bin laden died

Washington (CNN) -- U.S. intelligence officers are digging through a cache of computer equipment and data taken in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in hopes it will yield leads on other al Qaeda leaders and plots, according to American officials.
White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan said the U.S. commandos who stormed the northern Pakistan compound where bin Laden had been holed up took "whatever material we thought was appropriate and what was needed."
"We are trying to determine exactly the worth of whatever information we might have been able to pick up," Brennan said Monday. He would disclose no details, but added, "This is a very important time to continue to prosecute this effort against al Qaeda."
A U.S. counterterrorism official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said the haul inclued electronics and storage media such as CDs and DVDs. That official said the cache was larger than expected, since bin Laden was communicating by courier and his compound had no phone or internet service.
Investigators will be looking first for any sign of attacks being planned, then for anything that leads them to other top operatives of the terrorist network, the counterterrorism official said. A task force was being set up at the CIA to comb through the evidence seized in the raid, according to a senior intelligence official who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity.
Bin Laden was the mastermind of al Qaeda's September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, which killed nearly 3,000 people and triggered a war in Afghanistan that U.S. and allied troops are still fighting. But the terrorist network dispersed after the U.S. invasion that followed the 9/11 attacks, while others inspired by the group have taken up the cause with little or no direct connection to the group.
Former CIA Director Michael Hayden told CNN's "The Situation Room" that the "diffuse" nature of al Qaeda is among its strengths.

"Keep in mind this is a network, not a hierarchy," Hayden said. "So you've got still very active, very talented cells around the world."

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/05/03/bin.laden.intelligence/index.html?hpt=T1

Reflection

The reflection on our class discussion is that no one was right or wrong I think everyone had good points of views and came with good facts. I believe that this immigration issue will never be solved but we should work on methods on improving how our immigration is worked out in our country, we should be more organized and keep more track on the immigrants in out country instead of living in fear of them and spending money on something that will never come to an end.

leggooo 3-2

oil vs $

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- President Obama repeated his call Tuesday for an end to $4 billion in oil industry tax breaks as gas prices approach $4 a gallon and after a top lawmaker indicated a possible shift in Republican policy.

In a letter to congressional leaders, the president said the oil industry is profitable enough without the tax incentives and that the money should be spent on alternative energy sources and conservation.

"CEOs of the major oil companies have made it clear that high oil prices provide more than enough profit motive to invest in domestic production without special tax breaks," said Obama. "As we work together to reduce our deficits, we simply can't afford these wasteful subsidies."

This week those profits are going to be front and center. BP (BP) is expected to report earnings on Wednesday. Exxon (XOM, Fortune 500) is slated to announce its results on Thursday. Some analysts expect the company's profits to jump 50% from last year. Chevron (CVX, Fortune 500) is scheduled to make its earnings announcement on Friday.

The oil industry and many of its supporters in Congress have long argued that the tax breaks encourage domestic oil production and provide jobs for millions of Americans. Republicans in particular have resisted efforts to eliminate these tax breaks, something many Democrats have been trying to do since at least 2008.

But on Monday night, Speaker of the House John Boehner indicated he might be open to taking some of those breaks off the table.

Drill baby drill won't lower gas prices

"I don't think the big oil companies need to have the oil depletion allowances, but for small, independent oil and gas producers, if they didn't have this, there'd be even less exploration in America than there is today," Boehner said on ABC's World News Tonight. "It's certainly something we need to be looking at."

Depletion allowances let oil companies treat the oil in the ground as capital equipment, and they can write off a certain percentage for each barrel that comes out.

On Tuesday the speaker appeared to backtrack from those comments, with an aid telling CNN that "what the President has suggested so far would simply raise taxes and increase the price at the pump."
Nonetheless, Obama took the chance to pounce, saying in his letter that he was "heartened that Speaker Boehner yesterday expressed openness to eliminating these tax subsidies."

This all comes as the price of gasoline surges above $4 a gallon in many states, making it increasingly difficult politically to defend Big Oil.

As gas prices approach their record highs set in 2008 they are threatening to derail the nation's nascent economic recovery.

The tax breaks in question

The Obama administration is targeting nine tax breaks, according to a paper from the left-leaning Center for American Progress. Four account for the lion's share of the money:
Domestic manufacturing tax deduction: This is the largest single tax break, and would save over $1.7 billion a year if eliminated.
The tax deduction, passed in 2004, is designed to keep factories in the United States. Companies that manufacture here can deduct 9% of their income from operations that are attributed to domestic production.
But some question if that incentive is really appropriate for oil companies. "What are they going to do, move the oil field to the North Sea," said one staffer at the Center for American Progress said in an interview earlier this year.
No, but higher costs in the United States may make them move the drill rigs to the North Sea or some other place.
Eliminating the tax breaks "would actually discourage new energy projects and new hiring in one of the nation's most dependable job-creating industries," the American Petroleum Institute said in a statement at the time, noting the industry currently supports over 9 million jobs.

The percentage depletion allowance: This lets oil companies deduct about 15% of the money generated from a well from its taxes. Eliminating it would save about $1 billion a year.

The deduction essentially lets oil companies treat oil in the ground as capital equipment. For any industry, the value of that equipment can be written down each year.
But critics say oil in the ground is not capital equipment, but a national resource that the oil companies are simply using for their own profit.
The foreign tax credit: This provision gives companies a credit for any taxes they pay to other countries. Altering this tax credit would save about $850 million a year.
Foreign governments can collect money from oil companies through royalties -- fees for depleting their national resources -- and income taxes.
A royalty would be deducted as a cost of doing business, and would likely shave about 30% off a company's tax bill. Categorized as income tax, it is 100% deductible.
Foreign governments long ago grew wise to the U.S. tax code. To reduce costs for everyone involved and attract business, they agreed to call some royalties income taxes, allowing oil companies to take the 100% deduction on a bigger slice of their bill.
Intangible drilling costs: This lets the industry write off about $780 million a year for things like wages, fuel, repairs and hauling costs.

