Afternoon Posting.
- Turkey names new military chiefs after row.Turkey's government has appointed generals to two top posts, ending a stand-off with the military.General Isik Kosaner will be the new overall head of the Turkish armed forces, while General Erdal Ceylanoglu becomes head of land forces.More on this topic here.
- Seized ships being inspected in southern İskenderun port.Turkish bomb squads are in the process of inspecting three ships that have been docked at the Mediterranean port of İskenderun since Saturday in order to defuse any possible bombs or unexploded devices that may have been left on board.Oruç said they would be able to board the ships once the inspections are completed. When asked why bomb disposal units were sent to inspect the vessels, he responded, “Anything is to be expected of those who killed nine people.”I've got news for you "Israelis don't plant bombs or use suicide bombers but guess who does!
- India Races to Contain Oil after Ships Collide!Indian Coast Guard Tries to Thwart Oil Spilling from Stricken Cargo Ship that Collided with Another Vessel in Arabian Sea.The Panamanian-registered MSC Chitra smashed into the St. Kitts-registered MV-Khalijia-II on Saturday near Mumbai's Jawahar Lal Nehru port. The accident caused the MSC Chitra to run aground and list heavily.
- HT:WeaselZippers.Texas GOP Gov. Rick Perry Greets Obama on Tarmac, Immediately Hands Letter to Valerie Jarrett Warning of “Dire Border Threat,” Request for 1,000 More Troops.You think Dear Leader got the message? Yeah, me neither.
- Spinal-Fluid Test Is Found to Predict Alzheimer’s.Researchers report that a spinal-fluid test can be 100 percent accurate in identifying patients with significant memory loss who are on their way to developing Alzheimer’s disease.
- Russia, U.S. Chase Jet in Hijack Drill.Military Officers Tested How They Could Track an International Terrorist Hijacking over the Pacific Ocean. In a historic first for Cold War adversaries, U.S., Canadian and Russian military officers directed fighter jets and ground controllers to test how well they could track an international terrorist hijacking over the Pacific Ocean.
- Video:Dem Analyst: FLOTUS Spain Vacation ‘Absolutely Tone Deaf’.“Most Americans are just not going to relate to going to Spain with however many friends she has with her… staying at this exclusive hotel, spending all this money, and it is extremely tone-deaf. Politically, it is absolutely tone-deaf. I can’t even believe that she has done it, frankly. It is not what people do in their first term.”Does a leech have feelings?"
- Wyclef Jean Owes IRS Over $5M in Back Taxes, Says Report.Wyclef Jean announced last week that he is running for president of Haiti. But before the Haitian musician and hip hop producer enters politics, he should probably pay his alleged back taxes here in the U.S. - all $5,278,430.10 worth.He's bound to be a great politician in Haiti.
- Iran to expunge 'dirty' dollar and euro reserves.Iran announced plans Monday to get rid of its dollar and euro reserves in response to the latest U.N. sanctions over its contested nuclear program."To fight sanctions, we will remove the dollar and euro from our foreign exchange basket and will replace them with (the Iranian) rial and the currency of any country cooperating with us,"Rahimi also called Australians "a bunch of cattlemen."
- Confessions of a Porn MILF.Ten years ago, I was one of adult film’s hottest stars. Now I’m 28—and dismissed by directors as over the hill. How did I go from “barely legal” to “older woman” so fast?But I am still at my core the girl who changed her major in college to business, and now I have a new goal, too: one day I am going to law school. I think my years in the industry will make me a great lawyer. Porn has helped me there."Why do i get the feeling someone will end up getting screwed?"
- Video: As Russian Fires Rage, Forest Rangers Fume! Ivan Yevangulov sits wearily on a bench in front of the forestry workers' headquarters in this small village in Russia's Nizhny Novgorod Oblast. Yevangulov, who is in his mid-40s, has worked for two decades as a ranger protecting these once-lush forests filled with pine and birch trees. But now, he says, he's helpless to stop uncontrollable wildfires from destroying the forest where he's spent his entire career. "The fire is two to four kilometers long and the flames are reaching 35 to 40 meters high," Yevangulov says. "Just imagine. And it spreads quickly. It's not possible to escape on foot. It's moving so quickly that it's impossible to stop it. The fire engines that were here had to turn around and leave."
