharma, a professor at the University of California at San Diego, said the images of the first crashed proton beams were beautiful.

“It’s taken us 25 years to build,” he said. “This is what it’s for. Finally the baby is delivered. Now it has to grow.”

___

Associated Press Writer Frank Jordans contributed to this report.

Catholics find ties to the church tested by crisis

People (at least some) are finally seeing the Roman Catholic Church for what it really is: a deceitful and corrupt organization founded on lies and superstitions, operated by a clan of immoral individuals whose sole purpose is to increase their profits at the expense of the gullible masses who continue to support them.

For whatever it’s worth, in my opinion celibacy is not the reason priests sexually abuse children, although no question it is a totally ridiculous tradition (just as most other Church traditions are). Priests abuse children because many are sick, maladjusted individuals. Just think about it, what kind of a young man in today’s day and age with a decent upbringing, who grows up in a healthy environment, plays sports, likes girls, etc. would ever want to become a priest? Not many.

The Catholic Church is nothing more than a business, and a shady business at that. They take in millions if not billions of dollars worldwide each year, pay no taxes, and offer handouts that amount to a pittance in return. In the meantime, its “leaders” simply offer meaningless apologies and some worthless prayers, prayers that have never been and will never be heard or answered.  This is all they have to offer in return for the many lives members of their clergy have destroyed.

As I see it, individuals who still take pride in calling themselves Catholics are a disgrace to the human race. TGO

Refer to story below. Source: Associated Press

By VANESSA GERA, Associated Press Writer Vanessa Gera, Associated Press Writer Tue Mar 30, 6:30 am ET

WARSAW, Poland – An Austrian priest avoids mention of Pope Benedict XVI in his Masses. A Philadelphia woman stops going to confession, saying she now sees priests as more flawed than herself. British protesters call for the pontiff to resign.

As the faithful fill churches this Holy Week, many Roman Catholics around the world are finding their relationship to the church painfully tested by new revelations of clerical abuse and suggestions Benedict himself may have helped cover up cases in Germany and the U.S.

There are fears that for those whose commitment is already wavering, the scandal could be the final blow, and a growing chorus is clamoring for the church to embrace full transparency, take a hard line against pedophiles, and reconsider the rule of priestly celibacy.

“There’s too many victims, and too much lying from the church about what really happened,” said Martin Sherlock, a Catholic newspaper vendor in Dublin, Ireland.

Experts say the church is facing a crisis of historic proportions.

“This is the type of problem that arises really once in a century, I think, and it might even be more significant,” said Paul Collins, an Australian church historian and former priest.

Collins, 69, said the abuse controversy was not mentioned by the priest in his own church near Canberra on Palm Sunday, but that the congregation discussed it afterward outside.

“People are outraged really, they’re furious with the complete failure of the church’s leadership and their view would be that we are led by incompetent people,” Collins said.

That view was echoed by many Catholics interviewed around the world by The Associated Press in recent days, although the pope also had defenders.

One of them was John Ryan, a retired glue factory worker, who said he was impressed by the letter Benedict wrote to the Irish faithful last week in which he chastised Irish bishops.

“I was talking to my parish priest last weekend, and we were reading the pope’s letter, and he told me: This pope is the most intelligent pope we’ve had in the last thousand years,” said Ryan, 66, after a Mass in Dublin. “I couldn’t disagree with that. I don’t really think we could do better than with Benedict. I know they’re supposed to be infallible, but I’d say most Catholics today would accept that nobody’s perfect — not even the pope.”

In staunchly Catholic Poland, the homeland of the late Pope John Paul II and a place where churches are packed even on work days, the top church authority called the pope the target of an “unprecedented media attack.”

Allegations that Benedict concealed abuse “are totally groundless and it is hard to understand them in any other way than as a direct attack on the person and dignity of the pope,” Henryk Muszynski, the Primate of Poland and Archbishop of Gniezno, said Sunday.

But across the Atlantic, Jasmine Co said her faith in the church was badly shaken.

The 56-year-old nurse, who recently moved to the U.S. from the Philippines, said she has stopped confessing her sins to priests, and is turning to God directly.