All industries get to write off the costs of doing business, but they must take it over the life of an investment. The oil industry gets to take the drilling credit in the first yearhttp://money.cnn.com/2011/04/26/news/economy/oil_tax_breaks_obama/index.htm

Artest speaking up on health

In the Human Factor, we profile inspiring figures who've confronted a challenge, tapped their inner strength and found resilience they didn’t know they possessed.   This week Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta talks to LA Lakers forward Ron Artest, who became notorious for storming  the stands in pursuit of a fan. Today he champions counseling, saying more people need access to mental health care



http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2011/04/13/human-factor-ron-artest-says-im-an-example/

GOP

Narco war next door

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqh3do6RBXo&oref=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fresults%3Fsearch_query%3Dvanguard%2Bnarco%2Bwar%2Bnext%2Bdoor%26aq%3D0&has_verified=1

Mexican drug trafficking

Although Mexico has been a producer and transit route for illegal drugs for generations, the country now finds itself in a pitched battle with powerful and well-financed drug cartels.
The government says more than 34,600 have been killed in the four years since President Felipe Calderón took office and threw the federal police and military at the cartels, with the toll for 2010, 15,237, the heaviest yet.
Mexican and American officials, crediting American training of the military and what they consider to be an increasingly professional federal police force, point out that more than half of the 37 most wanted crime bosses announced last year have been captured or killed. The government also maintains that the last quarter of 2010 showed a decline in the pace of killings.
But the public does not seem to believe it. A poll released Jan. 11 by Mexico’s national statistics institute found that more than 70 percent of respondents believed the country’s security had worsened since 2009.
Both Mexican and American officials, who say the two countries have never worked closer in fighting crime, are facing growing pressure to prove that their strategy is working. With Republicans now in control of the House, the Obama administration will face renewed scrutiny to account for the $1.4 billion, multiyear Merida Initiative, the cornerstone of American aid in Mexico’s drug fight.
The violence has in some cases spilled over the border and become a source of mounting concern in states in the Southwest. And in June 2010 a Justice Department report described a "high and increasing" availability of methamphetamine mainly because of large-scale drug production in Mexico.
In October 2010, the government announced that it was preparing a plan to radically alter the nation’s police forces, hoping not only to instill a trust the public has never had in them but also to choke off a critical source of manpower for organized crime. It would all but do away with the nation’s 2,200 local police departments and place their duties under a “unified command.”
In February 2011, the Pentagon began flying high-altitude, unarmed drones over Mexican skies in hopes of collecting information to turn over to Mexican law enforcement agencies. A Homeland Security drone was said to have helped Mexican authorities find several suspects linked to the Feb. 15 killing of Jaime Zapata, a United States Immigration and Customs EnforcementImmigration agent.http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/mexico/drug_trafficking/index.html

war in libya

As allied forces enter their sixth day of strikes over Libya - so far failing to stop Moamar Gaddafi's tanks and ground forces from shelling rebel-held towns - questions are being asked about the future of the strategy.

Allied warplanes are now attacking regime forces in built-up areas in the rebel strongholds of Misrata and Ajdabiya, but fighting is continuing on the ground.
Some analysts believe the rebels do not have what it takes to defeat Mr Gaddafi by themselves, and warn that an allied ground invasion of Libya is almost a certainty.
But the US is hosing down any ideas of putting troops on the ground and fending off suggestions it is already at war with Libya.
In a briefing that stuck carefully to the official script, US Rear Admiral Gerard Hueber would not explain what the coalition would do next if Mr Gaddafi's forces could not be beaten from air.
"Can you achieve your mission of 1973 UN Security Council resolution without ground forces?" a reporter asked.
"It's my primary focus today to discuss the current operations that we are in, and I would not project or discuss future military operations," Rear Admiral Hueber said.
"The impression we get from you is it's gotten worse since the allies started bombing. Is that accurate?" another reporter asked.
"Our mandate now is to enforce the no-fly zone and to allow humanitarian assistance to be available to the Libyan people," Rear Admiral Hueber replied.
When asked whether or not the US was at war with Libya, US State Department spokesman Mark Toner also had trouble answering.
"We are, uh, implementing UN Security Council resolution 1973. It is clearly a combat operation - a combat mission," he said.
"As the president made very clear, there will be no US ground forces involved in this."
Whatever the mission ends up becoming, the US hopes to hand over responsibility for command of the mission as early as this weekend.

Tough words

As well as scrutiny from the general public, US president Barack Obama is having a tough time with his political adversaries over his handling of the situation in Libya.
Mr Obama touched down in the US late on Wednesday afternoon (local time), officially ending his five-day, three-nation tour of Latin America.
But he had mail waiting for him - a tough-worded letter from the most senior Republican, house speaker John Boehner, demanding more details on the president's military mission.
Mr Boehner said he was troubled by the lack of details and wanted to know the benchmark for success.
He wrote: "Is it an acceptable outcome for Gaddafi to remain in power after the military effort concludes in Libya? If not, how will he be removed?"
Mr Obama's deputy national security adviser, Denis McDonough, responded.
"We think it's a good opportunity to continue that conversation with Congress," Mr McDonough said.
"The bottom line and the president's view on this is it's important to bring the country along."
Earlier, key Democratic senators held a conference call with reporters to defend the president's methods as cautious and thoughtful.
They said the future of US ties with emerging Muslim leaders was at stake.
Secretary of state Hillary Clinton's message for the Libyan leader is that the crisis can end if he steps down.
"It will be up to Gaddafi and his insiders to determine what their next steps are," she said.
"But we would certainly encourage that they would make the right decision and not only institute a real comprehensive ceasefire but withdraw from the cities and military actions and prepare for a transition that does not include Colonel Gaddafi."
That was also the suggestion from US defence secretary Robert Gates, who was making an unannounced visit to Cairo.
"I think there are any number of possible outcomes here and no-one's in a position to predict them," he said.