- Defense Secretary Robert Gates confirmed that he has proposed eliminating the U.S. Joint Forces Command.
- Russia reduces grain harvest forecast.Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has warned this year's grain harvest - hit by fire and drought - will be worse than previously forecast.The harvest is now expected to be 65 million tonnes, but could be as low as 60 million tonnes, Mr Putin said.
- Muslim mob attacks Christians in Bekasi, dozens are injured.Denied the right to meet in church, Ethnic Christian Bataks are again subject to violence once. Police is accused of just looking on. Many women are attacked.Hundreds of Muslim extremists and residents in Bekasi, 25 kilometres east of Jakarta, attacked dozens of members of a Protestant Church. A mob of about 800 angry Muslims stormed an open field in Ciketing Asem, Bekasi, Sunday morning, where Christians were holding Mass. After taking over the place, they roughly threw the Christians out.Although present at the site, police just stood idly by, looking at what was happening, forming two lines to create a protective corridor that allowed the Christians to walk away. However, some of the latter were chased and beaten. “Several of them were wounded,” a churchgoer told AsiaNews. “Several of them were women”.
- Rape threat nixes Khadr confessions: lawyer.Jackson noted the interrogator testified to telling Khadr how a young detainee in American custody had been raped by other inmates, possibly to death.The incident involving former U.S. Army sergeant Joshua Claus occurred at Bagram prison in Afghanistan soon after American forces captured a badly wounded Khadr eight years ago."He was 15 years old when Interrogator 1 (Claus) told him that story," Jackson said.
- Fury in China as female babies grow breasts after drinking milk laced with hormones.The official China Daily newspaper reported today that medical tests indicated that the level of hormones in three 'test case' girls, ranging in age from four months to 15 months, exceeded those found in the average adult woman.All the babies who showed symptoms of the phenomenon were fed the same baby formula.
- How public worker pensions are too rich for New York's - and America's - blood.States and local governments will soon find themselves up against a painful tradeoff: between closing schools and libraries and cutting other essential services or paying inflated pensions to 50-year-old retirees.
- Thousands of miles, 859 days... and 50,000 mosquito bites: Briton becomes first man to walk length of the Amazon.The former British army captain, who says he is both elated and tired, ended the epic 6,000 mile trek when he reached the Atlantic Ocean in Northern Brazil today.Stafford walked through 3 countries; Peru, Colombia and Brazil repeatedly risking his life in his quest to raise awareness of the destruction of the Amazon rainforest.
- Agent: 'Naomi Knew She Was Getting Diamonds'.Naomi Campbell's ex-agent says the supermodel told her she was going to be given diamonds by the former Liberian president Charles Taylor.Carole White told Taylor's war crimes trial at The Hague that the warlord was mildly "flirting" with Campbell during a charity meal hosted by Nelson Mandela in 1997 in South Africa - and a promise of diamonds was made.
- Why I'm Not Hiring.When you add it all up, it costs $74,000 to put $44,000 in Sally's pocket and to give her $12,000 in benefits.
- Obama Helps Buy Kenya Abortion and Sharia Law with 23 Million of Our Dollars.I know our president probably doesn’t think $23 million is a lot of money. Not only is he personally wealthy, but money means nothing when it’s America’s money. Obama has shown a strong desire to fundamentally change America. But now it appears he’s using our money to fundamentally change his father’s country too.
- Zanzibar Muslims, Officials Stop Church Building, Erect Mosque.Islamists demolish foundation; police withhold crime report from court.NAIROBI, Kenya, Aug. 6 (Compass Direct News) - On an island off the coast of East Africa where the local government limits the ability of Christians to obtain land, officials in one town have colluded with area Muslims to erect a mosque in place of a planned church building.
- Obama's True Black Royalty: I’d be curious to know how many vacations the average black person has taken in the last 18 months. The eight vacations the Obamas have taken are more vacations taken by half the black population of America in the same timeframe! I know of NO working person who has taken EIGHT vacations in EIGHTEEN months.When you take that many vacations, vacationing is your JOB.Michelle’s diplomatic mission (*wink*) is to implement a new diversity program for Spain.To do so Michelle is joined by 33 members of the NAACP and the New Black Panthers, as a show of solidarity for Spain, and flanked by an all-white detachment of the Secret Service. Black Power: Under white supervision.