“I don’t believe in confession to the priest because I don’t know if that priest is more of a sinner than I am,” Co said after attending a Palm Sunday service in central Philadelphia.

On Sunday in London, about 50 protesters staged a demonstration calling on the pope to resign — something that hasn’t happened in 700 years.

The criticism is also coming from pulpits.

Udo Fischer, an Austrian priest known for his liberal views, avoids mentioning Benedict and other church leaders by name during his Masses — at least until he sees stronger signals of remorse from the Holy See.

“We always stress that this is the church of Jesus Christ — that of the Lord Jesus and not that of the Lord Pope,” Fischer said after a Palm Sunday service in his parish in Paudorf, a village near Vienna.

Parishioners young and old squeezed into pews in Fischer’s modern and airy church clutching bunches of pussy willows blessed by the priest.

Traditionally Catholic Austria, shaken by clergy abuse claims in past years and again in recent weeks, risks a drop in already dwindling support for the church if no concrete action is taken to prevent further abuse and cover-ups, says Regina Polak of the University of Vienna’s Institute for Practical Theology.

“The situation is very fragile right now,” Polak said. “The potential for frustration is high.”

In Spain, a heavily Catholic country where secular lifestyles are eroding church attendance, a coalition of more than 100 liberal-minded lay and clergy-based groups called the Vatican’s handling of the scandal “irresponsible and insufficient,” saying it failed to “put itself firmly on the side of the victims.”

In Norway, Oslo’s Bishop Bernt Eidsvig told Catholics in a letter last week that “the culture of silence that certain bishops advised is a betrayal.”

Perhaps most ominous is the threat to the pope’s own authority.

David Gibson, author of “The Rule of Benedict,” a biography of the pope, said the criticism focusing on Benedict puts the “the mystique of the papal office” in peril.

“And above all, it diminishes his credibility, his ability to convince people of his message, to have people listen to him. It distances many Catholics, I think, even further from the institutional hierarchical church,” said Gibson.

Even as Easter Week began, anxiety was heard in many places, with people struggling to draw a line between the crimes of some priests and their own deep attachment to communities and the beliefs that sustain them.

“At this point in my life I wouldn’t leave the church for somebody else’s sins,” said Linda Faust, 56, after a Mass in Greendale, Wisconsin — the state where the late Rev. Lawrence Murphy was accused of molesting some 200 boys at a school for the deaf. Benedict, at the time Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, is linked to a decision in the 1990s not to defrock Murphy.

Instead, Faust said that she and her husband pray for the child victims, the abusive priests and the archbishops who let them transfer to other parishes.

A key focus for those seeking church reform is celibacy — a tradition dating to Christianity’s early days but only made mandatory in the 11th century. Both Collins in Australia and Bishop Geoffrey Siundu, a former Catholic priest in Kenya, said the rule should go.

Siundu now heads the Ecumenical Catholic Church of Christ in Kenya, said the celibacy rule has driven 30 other ex-priests to join his church.

Kathrin Radelmayer, 24, attended Mass in Munich, where Ratzinger’s handling of a case when he was archbishop there has been questioned. She said she was sticking with the church even though many of her friends and relatives are distancing themselves now.

“It is such a shock for the church, but the church has withstood a lot in its 2,000 years and I think that it will survive this as well,” Radelmayer said.

Marina Buendia, a 22-year-old nurse from Madrid, went to St. Peter’s Square in Rome with a friend for the Pope’s Palm Sunday Mass. She defended the church.

“The news of these cases has come to the Vatican far too late for the Vatican to be held responsible,” she said. “I think that the Vatican has accepted the problem, which is a step in the right direction. We are both very religious and feel a very strong personal bond with the pope, which would never be affected by such scandals. As young Catholics, we feel welcome and included by the church.”

At a Mass in Minneapolis, Teresa Schweitzer, a 45-year-old English teacher, said the handling of abuse cases compounds her disenchantment over other matters, including women denied leadership roles. But she drew comfort from the many Catholic priests and activists she has seen helping the poor and pursuing social justice.

“I’ve had a lot of disappointments over the years, and I’m hanging by a thread,” Schweitzer said. “I keep coming back for the community — the way we support each other in so many ways. Do you give up on that? Or do you stay in it and fight for justice? I think that’s where a lot of us are at now.”