Battles rage

As pressure mounts on Mr Obama, Western allies continue their air strikes over Libya.
Coalition forces say Mr Gaddafi's air force has now been crippled, but they have so far failed to stop his tanks and ground forces from shelling rebel-held towns.
Several explosions have been heard in the capital, Tripoli, while battles continue to rage in the towns of Misrata and Ajdabiya.
Libyan officials have reportedly taken journalists to a Tripoli hospital to see what they said were the charred bodies of 18 military personnel and civilians killed by Western warplanes or missiles overnight.
Western air strikes in Misrata temporarily silenced an artillery bombardment from pro-Gaddafi forces, but later a doctor reported government forces were closing in on and firing at a local hospital struggling to help hundreds of wounded.
Other residents say a "massacre" has been taking place in the town, where snipers have been targeting civilians.
The siege of Misrata, now weeks old, has become increasingly desperate with water cut off for days and food running out, doctors operating on patients in hospital corridors and many of the wounded left untreated or simply turned away.
Pro-Gaddafi forces have also resumed their bombardment of Zintan, another rebel-held town in west Libya, and tanks were expected there.
Meanwhile, six NATO nations have agreed to contribute up to 16 vessels to prevent Mr Gaddafi from bringing in weapons from the Mediterranean, with Turkey offering five warships and a submarine despite its reservations about the military action.
The NATO mission will have the means to intercept and board suspicious ships and the authority to fire a warning shot across the bow of vessels trying to slip away, a NATO official said.


http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/03/24/3172835.htm?section=justin

Government vs japan

By 9:30 a.m. local time on March 22, the emergency shelter at Saitama Super Arena, just north of Tokyo, had reached its maximum capacity of 500 volunteers. The other 1,500 do-gooders wanting to help the displaced people of Futaba, the town closest to ground zero of the earthquake- and tsunami-damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, were turned away by volunteers holding hand-printed cardboard signs that said "We are sorry, but we cannot take any more volunteers. Please try again tomorrow."
Inside the arena, which normally hosts rock concerts, some 5,000 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear-plant refugees, including those from Futaba, were trying to carve out a normal routine in their makeshift homes, composed of squares of blankets and mats. There to help them were the volunteers, who handed out free bananas, blankets, diapers, toys and other necessities for people who escaped with little more than the clothes on their backs. Some volunteers held signs presenting complimentary day-care services, while others offered free shampoos, blow-dries and shaves at local beauty parlors. "It's the least I can do," said Hideyuki Tanaka, a stylist with dyed blond hair who held a sign offering free salon services. "I don't have any other skills except for this, so I thought I could make this small contribution." By noon, some 60 evacuees had taken advantage of free services at his Maggie Friends beauty salon. (See TIME's exclusive pictures of the devastation in Japan.)
The Saitama emergency shelter is a model of organization and goodwill, with masking-tape arrows pointing the way to the bath, food and clothing lines. Bowing, smiling volunteers shepherd dazed-looking evacuees from one line to another. But in northeastern Japan, where an estimated 21,000 are dead or missing and another 350,000 are homeless as of March 22, the country's labyrinthine bureaucracy has seriously hampered efforts to deliver aid. Some shelters still have no heat, while others are rationing rice balls. In a country that prides itself on efficiency, the fact that 11 days after the earthquake, displaced people are still hungry and, even if they have cars, cannot get food because of a shortage of fuel is a shocking turn of events. The aid bottlenecks are all the more surprising given that most Japanese anticipated that their government would respond quickly. "There are very high expectations of the government here, and civil society is struggling to find its place," says Randy Martin, director of global emergency operations for Mercy Corps, a U.S.-based NGO. "The most important thing is to get the supply chain going again."
In other natural disasters that I've covered, steady streams of local and international aid have usually converged upon the stricken area within four days of the event. This has happened even in developing-world countries with far less infrastructure than Japan has. But in Tohoku, as Japan's northeast is called, aid has trickled in agonizingly slowly, despite the mobilization of 100,000 Japanese soldiers for the relief effort. It took more than a week after the earthquake, for example, for the region's highways, which are reserved for emergency vehicles, to be filled with the kind of aid convoys that typically race to disaster scenes. (See Japan's history of massive earthquakes.)
One major bottleneck has been Japan's fondness for red tape. "In special times, you have to do things in a special way," says Kensuke Kobayashi, an IBM employee in Tokyo who has tried to organize relief efforts to Tohoku from the Japanese capital. "But in Japan, there is a legal wall that stops everything." Japanese shipping company NYK offered to provide a container ship for helicopters to land on when ferrying in relief supplies to coastal areas. But the government rejected the offer because the NYK shipmates lacked the proper licenses to help with such work. After some wrangling, volunteer foreign doctors were told that because they didn't have Japanese medical licenses, they could conduct only the "minimum necessary medical procedures" in the disaster zone.
Some medicine donations from overseas haven't reached the many elderly suffering in the earthquake's aftermath because Japanese regulatory agencies have not yet given the drugs approval. Local logistics companies have complained - off the record, for fear of angering the bureaucrats whom they depend on for future licensing - of days-long waits for permission from the central government to deliver donated goods. Only when their trucks get the magic pass can they start moving toward Tohoku. Until then, the boxes of relief goods, some of which were donated just hours after the earthquake and tsunami hit, sit in Tokyo warehouses.
See how to help Japan's earthquake and tsunami victims.
See TIME's complete coverage of the Japan earthquake.

