Quite a makeover for newly sworn House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, as her national image morphed from leader of the San Francisco liberal elite to Italian Catholic mom from Baltimore.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/artic...WASHINGTON (AP) — President Bush has vetoed just one bill in nearly six years in office. That soon may change.
As newly empowered Democrats forge ahead with their own agenda, some items may make it to his desk as prime candidates for veto.
One might be a recycled version of the stem-cell funding bill that drew Bush’s lone veto last July. Other possibilities include measures that would raise the minimum wage without offsetting tax breaks for businesses, fully put in place the September 11 commission’s recommendations and curb oil-industry subsidies.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/01...ISRAEL has drawn up secret plans to destroy Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities with tactical nuclear weapons.
Two Israeli air force squadrons are training to blow up an Iranian facility using low-yield nuclear “bunker-busters”, according to several Israeli military sources.
The attack would be the first with nuclear weapons since 1945, when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Israeli weapons would each have a force equivalent to one-fifteenth of the Hiroshima bomb.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/articl...LONDON (Reuters) - British finance minister Gordon Brown has condemned the way Saddam Hussein was hanged as “deplorable” — in contrast to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has so far stayed silent on the execution.
Brown, expected to take over as premier when Blair steps down this year, said: “Now that we know the full picture of what happened, we can sum this up as a deplorable set of events.”
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070107...NEW YORK - Comedian Chevy Chase depicted the late Gerald Ford as a bumbling and accident-prone president 30 years ago on “Saturday Night Live,” but he says the two shared a more serious link.
Former First Lady Betty Ford’s courageous decision to talk publicly about her problems with alcohol inspired him to get treated for his addiction to painkillers, Chase wrote in an essay published in Saturday’s editions of The New York Times.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070107...CHICAGO - A man has been charged with trying to extort $1.5 million from Oprah Winfrey by threatening to release recorded telephone conversations he claimed would hurt her reputation, according to the FBI and published reports.
http://news.yahoo.com ... winfrey_extortionBAGHDAD, Iraq - In the opening battle of a major drive to tame the violent capital, the Iraqi army reported it killed 30 militants Saturday in a firefight in a Sunni insurgent stronghold just north of the heavily fortified Green Zone.
http://news.yahoo.com ... iraq
A Canadian company says it has developed a system that can
automatically detect multiple kinds of security threats passing through
airport X-ray machines, from weapons and their components to liquid
explosives.
Using optical-recognition technology explored for Cold War weapons
systems, Optosecurity Inc. has built a device that attaches to X-ray
machines and identifies guns, knives and weapons components, to bolster
the work of human screeners. Tests in airports have been planned for
2007.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad has said Tehran is ready to talk to the US - once it changes its attitude.
Source: BBC NEWS | Middle East | Iran will talk to ‘corrected’ US
US President George W Bush is on his way to Asia, for his first foreign trip since the defeat his Republican party suffered in the mid-term elections.
Link to BBC NEWS | Americas | Bush tests standing on Asia visit
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061111/ap_on_en_ot/love_that_pynchon
Zak Smith is a painter, a rebel and an Ivy Leaguer, a Yale University graduate with a green mohawk, an apartment of wall-to-wall illustrations and a passion for comics, classic novels — and Thomas Pynchon.
About 10 years ago, Smith had a feeling that he should try Pynchon’s “Gravity’s Rainbow,” an instinct confirmed from the very first page. Smith didn’t just read the book, he reread it, marked it up and went back to it so many times that his paperback copy is held together by duct tape.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061109/sc_nm/space_saturn_dc
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A colossal, swirling storm with a well-developed eye is churning at Saturn’s south pole, the first time a truly hurricane-like storm has been detected on a planet other than Earth,
NASA images showed on Thursday.
The storm on the giant, ringed planet is about 5,000 miles
wide, measuring roughly two thirds the diameter of Earth, with winds howling clockwise at 350 mph (550 kph).
Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, which swirls counterclockwise, is far bigger, but is less like a hurricane because it lacks the typical eye and eye wall.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061111/ap_on_hi_te/japan_playstation3
Sony’s PlayStation 3 made its highly anticipated debut in Japan to long lines on Saturday, with local stores selling out their supplies of the video game console in a pattern that’s expected to be repeated around the world.
Throngs of people lined up for hours around Bic Camera, an electronics retailer in downtown Tokyo, to get their hands on one of the consoles. The enthusiasm was so great, clerks with megaphones asked the crowd to stop pushing, warning that all sales would end if there were any injuries.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/TV/11/11/andy.griffith.ap/index.html?ere...
MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin (AP) — Forget the small-town belief in letting bygones be bygones.
The star of “The Andy Griffith Show,” who portrayed the sheriff of the fictional town of Mayberry, has sued a Wisconsin man who unsuccessfully ran for the Grant County post after legally changing his name to Andrew Jackson Griffith.
The lawsuit, filed November 3 in U.S. District Court in Madison, alleges that William Harold Fenrick, 42, violated trademark and copyright laws, as well as the privacy of actor Andy Samuel Griffith, when he used his new name to promote his candidacy for sheriff in southwestern Wisconsin.
The TOW anti-tank missile of Iran-Contra fame was introduced for service in the US Army in 1970. Current versions are capable of penetrating more than 30 inches of armor, or “any 1990s tank,” at a maximum range of more than 3,000 meters. It can be fired by infantrymen using a tripod, as well from vehicles and helicopters, and can launch 3 missiles in 90 seconds. It is primarily used in antitank warfare, and is a command to line of sight, wire-guided weapon. TOW is used to engage and destroy enemy armored vehicles, primarily tanks.