- PICTURE SPECIAL: Haunting images of Biblical devastation after floods tear Pakistan apart.Stranded amid the ruins of their flood-wrecked homes, these Pakistani villagers face a desperate fight for survival. Many have been left marooned on tiny islands formed when the deluge swept away virtually everything in its path. Others are trapped in impromptu refugee camps waiting for aid helicopters to bring them the most basic of provision.The UN warned today that the floods could affect more people than the world's last three great disasters combined. It said the toll could exceed the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the 2005 Kashmir earthquake and the 2010 Haiti earthquake.
- HT:Sheikyermami.Fareed's Jihad.Fareed Zakaria in Newsweek promotes pro-Sharia Ground Zero mosque imam as a “moderate”.Slick, sly, smarmy and dangerous: Fareed Zakaria, son of an imam, is the prototype of the false ‘moderate Muslim’, a dyed in the wool stealth jihadist.Why is he not locked up in Gitmo?As a recent parody had it, would the KKK be allowed to build a “shrine of reconciliation” on the site of the black Baptist church bombed by racists in the early Sixties? Would Michael Bloomberg or Fareed Zakaria really have no problem with that?
- Deep impact market: the race to acquire meteorites.THE bottle had gone and Mario Di Martino had a sick feeling that their secret was out. It was early 2010: he and his team were staring down into the Kamil crater in the Egyptian desert, miles from the nearest settlement.Just a year before, Di Martino of the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics in Turin, Italy, and colleagues had written their names on paper, placed it inside an empty bottle and thrown it into the crater. The reason? They were the first team to visit the site of a huge meteorite impact 5000 years ago. Few craters on Earth are so perfectly preserved. "We realised we were in front of a true rarity."
- Wildfires turn Russia red: 700 die a day in Moscow as deadly smog doubles mortality rate.The number of deaths in Moscow is twice as high as usual because of smog suffocating the city from ongoing wildfires nearby, the Russian capital's chief health official said today.The Interfax news agency quoted Andrei Seltsovky as saying there were now 1,300 bodies in city morgues, which have a 1,500 capacity.He said this was twice the usual number for this time of year, and in part blamed the sweltering heat and the polluting smog hanging over the capital from wildfires burning in the south and west of the country.Video:Fire nears animal shelter in Yegoryevsk district,Russia.Video:Thick coat and artificial snow save polar bears from Moscow heat.
- Obama Salazar clubs endagered Pacific Walrus allowing oil drilling Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge.The impact of Climate Change impact on wildlife such as walruses just a got a club to the face from President Obama and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. The Administration is allowing oil seismic testing, the first test in drilling, in the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) area of the highly ecologically sensitive Chukchi Sea... Drilling begins in January.
- Fungus threatens extinction of some U.S. bats: study.The infection is spreading quickly across the Northeastern United States and Canada and is likely to cause the regional extinction of the little brown myotis bat, the researchers report in the journal Science.
- Of fire and brimstone. Churchgoers, strippers protest one another in Coshocton County.Every weekend for the last four years, Dunfee and members of his ministry have stood watch over George's joint, taking up residence in the right of way with signs, video cameras and bullhorns in hand. They videotape customers' license plates and post them online, and they try to save the souls of anyone who comes and goes.Now, the dancers have turned the tables, so to speak. Fed up with the tactics of Dunfee and his flock, they say they have finally accepted his constant invitation to come to church.It's just that they've come wearing see-through shorts and toting Super Soakers.The women don't come here, after all, without their own version of religion. They bring signs with Scriptures written in neon colors:Matthew 7:15: Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing.
- Ht:TheJawaReport.Internet Virginity Sale.(London, England) Recently, a British guy and an Irish guy became locked in an eBay bidding battle to win the precious flower of an 18-year-old Hungarian girl. The auction was halted by eBay, due to sensitivities, and ultimately completed via email.The pretty blonde, identified only as Miss Spring, promised her virginity to the Brit for £200,000 (approx. $320,000).Interestingly, the price for a maidenhead has dramatically increased since British lesbian Rosie Reid completed a deal for her virginity for $20,000 back in 2004. Reid, arguably the first of the high-profile virginity sellers on the Internet, even promised to throw in a free massage. Heh.My caption : "Just think it costs £4,000 for a hymen replacement operation on the NHS,even with flights and hotel costs .....hmmm would be a pretty good investment ..heh?"