Then there's fuel, which is in plentiful supply in southern Japan but all but impossible to procure easily in the north without special permits. To get even a 2.6 gal. (10 L) ration, cars in Tohoku often have to wait for half a day. When TIME wanted to accompany an NGO helicopter delivering aid to one stricken area, we were given permission on one condition: that TIME hire a car to drive the aid supplies to the airfield. The NGO's cars were out of gas and had no way to get the relief goods to the chopper. Such shortages have been repeated writ large, hampering even the efforts of major organizations like the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, which was one of the first groups on the scene.
There have been some extenuating circumstances. The radiation leaking from the Fukushima plant has meant that aid vehicles have to take a wide berth around a region contaminated by higher-than-normal radiation levels. Nevertheless, there are other ways to Tohoku. Indeed, one of the first organizations to start relief convoys in the northeast was none other than the yakuza, Japan's famous gangsters. Unconstrained by reams of regulations, the underworld representatives, whose business tentacles extend to the trucking business, simply started delivering aid on their own, without government approval. (See pictures of objects found in the rubble of Japan's quake.)
Citizen volunteers have been actively discouraged by the government from jumping into their cars and delivering aid themselves. That's because after the 1995 Kobe earthquake, roads into the area were jam-packed with well-meaning citizens whose endeavors hindered larger aid efforts. But there's a fine balance to be struck between not overwhelming damaged infrastructure and leaving it worryingly underutilized. And while U.S. military aid sorties conducted from American bases in Japan have been accepted by the Japanese government, other international organizations have been quietly told they're not needed - a stunning response given the magnitude of the disaster. "Everything has to go through government emergency centers," says one international NGO representative in Tokyo. "But they're very slow to respond and can't keep up with the flow of aid. They should let us get in there and start getting relief to people instead of worrying about paperwork." (Comment on this story.)
Meanwhile, back at Saitama Super Arena, Kouhei Nagatsuka, 18, ponders the strange fact that he just graduated from high school without a proper ceremony in Futaba, the town next to where the Fukushima plant is located. On March 11, the earthquake destroyed his home - or so he has heard from a friend who went back to the ravaged town to take a look. Nagatsuka and his family were first herded into an emergency shelter for earthquake and tsunami victims. Then, just as they were contemplating trying to salvage what they could from their home, a Fukushima reactor began spewing radioactive material into the air. Four days ago, they arrived as nuclear-plant refugees to Saitama. (See more pictures of the aftermath of Japan's earthquake.)
As Nagatsuka scrounged for warm clothes for his four siblings in a heap of donated goods, news that steam and smoke were again pouring from two of the plant's damaged reactors spread among the displaced Futaba residents. (By Tuesday evening, plant engineers said they had laid power cables to all six of the facility's nuclear reactors, though it's not clear whether the electricity can be turned on or whether pumps needed to cool down overheating reactors will work.) Already, reports of vegetables, water and milk tainted by small levels of radiation from the leaking nuclear plant have raised concerns about the accident's long-term effects - even if engineers are able to tame the reactors in the coming days and weeks. "I'm afraid I'll never be able to go back there," says Nagatsuka, who spent time volunteering when he was in high school. "I was supposed to start my adult life, but I guess I'll have to do that someplace else."http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20110322/wl_time/08599206077300

bully = FAIL !!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqtN258HNzE

Tomahawk missile being launched toward Libya

Class Reflection !

My reflection on our class discussion is that everyone came with very good facts and information . No one really disagreed on others opinions , our class was on the same page that something in our education system  has to change because if it stay's the same our nation will go no where and wont be seen like we take our education serious.

U.S stricks in Libya

WASHINGTON – U.S. and British ships and submarines launched the first phase of a missile assault on Libyan air defenses Saturday and a senior American defense official said it was believed substantial damage was inflicted.
In the strikes, 112 Tomahawk cruise missiles were fired at more than 20 coastal targets to clear the way for air patrols to ground Libya's air force.
While U.S. defense officials cautioned that it was too early to fully gauge the impact of the onslaught, the official said that given the precision targeting of the Navy's cruise missiles, they felt that Libya's air defenses suffered a good deal of damage.
The official spoke on grounds of anonymity because the ongoing mission.
In announcing the mission during a visit to Brazil, President Barack Obama said he was reluctant to resort to force but was convinced it was necessary to save the lives of civilians. He reiterated that he would not send American ground troops to Libya.
"We cannot stand idly by when a tyrant tells his people there will be no mercy," he said in Brasilia.
While U.S. defense officials said it was too early to gauge the impact of the onslaught, one senior official said that given the precision targeting of the Navy's cruise missiles, they believe Libya's air defenses suffered a good deal of damage.
It was clear the U.S. intended to limit its role in the Libya intervention, focusing first on disabling or otherwise silencing Libyan air defenses, and then leaving it to European and perhaps Arab countries to enforce a no-fly zone over the North African nation.

Navy Vice Adm. William E. Gortney, director of the Pentagon's Joint Staff, told reporters the cruise missile assault was the "leading edge" of a coalition campaign dubbed Operation Odyssey Dawn. Its aim: prevent Moammar Gadhafi's forces from inflicting more violence on civilians -- particularly in and around the rebel stronghold of Benghazi -- and degrading the Libyan military's ability to contest a no-fly zone.

"This is not an outcome the U.S. or any of our partners sought," Obama said from Brazil, where he is starting a five-day visit to Latin America. "Our consensus was strong, and our resolve is clear. The people of Libya must be protected, and in the absence of an immediate end to the violence against civilians our coalition is prepared to act, and to act with urgency."

