The goodness of goats

By ALAN CROWELL
Staff Writer
Kennebec Journal

FAIRFIELD -- Angelo and Dawn Pirri got into the goat-farming business in a small way.
With four growing daughters, Dawn Pirri liked the idea of having a fresh, healthy source of milk, so when a friend was willing to part with two of her own goats, she jumped at the chance.

That was back in January 2000. From there, things just sort of mushroomed, said Pirri, who owns the Sherman Farm in Fairfield with her husband, Angelo.

The family now milks 14 goats and has 15 kids, selling raw milk and soft cheese at the Waterville Farmers' Market as well as replacement does for breeders and male goats for meat.

And for the first time since getting into the goat business as a hobby, the Perri family turned a financial corner last year, going into the black by about $2,000.

"It is huge that we can actually make a profit," Dawn Pirri said.

Goat farming is increasing in Maine, according to the University of Maine Cooperative Extension, because the market for goat milk and cheese is growing and also because the animals are relatively easy to care for.

Goats are easy to please when it comes to pasture land -- they actually prefer eating leaves over grass -- and they require much less land or equipment than cows or many other farm animals.

The rising interest in goat farming is one reason the cooperative extension has organized a series of tours of goat farms.

Saturday, the Sherman Farm, named after the Pirri family's first farm, in Rhode Island, was the first stop on that tour.

Since moving to Fairfield from Rhode Island a little over two years ago, Dawn Pirri has watched as the local market has grown for her family's fresh milk and cheese.

Pirri said she also understands why more people are raising the animals.

"Goats are just terrific. Out of all the livestock animals, they have to be the most personable," said Pirri.

A goat will follow you around like a dog and they seem to know when you are upset, she said.

Then there is the cute factor.

"It is almost impossible not to fall in love with a baby goat," she said.

There is also something special about intimately knowing where your food is coming from, raising the animal yourself and then using the products it provides, she said.

Richard Brzozowski, a University of Maine Extension educator, said goat farming is increasing in Maine but still faces some significant hurdles.

One obstacle is the lack of a commercial slaughtering facility in the state. There are not enough goats being raised to support a commercial facility now, he said.

But as the number of people farming goats increases, it will approach the critical mass needed to support such a plant.

While goats are raised for their meat in many parts of the world, including Europe, Africa and the Middle East, their meat is still relatively unknown in the United States, despite the fact that it is low in fat and calories compared to beef.

Ethnic groups that prize goat meat are creating a market that more Mainers are taking advantage of.

Much of the goat meat to satisfy markets in the New York or Boston area comes from other countries and other parts of the world, said Brzozowski.

Maine farmers have the advantage of being closer and able to provide a fresher product, he said.

And he said the market for goat meat will increase as more people try it.

Before anybody gets into the goat-farming business, however, he suggested they first investigate the market in their area and then develop a plan to meet those needs.

The six remaining tours will take place in farms in Warren, Bradford, Newry, Starks, Dresden and Saco. More information is available at www.umext.maine.edu, or by calling (800) 287-1471.

This was found at Maine Today.

82 Inmates Cleared but Still Held at Guantanamo

U.S. Cites Difficulty Deporting Detainees

By Craig Whitlock
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, April 29, 2007; A01



LONDON -- More than a fifth of the approximately 385 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have been cleared for release but may have to wait months or years for their freedom because U.S. officials are finding it increasingly difficult to line up places to send them, according to Bush administration officials and defense lawyers.

Since February, the Pentagon has notified about 85 inmates or their attorneys that they are eligible to leave after being cleared by military review panels. But only a handful have gone home, including a Moroccan and an Afghan who were released Tuesday. Eighty-two remain at Guantanamo and face indefinite waits as U.S. officials struggle to figure out when and where to deport them, and under what conditions.

The delays illustrate how much harder it will be to empty the prison at Guantanamo than it was to fill it after it opened in January 2002 to detain fighters captured in Afghanistan and terrorism suspects captured overseas.

In many cases, the prisoners' countries do not want them back. Yemen, for instance, has balked at accepting some of the 106 Yemeni nationals at Guantanamo by challenging the legality of their citizenship.

Another major obstacle: U.S. laws that prevent the deportation of people to countries where they could face torture or other human rights abuses, as in the case of 17 Chinese Muslim separatists who have been cleared for release but fear they could be executed for political reasons if returned to China.