___

Associated Press Writers Veronika Oleksyn in Paudorf, Austria, Rod McGuirk in Canberra, Australia, Tom Odula in Nairobi, Patrick Condon in Minneapolis, Ron Todt in Philadelphia, Dinesh Ramde in Milwaukee, Ian MacDougall in Oslo, Andrea M. Jarach in Munich, Monika Scislowska in Warsaw, Alice Herford in Rome, Daniel Woolls in Madrid and Jim Fitzgerald in White Plains, New York, contributed to this report.

Indian city of Hyderabad under curfew after riots

Here we go again… I realize that this sounds rather redundant, but as has been stated on this Blog on many occasions in the past, there is nothing like religion to make people crazy. The first two brief paragraphs in the article pretty much tell the story.

This world would be such a peaceful place without religion. Although I must admit, religion does have one redeeming quality; it maintains the world’s population in check. TGO

Refer to story below. Source: Associated Press

HYDERABAD, India (AFP) – Indian police on Tuesday imposed a curfew in parts of the southern city of Hyderabad, home to global IT giants Google and Microsoft, after three days of inter-religious clashes.

At least one man died in street battles between Hindu and Muslim mobs during violence triggered by arguments over putting up decorations for a religious festival, Hyderabad Police Superintendent A.K. Khan told AFP.

He said the victim, a Hindu youth, was stabbed to death on Monday and scores of people had been injured.

“We have imposed a curfew on parts of the city because we did not want the situation to escalate,” Khan said, adding that the curfew would cover about a third of the city.

Violence spread over the weekend through the Muslim-dominated “old city” of Hyderabad with crowds pelting stones at each other near the tourist landmark of the Charminar mosque.

Five smaller mosques and one Hindu temple were slightly damaged, police said, as shops, buses and cars were set on fire.

Hyderabad city has attracted major investment from global information technology and pharmaceuticals firms, and is a symbol of India’s emerging economy.

But it has also suffered from historically deep communal tension and growing unrest over the proposed division of Andhra Pradesh state into two entities, which has also lead police to impose curfews.

Frequent strikes and road and rail blockades have caused widespread disruption to business in the last year.

Analysts say the turmoil has created a sense of uncertainty among investors, though social networking group Facebook chose the city earlier this month for its first office in India.

Hyderabad police were on alert Tuesday as Hindus marked a festival celebrating the birth of the Hindu monkey god Hanuman.

Bodies of 21 babies found in China river

This is sick!!! TGO

Refer to story below. Source: Associated Press

By CHI-CHI ZHANG, Associated Press Writer Chi-chi Zhang, Associated Press Writer

BEIJING – The bodies of 21 babies, believed dumped by hospitals, have washed ashore a riverbank in eastern China, state media reported Tuesday.

Video footage indicated that the bodies — stashed in yellow plastic bags, at least one of which was marked “medical waste” — included some several months old. Some wore identification tags with their mothers’ names, their birth dates, measurements and weights. The official Xinhua News Agency said they also included fetuses.

Residents discovered the remains under a bridge in the city of Jining, Shandong province, over the weekend. Tags on the feet of eight of the babies traced them back to a hospital in Jining, according to the People’s Daily Web site. Three of them had been admitted earlier to the hospital in critical condition, the report said. It did not say when.

The other 13 bodies were unidentified. The number of girls or boys was not reported.

More girls than boys are aborted in China because of the traditional preference for male offspring, especially in rural areas. Although gender-selection abortions are illegal in China, the practice remains widespread and has led to a skewed sex ratio at birth in China with 119 males born for every 100 females. In industrialized countries, the ratio is 107 to 100.

An official from the general office from the Affiliated Hospital of Jining Medical College confirmed it was involved.

“Several of the bodies of babies with (identification) tags were from our hospital, but not all of them. The officials from the health bureau are still in the hospital doing an investigation,” said the official, who like most Chinese officials would not give his name.

Xinhua said medical staff were suspended after the discovery.

“The hospital medical staff involved have been suspended from their work during the investigation,” Zhong Haitao, a spokesman at the Jining Health Bureau, was quoted as saying.