A chief target of Saturday's cruise missile attack was Libya's SA-5 surface-to-air missiles, which are considered a moderate threat to some allied aircraft. Libya's overall air defenses are based on older Soviet technology but Gortney called them capable and a potential threat to allied aircraft.
Also targeted: early warning radars and unspecified communications facilities, Gortney said. The U.S. military has extensive recent experience in such combat missions; U.S. Air Force and Navy aircraft repeatedly attacked Iraq's air defenses during the 1990s while enforcing a no-fly zone over Iraq's Kurdish north.
Cruise missiles are the weapon of first choice in such campaigns; they do not put pilots at risk, and they use navigational technologies that provide good precision.
The first Tomahawk cruise missiles struck at 3 p.m. EDT, Gortney said, after a one-hour flight from the U.S. and British vessels on station in the Mediterranean.
They were fired from five U.S. ships — the guided-missile destroyers USS Stout and USS Barry, and three submarines, USS Providence, USS Scranton and USS Florida.
The U.S. has at least 11 naval vessels in the Mediterranean, including three submarines, two destroyers, two amphibious warfare ships and the USS Mount Whitney, a command-and-control vessel that is the flagship of the Navy's 6th Fleet. Also in the area are Navy P-3 and EP-3 surveillance aircraft, officials said.
Gortney initially had said that it could take as long as 12 hours to assess the effectiveness of Saturday's strikes. Then a high-altitude Global Hawk unmanned surveillance plane would overfly the target areas to get a more precise view, the admiral said. He would not say how long the attacks on Libyan air defenses would last, but he stressed that Saturday's assault with cruise missiles was the first phase of a multi-stage mission.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who was scheduled to fly to Russia on Saturday afternoon to begin a week-long overseas trip, postponed his departure for 24 hours. Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said Gates decided he should remain in Washington to monitor developments in Libya at the outset of U.S. strikes.
Gates had been skeptical of getting involved in Libya's civil war, telling Congress earlier this month that taking out Libya's air defenses was tantamount to war. Others have worried that the mission could put the U.S. on a slippery slope to deeper involvement in yet another Muslim country — on top of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Hours after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton attended an international conference in Paris that endorsed military action against Gadhafi, the U.S. and Britain kicked off their attacks.
At a news conference in Paris, Clinton said Gadhafi had left the world no choice but to intervene urgently and forcefully to protect further loss of civilian life.
"We have every reason to fear that, left unchecked, Gadhafi would commit unspeakable atrocities," she told reporters.
Clinton said there was no evidence that Gadhafi's forces were respecting an alleged cease-fire they proclaimed and the time for action was now.
"Our assessment is that the aggressive action by Gadhafi's forces continues in many parts of the country," she said. "We have seen no real effort on the part of the Gadhafi forces to abide by a cease-fire."
In addition to the three submarines and two destroyers, the U.S. Navy ships in the Mediterranean include two amphibious warships, the USS Kearsarge and USS Ponce, and a command-and-control ship, the USS Mount Whitney. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_us_libya

Videos of the earthquake !!!

An 8.9 magnitude earthquake off the coast of Northeast Japan spawned a ferocious tsunami that's caused massive destruction; flattening whole cities, starting raging fires, and killing hundreds.
We've gathered some videos that show the scope of the disaster, and you can also see The Atlantic's collection of photos of the quake.
Footage of the tsunami quickly enveloping the city of Sendai, Japan. Officials say hundreds are dead, and the death toll is rising. As the sun rose on Japan, the rescue operations began:




http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_theenvoy/20110311/ts_yblog_theenvoy/watch-raw-footage-of-the-japan-earthquake-and-tsunami

the heat still suck !!

Clinton vs libya

Washington (CNN) -- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, testifying Thursday before the House Appropriations Committee, said, "We are suspending our relationships with the existing Libyan embassy, so we expect them to end operating as the embassy of Libya."
A senior administration official, speaking on background because he was not authorized to speak on the record, told CNN, "This is recognition that Gadhafi is no longer the legitimate leader of Libya and therefore his representatives should leave."
The official says this means that "the Libyan embassy must shut down."
Clinton's statement appears to stop short of saying officially that the U.S. is severing diplomatic relations with Libya.

Clinton: Libya will be held accountable

RELATED TOPICS

• Libya
• International Relations
• Hillary Clinton

The existing Libyan ambassador, Ali Aujali, has gone over to the opposition. The Libyan government said Aujali no longer represents Libya and named the charge d'affaires as ambassador. The United States, however, has refused to recognize the newly-named ambassador.
Clinton warned against unilateral action against Libya, warning it would have "unforeseeable consequences."

But Clinton acknowledged there is ambivalence in the world community about intervention.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/03/10/libya.embassy/index.html