Compounding the problem are persistent refusals by the United States, its European allies and other countries to grant asylum to prisoners who are stateless or have no place to go.

"In general, most countries simply do not want to help," said John B. Bellinger III, legal adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. "Countries believe this is not their problem. They think they didn't contribute to Guantanamo, and therefore they don't have to be part of the solution."

A case in point is Ahmed Belbacha, 37, an Algerian who worked as a hotel waiter in Britain but has been locked up at Guantanamo for five years. The Pentagon has alleged that Belbacha met al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden twice and received weapons training in Afghanistan. His attorneys dispute the charges and say he was rounded up with other innocents in Pakistan in early 2002.

On Feb. 22, without explanation, the Pentagon notified Belbacha's lawyers in London that he had been approved to leave Guantanamo. Despite entreaties from the State Department, however, the British government has refused to accept Belbacha and five other immigrants who had lived in the country, because they lack British citizenship.

This month, Clint Williamson, the State Department's ambassador for war crimes, visited Algiers to discuss possible arrangements for the return of two dozen Algerians who remain at Guantanamo, including Belbacha, but no breakthroughs were reported. That country has been slow to accept its citizens.

Zachary Katznelson, a lawyer who represents Belbacha and several other prisoners who have been cleared, said defense attorneys have tried to speed up the process by contacting foreign governments to see if there are any specific obstacles to the return of their clients. In many cases, he said, the prisoners and officials in their home countries are willing to approve the transfer, but the delays persist.

"The holdup is a mystery to me, frankly," said Katznelson, senior counsel for Reprieve, a British legal defense fund. "If the U.S. has cleared these people and they want to go back, I don't understand why they can't just put them on a plane."

Other prisoner advocates said the Bush administration has made its task more difficult by exaggerating the threat posed by most Guantanamo inmates -- officials repeatedly called them "the worst of the worst" -- and refusing to acknowledge mistaken detentions.

Foreign governments have also questioned why U.S. officials should expect other countries to pitch in, given that Washington won't offer asylum to detainees either.

"This is a problem of our own creation, and yet we expect other countries to shoulder the entire burden of a solution," said Ben Wizner, staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union. "There needs to be a worldwide solution here. The U.S. has to bear some of that burden. It can't simply expect its partners and allies to absorb all its detainees."

The 82 cleared prisoners who remain stuck in limbo come from 16 countries in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia, according to defense attorneys who have received official notification of their clients' status.

The 17 Chinese Muslim separatists make up the largest contingent. Other countries with multiple prisoners awaiting release include Afghanistan, Sudan, Tunisia, Uzbekistan and Yemen.

The Pentagon has reduced the population at Guantanamo by roughly half since the peak of 680 people in May 2003, generally by sending prisoners back to their native countries. But U.S. officials said progress has slowed because of the complexity of the remaining cases.

Of the roughly 385 still incarcerated, U.S. officials said they intend to eventually put 60 to 80 on trial and free the rest. But the judicial process has likewise moved at a glacial pace, largely because of constitutional legal challenges.

Only two people have been charged under a military tribunal system approved by Congress last year. One of those cases has been adjudicated. David M. Hicks, an Australian citizen, pleaded guilty in March to lending material support to terrorists. He was sentenced to nine months in prison and is scheduled to be transferred to Australia in May to serve his time there.

Defense lawyers for some of the 82 cleared prisoners whose release is pending said Hicks received a better deal than did their clients who were not charged with any offenses. "One of the cruel ironies is that in Guantanamo, you've got to plead guilty to be released," said Wizner, the ACLU attorney. "It's the only way out of there."

Complicating the return process is that virtually all the prisoners at Guantanamo come from countries that the State Department has cited for records of human rights abuses. Under U.S. rules, a pattern of abuses in a country does not automatically preclude deportation there. Rather, U.S. officials must investigate each case to determine whether an individual is likely to face persecution.

The investigations are time-consuming and often meet with resistance from the prisoners' home countries, which can be sensitive to suggestions that they allow torture, U.S. officials said. In cases where there is a risk of mistreatment, U.S. policy is to obtain a written promise from the host government that the prisoner will not be abused and that U.S. officials will be allowed to monitor the arrangement.

"It often takes us months and months, or even years, to negotiate the human rights assurances that we are comfortable with before we will transfer someone to another country," said Bellinger, the State Department's legal adviser.