Local residents and firefighters recovered the bodies Monday after they were discovered under a bridge spanning the Guangfu River in the outskirts of Jining, Zhong said.

Interviews with residents who discovered the bodies floating near the shore over the weekend were broadcast on the Web site of the Shandong Broadcasting Company, IQILU.com.

The footage shows bodies lying on parts of the bank of the river. Some are uncovered, and others are in bags. They are all small and covered in dirt. A leg sticks out from under one bag. At least one of the bags has “medical waste” written on it.

The IQILU.com report said the babies ranged from newborns to several months old. One of the bluish-green identification tags visible in the video indicates the baby was born in April 2009.

People’s Daily said all the bodies were babies, while Xinhua said several were fetuses.

An official from the information office of China’s Health Ministry said she was not aware of the case, while telephone calls to the Jining Health Bureau and the Shandong Health Bureau rang unanswered Tuesday.

Kuwaiti wife gets death sentence for wedding blaze

What a crazy story. It’s amazing what jealousy (which appears to have been her motivation) can drive people to do. TGO

Refer to story below. Source: Associated Press

KUWAIT CITY (AFP) – A court on Tuesday sentenced a Kuwaiti woman to death for starting a fire that killed 57 women and children at the wedding party of her husband who married another wife.

Judge Adel al-Sager read out the verdict against Nasra Yussef Mohammed al-Enezi, 23, at the court of first instance.

Death sentences in Kuwait are carried out by hanging, but it would first have to be upheld by the appeals court.

The woman who was not present in the court was found guilty of “premeditated murder and starting a fire with the intent to kill.”

Defence lawyer Zaid al-Khabbaz described the ruling as “very harsh” and vowed he would prove the woman’s innocence in the higher courts.

“The ruling was very harsh against a woman who is innocent,” Khabbaz told AFP. “It is a political judgement rather than a criminal ruling because the court came under the influence of public opinion.”

He said the public prosecution failed to “unequivocally prove that Nasra was the perpetrator. The case contained many legal loopholes.”

Khabbaz said the defence team was considering contacting international human rights organisations in its bid to save Enezi’s life.

He also said the defence team would have a better opportunity to prove her innocence in the appeals and supreme courts.

The August 15 inferno engulfed the women-and-children-only tent in minutes and triggered a stampede.

At her first hearing in October, the suspect denied the charges.

At another hearing, an Asian domestic helper testified in court that she saw Enezi pour petrol and start the fire at the wedding tent in Jahra, about 40 kilometres (25 miles) west of Kuwait City.

Her defence lawyers had alleged at the time that Enezi was two months pregnant when arrested and was “deliberately aborted” by a prison guard with the help of an Asian nurse.

Enezi was arrested on August 16, a day after 41 women and children died in the fire inside the wedding tent. The death toll later rose to 57, including several Saudis and stateless Arabs.

The incident shocked the small Gulf Arab state and Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah ordered that relatives of each victim be paid 35,000 dollars in compensation.

Enezi was initially believed to be the groom’s ex-wife but defence lawyers said she was still his wife, as men are allowed to have more than one wife in this Muslim state.

Enezi and the man have two children, both of whom are mentally handicapped.

French council advises against total ban on burqa

The last paragraph in this article has the key statement. Given the choice, I don’t believe women would wear these goofy-looking costumes. The problem is that Islamic women have never been free to wear what they want as they have been treated as slaves by their male counterparts.

These women need to ‘get with the program’ and show some skin. TGO

Refer to brief article below. Source: Associated Press

PARIS – France’s highest administrative body has concluded that a total ban on Islamic face-covering veils in public risks being found illegal and advises against it.

The Council of State also says in a report on the veil that even a limited ban would be difficult to enforce.

The council said Tuesday that a total ban risks violating the French Constitution as well as the European human rights convention.

Prime Minister Francois Fillon earlier this year asked the council to study the legal possibilities of the ban. A parliamentary committee has called for a partial ban on veils like the burqa.

The issue is divisive, with many conservatives such as President Nicolas Sarkozy favoring a ban, while others say women should be free to wear what they want.