$ $ Facebook $ $

(CNN) -- Depending on who you talk to, Facebook is valued at more than $50 billion -- maybe even as much as $65 billion.
Forbes puts the social networking site's market value higher than Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Target, Sony, Nike and the major automakers.
But CNN spoke to some observers who aren't so bullish.
"Facebook's not worth $50 billion. I mean, it's just not," according to Douglas Rushkoff, an author and respected teacher on new media. "What people think is that Facebook in the future might be worth more than $50 billion, but for Facebook to be worth more than $50 billion it would have to become a permanent fixture."
Launched by Mark Zuckerberg just seven years ago in his Harvard dorm room, Facebook has been nothing less than a sensation. The site has almost 600 million worldwide users and enough influence to make its founder Time magazine's Person of the Year. Facebook is even getting credit for helping to topple regimes in the Middle East.
The recent hit movie, "The Social Network," certainly promoted the idea that Facebook is worth a fortune. The film itself has earned more than $220 million dollars in theaters worldwide.
But the $50 billion price tag came from a far less flashy source: Goldman Sachs. The investment firm reportedly paid $500 million for 1% of Facebook. And $500 million is 1% of $50 billion.
"No one is offering $50 billion at all for Facebook," said Lise Buyer of Class Five Group, a Silicon Valley firm that advises companies on going public.
Buyer is an analyst who makes her living helping investors figure out what companies, especially internet firms, are worth. And she says no one in Silicon Valley really has any idea about Facebook's value, even though they all concede it could be a lot.
"Oh, Facebook is definitely worth something because it's a company that's collected more personal information about 600 million ... individuals than any company has ever had access to before, and marketers love that information," she said.
Facebook's real fortune
That's the real fortune of Facebook: access to all that information about consumers. What music and movies we like, where we shop, how much we spend, what we eat, where we vacation, and who our friends are.
"We are the thing that Facebook has of value. We are the only thing they have to sell," said Rushkoff, who teaches media studies at NYU and the New School University.
Most Facebook users probably think they are customers of the site. Think again, Rushkoff says.
"The user's not the customer of Facebook. The user's the product," he said. "The customer at Facebook is the people paying Facebook, and who's paying Facebook? Market research firms and advertisers."
Zuckerberg, the boyish CEO, has long said the goal of Facebook is to connect people. Facebook also has repeatedly and publicly spoken about its commitment to protecting the privacy of its users.
But analysts say the judicious use of that information must inevitably form the economic backbone of the company, because it allows targeted ads to be put in front of the most likely buyers with unprecedented accuracy.
For Facebook, that's the potential gold mine -- and the risk. Because even the company does not know how the public will respond if Facebook tries to cash in on all that data.
"It's one thing for me to send that [information] to my friends," Buyer said. "It's something else for someone else to try to use that information to market to me. Now maybe, folks who will be marketed to will be happy to have ads from their real interests. Maybe they won't. We'll see."
To become a permanent fixture on the internet, Facebook must transform itself from a wildly popular social network into a money-making machine. And analysts say that will be tricky.
"When Facebook goes over that line ... as it will have to justify its valuation, and starts selling us and who we are to its real customers is when people are going to get that itchy feeling," Rushkoff said. "When you look at the ways in which people are actually committed to Facebook, it's not so strong that they can't move somewhere else."
Mystery finances
The company's finances are something of a mystery. No one outside of Facebook knows what the company is truly worth, or how much revenue it's bringing in.
"They're a private company so they don't really have to share what they are making or not making with us...or how they're making it," Rushkoff said.
And with ongoing legal battles over whether Zuckerberg truly had the original idea for Facebook, no one close to the financial records is talking.
When CNN contacted Goldman Sachs to ask why they thought it was worth investing $500 million in Facebook, the firm politely said, "No comment."
Facebook passed along the following statement: "We're focused on creating a useful service and building our business for the long term."
That long-term future may be Facebook's biggest challenge. Remember MySpace?
The Facebook's seven-year history is an eternity on the Internet, where other dreamers are hard at work, especially in Silicon Valley, trying to knock them off the top.
"Those of us who still mention Facebook ten years from now, will mention it in the same sentence as AOL, and Friendster, and MySpace," Rushkoff said. "As yet another thing that we thought was invincible and turned out to be another passing fad."

Will his dire prediction prove to be right? That ultimately will depend on how many people remain friends of Facebook as it tries to realize its full value, and how many do not.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/social.media/03/08/facebook.overvalued/index.html

Lincoln's racial views

By MATTHEW BARAKAT, Associated Press Matthew Barakat, Associated Press – Fri Mar 4, 4:04 pm ET

McLEAN, Va. – Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address has inspired Americans for generations, but consider his jarring remarks in 1862 to a White House audience of free blacks, urging them to leave the U.S. and settle in Central America.
"For the sake of your race, you should sacrifice something of your present comfort for the purpose of being as grand in that respect as the white people," Lincoln said, promoting his idea of colonization: resettling blacks in foreign countries on the belief that whites and blacks could not coexist in the same nation.
Lincoln went on to say that free blacks who envisioned a permanent life in the United States were being "selfish" and he promoted Central America as an ideal location "especially because of the similarity of climate with your native land — thus being suited to your physical condition."
As the nation celebrates the 150th anniversary of Lincoln's first inauguration Friday, a new book by a researcher at George Mason University in Fairfax makes the case that Lincoln was even more committed to colonizing blacks than previously known. The book, "Colonization After Emancipation," is based in part on newly uncovered documents that authors Philip Magness and Sebastian Page found at the British National Archives outside London and in the U.S. National Archives.
In an interview, Magness said he thinks the documents he uncovered reveal Lincoln's complexity.
"It makes his life more interesting, his racial legacy more controversial," said Magness, who is also an adjuct professor at American University.
Lincoln's views about colonization are well known among historians, even if they don't make it into most schoolbooks. Lincoln even referred to colonization in the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, his September 1862 warning to the South that he would free all slaves in Southern territory if the rebellion continued. Unlike some others, Lincoln always promoted a voluntary colonization, rather than forcing blacks to leave.
But historians differ on whether Lincoln moved away from colonization after he issued the official Emancipation Proclamation on Jan. 1, 1863, or whether he continued to support it.
Magness and Page's book offers evidence that Lincoln continued to support colonization, engaging in secret diplomacy with the British to establish a colony in British Honduras, now Belize.
Among the records found at the British archives is an 1863 order from Lincoln granting a British agent permission to recruit volunteers for a Belize colony.
"He didn't let colonization die off. He became very active in promoting it in the private sphere, through diplomatic channels," Magness said. He surmises that Lincoln grew weary of the controversy that surrounded colonization efforts, which had become enmeshed in scandal and were criticized by many abolitionists.
As late as 1864, Magness found a notation that Lincoln asked the attorney general whether he could continue to receive counsel from James Mitchell, his colonization commissioner, even after Congress had eliminated funding for Mitchell's office.
Illinois' state historian, Tom Schwartz, who is also a research director at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library in Springfield, Ill., said that while historians differ, there is ample evidence that Lincoln's views evolved away from colonization in the final two years of the Civil War.
Lincoln gave several speeches referring to the rights blacks had earned as they enlisted in the Union Army, for instance. And presidential secretary John Hay wrote in July 1864 that Lincoln had "sloughed off" colonization.
"Most of the evidence points to the idea that Lincoln is looking at other ways" to resolve the transition from slavery besides colonization at the end of his presidency, Schwartz said.
Lincoln is the not the only president whose views on race relations and slavery were more complex and less idealistic than children's storybook histories suggest. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were both slaveholders despite misgivings. Washington freed his slaves when he died.
"Washington, because he wanted to keep the union, knew he had to ignore the slavery problem because it would have torn the country apart, said James Rees, director of Washington's Mount Vernon estate.
"It's tempting to wish he had tried. The nation had more chance of dealing with slavery with Washington than with anyone else," Rees said, noting the esteem in which Washington was held in both the North and the South.
Magness said views on Lincoln can be strongly held and often divergent. He noted that people have sought to use Lincoln's legacy to support all manner of political policy agendas since the day he was assassinated. And nobody can claim definitive knowledge of Lincoln's own views, especially on a topic as complex as race relations.
"He never had a chance to complete his vision. Lincoln's racial views were evolving at the time of his death," Magness said. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_lincoln_colonization