Human rights groups have criticized the written assurances as unreliable. In March, the New York-based group Human Rights Watch issued a report on the fate of seven Russians who were released from Guantanamo three years ago, asserting that three of the men have been tortured since their return.

The watchdog group urged the U.S. government to find third-party countries willing to take Guantanamo inmates who are judged to be at risk for political persecution. U.S. officials countered that they have tried to do that for years, with virtually no success.

Only one country has been willing to accept Guantanamo prisoners who had never previously set foot inside its borders. Last year, after prodding by the State Department, the Balkan nation of Albania agreed to take five Chinese separatists who belong to an ethnic group known as Uighurs.

The men were captured in late 2001 after they crossed the Chinese border into Afghanistan and Pakistan. Their attorneys said they were mistakenly taken into custody and had not taken up arms against U.S. forces. U.S. officials said dozens of countries refused to grant asylum to the Uighurs for fear of angering China, which considers them terrorists for leading a secession movement in the western province of Turkestan.

Seventeen other Uighurs who were caught in similar circumstances have been cleared for release but remain in Guantanamo because the State Department has been unable to find a home for them. Human rights groups have pressed the U.S. government to offer the men asylum, to no avail.

A senior U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity said that the Bush administration had considered granting the Uighurs asylum but that the idea was nixed by the Department of Homeland Security. The Uighurs would be rejected under U.S. immigration law, the official said, because they once trained in armed camps and because their separatist front, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, was labeled a terrorist organization by the U.S. government in 2002.

Attorneys for the Uighurs said their predicament has been compounded by the Pentagon's unwillingness to say they don't pose a national security risk to the U.S. government or its allies. In announcing that the Uighurs had been approved to leave Guantanamo, military officials made a point of noting that they had not been exonerated and were still classified as enemy combatants.

"It's not a distinction that makes sense at all," said Michael J. Sternhell, a New York lawyer whose firm represents four of the Uighurs. "It's a caveat that the Defense Department is offering to cover itself."

Some human rights advocates said the Bush administration could speed things up by asking the United Nations or another international body for help.

Manfred Nowak, an Austrian law professor who serves as the U.N. special monitor on torture, said European allies and other countries would continue to duck requests to accept released prisoners as long as the U.S. government approaches them separately. An international commission responsible for finding a solution, he said, might carry more weight.

"If the U.S. is willing to do something to close down Guantanamo, then it should be done in a cooperative manner with the international community," Nowak said. "It's a question of burden-sharing. Otherwise, every individual country that the U.S. approaches says, 'Why us?' "

This was found at Washington Post

The CFL mercury nightmare

Steven Milloy
Financial Post


Saturday, April 28, 2007


How much money does it take to screw in a compact fluorescent light bulb? About US$4.28 for the bulb and labour -- unless you break the bulb. Then you, like Brandy Bridges of Ellsworth, Maine, could be looking at a cost of about US$2,004.28, which doesn't include the costs of frayed nerves and risks to health.

Sound crazy? Perhaps no more than the stampede to ban the incandescent light bulb in favour of compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs).

According to an April 12 article in The Ellsworth American, Bridges had the misfortune of breaking a CFL during installation in her daughter's bedroom: It dropped and shattered on the carpeted floor.

Aware that CFLs contain potentially hazardous substances, Bridges called her local Home Depot for advice. The store told her that the CFL contained mercury and that she should call the Poison Control hotline, which in turn directed her to the Maine Department of Environmental Protection.

The DEP sent a specialist to Bridges' house to test for mercury contamination. The specialist found mercury levels in the bedroom in excess of six times the state's "safe" level for mercury contamination of 300 billionths of a gram per cubic meter. The DEP specialist recommended that Bridges call an environmental cleanup firm, which reportedly gave her a "low-ball" estimate of US$2,000 to clean up the room. The room then was sealed off with plastic and Bridges began "gathering finances" to pay for the US$2,000 cleaning. Reportedly, her insurance company wouldn't cover the cleanup costs because mercury is a pollutant.

Given that the replacement of incandescent bulbs with CFLs in the average U.S. household is touted as saving as much as US$180 annually in energy costs -- and assuming that Bridges doesn't break any more CFLs -- it will take her more than 11 years to recoup the cleanup costs in the form of energy savings.