RFK assassin denied

Coalinga, California (CNN) -- A California state panel on Wednesday denied parole for Sirhan B. Sirhan, saying the convicted assassin of Robert F. Kennedy hasn't demonstrated an understanding of the "magnitude" of his crimes.
Commissioner Mike Prizmich of the California Board of Parole Hearings told Sirhan that he failed to meet the state's criteria for suitability for parole and added that he failed to seek self-help program and his behavoir was immature.
In response, Sirhan sought to interrupt Prizmich, who admonished the inmate. Prizmich, however, said Sirhan would be eligible for parole again in five years.
"At this hearing, you're interrupting me time and time again, demonstrating a lack of control and impulsitivity," Prizmich told Sirhan.
Sirhan made his first appearance before a California parole board since 2000, supported by two psychologists' reports saying he no longer poses a threat to society, his attorney said.
"While Sirhan Sirhan's statements at his parole hearing will likely be the source of continuing public interest due to the infamous nature of the crime, there is little he can say that is likely to sway the parole board and convince them that he deserves to be released from prison," said Robert Mintz, a former federal prosecutor.
Weisel, who shared with CNN his prepared statement to the parole board, said he was hit by a stray bullet in the abdomen "on that terrible evening" a quarter past midnight on June 5, 1968, after Kennedy had just won the California primary in his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.

2009: RFK assassination remembered

RELATED TOPICS

• Sirhan Sirhan
• Robert F. Kennedy
• Criminal Sentencing and Punishment

Now 73, Weisel, of Healdsburg, California, was an ABC News associate director at the time of the shooting.
"I'm advised that two reputable psychologists, one representing the state of California and the other from Harvard University, have concluded, after examining him -- Sirhan Sirhan -- that if he is granted parole, he would not be a threat to himself and others, and the community at large. If this is a fact and the board is inclined to grant him parole after him being in prison for nearly 43 years, I would not be opposed to the decision," Weisel said in a telephone interview with CNN.
Dahle declined to comment on Weisel's statement or on the psychologists' reports to the parole board, but he said Weisel's scheduled appearance would mark the first time during Sirhan's imprisonment that a surviving witness voiced no objection to his possible parole -- at least since 1970.
Prior to 1970, "there's no record of the proceedings and I don't know if anyone showed up," Dahle said.
"It's fairly unusual. It's not common," Dahle added with respect to victims attending a parole hearing and not objecting to the prisoner being released. "We don't get many, at least in cases in Los Angeles County -- where we get victims or victims' next of kin coming to cases. It's an expensive proposition."
Wednesday will mark Sirhan's 14th parole hearing. It's scheduled to be held in the Pleasant Valley State Prison in Coalinga, California, which is 200 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles.
Members of the Kennedy family and their representatives didn't return messages or e-mails seeking a comment.
Sirhan's attorney, William Pepper, an international human rights attorney and a barrister with offices in New York and London, said he and Sirhan were "very grateful" for Weisel's statement.
Sirhan was convicted of killing Kennedy and wounding five other people in the shooting in the kitchen pantry of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. The hotel was later razed and a public school now occupies the site.
He was convicted of first-degree murder and five counts of assault with attempt to commit murder.
Four of those five surviving victims are alive, including Weisel. The others are Paul Schrade, a Kennedy family friend and former UAW Union regional leader; Ira Goldstein, a former radio journalist; and Elizabeth Y. Evans, a friend of the late Pierre Salinger.
A Palestinian Christian who was born in Jerusalem and whose parents brought him and his siblings to America in the 1950s, Sirhan killed Kennedy because of statements the New York senator made about the United States sending fighter jets to aid Israel, prosecutors argued during Sirhan's 1969 trial.
In 1968, Senator Kennedy, who was a younger brother of assassinated President John F. Kennedy, is whose administration he also served as attorney general, was a leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination against Vice President Hubert Humphrey and Sen. Eugene McCarthy. Kennedy was shot only minutes after a hotel ballroom speech televised live to American household, in which he claimed victory over McCarthy in the California primary.
The shooting, in the hotel's kitchen pantry, was not captured by any cameras.
Sirhan was the only person arrested in the shooting.
Sirhan has Jordanian citizenship but never became a U.S. citizen, so if the parole board were to release him, he would be deemed an illegal immigrant and deported to Jordan, where he has extended family, his attorney said.
Sirhan's younger brother, Munir, 63, continues to live in the southern California community where the Sirhan family siblings were raised, Munir Sirhan said.
Sirhan Sirhan "has maintained a good relationship with his brother and he would love to live with this brother in Pasadena, but that's very unlikely because of his immigration status," Pepper said.
Daniel Brown, an associate clinical professor in psychology at Harvard Medical School, has submitted a statement to the parole board after interviewing Sirhan for 60 hours over a three-year period, Pepper said.
"The report is part of a sealed file, but I can say that Sirhan does not have any violent tendency that should be regarded as a threat to the community," Pepper said.
Brown's report "confirms Sirhan's legitimacy of the loss of his memory," including in the pantry during the shooting and in moments of his life in the year prior to the Kennedy slaying, Pepper said.
"Sirhan has at various times taken responsibility (for the Robert Kennedy assassination), but the actual fact is that he doesn't remember what happened in the pantry at all. But because everyone around there told him he did it and he had a pistol and he did fire that pistol, he came to believe that he was actually guilty," Pepper said.
Sirhan shows no sign of mental illness and has demonstrated remorse for the shootings, Pepper said. Sirhan has been "free of any disciplinary rulings against him" in prison, Pepper said.
"He's said no day of his life goes by where he doesn't have remorse and deep regret that this took place and the role he played in this thing," Pepper said. "He's not schizophrenic or psychotic, and he has not shown any history of violence during incarceration."
Pepper said he became Sirhan's pro bono attorney in the fall of 2007 after he learned of the results of an audio analysis conducted on a sound track of the Kennedy shooting. The audio recording, made 40 feet away from the crime scene by free-lance newspaper reporter Stanislaw Pruszynski, is the only known recording of the gunshots in that June 1968 assassination.
Pepper said he believes the Pruszynski recording is evidence showing that there was a second gun firing in addition to Sirhan's Iver-Johnson handgun. The tape was uncovered in 2004 by CNN's Brad Johnson, who had the recording independently examined by two audio analysts, Spence Whitehead in Atlanta, Georgia, and Philip Van Praag in Tucson, Arizona. Johnson reported on their separate findings for CNN's Backstory in June 2009.
But the parole board won't hear arguments on the second-gun evidence, Pepper said. Rather, the parole panel will focus on Sirhan's suitability for parole, he said.
The Pruszynski recording "clearly showed that 13 shots were fired in the pantry, and Sirhan's gun had only eight shots, so it definitely means there was a second shooter," Pepper said.
But Weisel, joined by authorities who have dismissed the second-gun assertion, said he was convinced that Sirhan was a lone gunman.
"I've seen so many theories after 43 years. Please -- I think you can have a conspiracy in a dictatorship and some countries, but I don't think so in a democracy or our country where there is freedom of speech," Weisel said.
However, another shooting victim sees it differently than Weisel: Schrade. He is a Kennedy friend who was shot in the forehead while standing immediately behind Robert Kennedy in the pantry.
In 2008, Schrade, now 86, told CNN that he believes evidence clearly shows Sirhan was not the only person who fired shots in that assassination. "We have proof that the second shooter was behind us and off to our right. Sirhan was off to the left and in front of us," Schrade told CNN anchor Adrian Finighan.
Schrade declined to comment to CNN this week about Wednesday's scheduled parole hearing for Sirhan.
In a 2006 interview on CNN's Larry King Live, Weisel recounted how Kennedy and he were shot.
"Well, I was right behind Bobby. We were following him to go downstairs and speak to another group of people. And I was going with our cameraman down to show him where to plug in. And so we followed Bobby, and the shooting started," Weisel said.
He said after Kennedy was struck three times, he was shot once in the stomach.
Dahle, the deputy district attorney, said Sirhan wasn't present at his last two parole hearings, in 2003 and 2006, which Dahle attended.
Pepper said he was chairman of Kennedy's citizens campaign in Westchester County, New York, during his successful 1964 bid for the U.S. Senate, and Pepper's duties included taking Kennedy's sisters and mother to political events. He said he was also a volunteer in the successful 1960 presidential campaign of Kennedy's brother, John Kennedy.
In 1999, Pepper represented the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King's family in a wrongful death lawsuit concerning King's April 4, 1968, murder and successfully persuaded a Memphis, Tennessee, jury to find Lloyd Jowers responsible as an accomplice in the King assassination.
If Sirhan is denied parole, Pepper said he would consider appealing the matter to the courts.

Sirhan was initially sentenced to death, but three years later that sentence was commuted by California courts to life imprisonment plus six months to 14 years in prison, to run concurrently.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/03/02/california.sirhan.parole.hearing/index.html

RFK assassin denied parole

$53 billion high-speed rail plan

Washington (CNN) -- The Obama administration is proposing to spend $53 billion over the next six years to help promote the construction of a national high-speed, intercity passenger rail network, Vice President Joe Biden announced Tuesday.

The proposal represents a significant expansion of the $10.5 billion already spent on high-speed rail expansion since Obama entered office, including $8 billion in the 2009 economic stimulus package.

U.S. bullet trains: Coming soon?

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters potential funding sources for the plan will be outlined in the president's proposed budget, which is scheduled to be released next week.



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President Barack Obama said in last month's State of the Union address that he was setting a goal of giving 80 percent of Americans access to high-speed rail within 25 years.

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The proposed new investment -- including $8 billion in the upcoming fiscal year -- would accompany a streamlined application process for cities, states, and private companies seeking federal grants and loans to develop railway capacity.

"There are key places where we cannot afford to sacrifice as a nation -- one of which is infrastructure," Biden said in a written statement. There is a pressing need "to invest in a modern rail system that will help connect communities, reduce congestion and create quality, skilled manufacturing jobs that cannot be outsourced."

Biden, who commuted regularly by train between Washington and his home state of Delaware during a 36-year Senate tenure, has been a prominent advocate for railway travel and, more specifically, Amtrak.

A new high-speed rail investment, however, may face a cool reception in the new, more Republican Congress.

GOP leaders have called for more spending cuts in the wake of spiraling federal deficits.

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Obama has also called for more fiscal responsibility, proposing in his State of the Union address a five-year freeze on non-security discretionary spending.

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