The potentially hazardous CFL is being pushed by companies such as Wal-Mart, which wants to sell 100 million CFLs at five times the cost of incandescent bulbs during 2007, and, surprisingly, environmentalists.

It's quite odd that environmentalists have embraced the CFL, which cannot now and will not in the foreseeable future be made without mercury. Given that there are about five billion light bulb sockets in North American households, we're looking at the possibility of creating billions of hazardous waste sites such as the Bridges' bedroom.

Usually, environmentalists want hazardous materials out of, not in, our homes. These are the same people who go berserk at the thought of mercury being emitted from power plants and the presence of mercury in seafood. Environmentalists have whipped up so much fear of mercury among the public that many local governments have even launched mercury thermometer exchange programs.

As the activist group Environmental Defense urges us to buy CFLs, it defines mercury on a separate part of its Web site as a "highly toxic heavy metal that can cause brain damage and learning disabilities in fetuses and children" and as "one of the most poisonous forms of pollution."

Greenpeace also recommends CFLs while simultaneously bemoaning contamination caused by a mercury-thermometer factory in India. But where are mercury-containing CFLs made? Not in the United States, under strict environmental regulation. CFLs are made in India and China, where environmental standards are virtually non-existent.

And let's not forget about the regulatory nightmare in the U.S. known as the Superfund law, the EPA regulatory program best known for requiring expensive but often needless cleanup of toxic waste sites, along with endless litigation over such cleanups.

We'll eventually be disposing billions and billions of CFL mercury bombs. Much of the mercury from discarded and/or broken CFLs is bound to make its way into the environment and give rise to Superfund liability, which in the past has needlessly disrupted many lives, cost tens of billions of dollars and sent many businesses into bankruptcy.

As each CFL contains five milligrams of mercury, at the Maine "safety" standard of 300 nanograms per cubic meter, it would take 16,667 cubic meters of soil to "safely" contain all the mercury in a single CFL. While CFL vendors and environmentalists tout the energy cost savings of CFLs, they conveniently omit the personal and societal costs of CFL disposal.

Not only are CFLs much more expensive than incandescent bulbs and emit light that many regard as inferior to incandescent bulbs, they pose a nightmare if they break and require special disposal procedures. Yet governments (egged on by environmentalists and the Wal-Marts of the world) are imposing on us such higher costs, denial of lighting choice, disposal hassles and breakage risks in the name of saving a few dollars every year on the electric bill? - Steven Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and CSRWatch.com. He is a junk-science expert and advocate of free enterprise, and an adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

This was found at Canada.com

If I do comment, it's usually at the end, but this is bullshit! Once again our rights as US citizens stripped without people even realizing it.
While I don't necessarily condone what was written, I do feel the kid is entitled to his rights just like everyone else.
Furthermore the remarks from the school stating that "Our staff is very familiar with adolescent behavior." should not even come up considering the student is 18 years old, legally an adult.

Slap on the wrist, stern talk explaining the implications of the writing, sure. Involve police, unacceptable.

Can we say "Good bye 1st amendment"?

By Jeff Long and Carolyn Starks
Tribune staff reporters
Published April 26, 2007

High school senior Allen Lee sat down with his creative writing class on Monday and penned an essay that so disturbed his teacher, school administrators and police that he was charged with disorderly conduct.

"I understand what happened recently at Virginia Tech," said the teen's father, Albert Lee, referring to last week's massacre of 32 students by gunman Seung-Hui Cho. "I understand the situation."

But he added: "I don't see how somebody can get charged by writing in their homework. The teacher asked them to express themselves, and he followed instructions."

Allen Lee, an 18-year-old straight-A student at Cary-Grove High School, was arrested Tuesday near his home and charged with disorderly conduct for an essay police described as violently disturbing but not directed toward any specific person or location.

The youth's father said his son was not suspended or expelled but was forced to attend classes elsewhere for now.

Today, Cary-Grove students rallied behind the arrested teen by organizing a petition drive to let him back in their school. They posted on walls quotes from the English teacher in which she had encouraged students to express their emotions through writing.

"I'm not going to lie. I signed the petition," said senior James Gitzinger. "But I can understand where the administration is coming from. I think I would react the same way if I was a teacher."

Cary Police Chief Ron Delelio said the charge was appropriate even though the essay was not published or posted for public viewing.

Disorderly conduct, which carries a penalty of 30 days in jail and a $1,500 fine, is filed for pranks such as pulling a fire alarm or dialing 911. But it can also apply when someone's writings can disturb an individual, Delelio said.

"The teacher was alarmed and disturbed by the content," he said.

But a civil rights advocate said the teacher's reaction to an essay shouldn't make it a crime.

"One of the elements is that some sort of disorder or disruption is created," said Ed Yohnka, a spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois. "When something is done in private—when a paper is handed in to a teacher—there isn't a disruption."

The "key outcomes" this month for the Creative English class was for students to identify and utilize poetic conventions to communicate ideas and emotions. With that in mind, teachers reminded students that if they read something that posed a threat to self or others, the school could take action, said High School District 155 Supt. Jill Hawk.

The English teacher read the essay and reported it to a supervisor and the principal. A round-table discussion with district officials conveyed, with lively debate, and they decided to report it to the police.

"Our staff is very familiar with adolescent behavior. We're very well versed with types of creativity put into writing. We know the standards of adolescent behavior that are acceptable and that there is a range," Hawk said.

"There can certainly be writing that conveys concern for us even though it does not name names location or date," he said.

The charge against Lee comes as schools across the country wrestle with how to react in the wake of the shootings at the Virginia Tech campus at Blacksburg, Va.

Bomb threats at high schools in Schaumburg and Country Club Hills have caused evacuations, and extra police were on duty at a Palos Hills high school this week because of a threatening note found in the bathroom of a McDonald's restaurant a half-mile away.

Experts say the charge against Lee is troubling because it was over an essay that even police say contained no direct threats against anyone at the school. However, Virginia Tech's actions toward Cho came under heavy scrutiny after the killings because of the "disturbing" plays and essays teachers say he had written for classes.

Simmie Baer, an attorney with the Children and Family Justice Center at Northwestern University, called the Cary incident an example of zero-tolerance policies gone awry. Children, she said, are not as sophisticated as adults and often show emotion through writing or pictures, which is what teachers should want because it is a safe outlet.

This was found at The Chicago Tribune.

Pet Monkey Bites IRS Agent

A pet monkey that weighs ten to twelve pounds, in Rankin County, attacked an IRS Agent last Tuesday. The Macatue monkey, which is at least seven years old and came from Japan is now locked in a secure cage in Rankin County.

Sheriff Ronnie Pennington confirmed the attack and said the owner of the monkey was given a citation for having a wild animal in captivity. The monkey is being tested for disease and will eventually be turned over to the Animal Rescue League. It's canine teeth have been removed, according to the Sheriff. Pennington will who not release the name of the owner of the monkey or the IRS agent.

The agent was treated for scratches and bites on her face and arms.

This was found at a Missippi news site, WLBT Channel 3



Aside from the family of the IRS agent, who isn't laughing about this? I feel bad for the monkey.

Next up, Kangaroos boxing Social Security agents.

Human rights for robots? We’re getting carried away

A study commissioned by the Government that suggests robots could one day have rights was attacked by leading scientists yesterday as a red herring that has diverted attention from more pressing ethical issues.

Researchers studying robotics said that the Robo-rights document, published in December and sponsored by the Department of Trade and Industry, amounted to pointless philosophical speculation founded on poor science.

While there are important questions to be asked about the direction of robot technology, these have been obscured by considering "robot rights” that no scientists take seriously, the experts said.

Robo-rights was one of more than 200 reports commissioned by Sir David King, the Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser, from Outsights, a management consultancy, and Ipsos MORI, the pollsters.

It said that if true artificial intelligence were ever developed, such robots might have to be given similar rights to humans, including the right to vote. “If granted full rights, states will be obligated to provide full social benefits to them including income support, housing and possibly robo-healthcare to fix the machines over time,” it added.

Owen Holland, Professor of Computer Science at the University of Essex, said that he was disappointed by the quality of the work, which included just five references. Three of these were to studies published more than 20 years ago, and only one was to research by a working scientist in the field.

“It was very shallow, superficial and poorly informed,” he said. “I know of no one within the serious robotics community who would use that phrase, ‘robot rights’.”

Alan Winfield, Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of the West of England in Bristol, said that debating the implications of artificial intelligence was an unnecessary diversion from more pressing problems. “I am much more worried about robot autonomy than robot intelligence,” he said. “It is likely that we will have autonomous dumb robots very soon.”

Noel Sharkey, Professor of Computer Science at the University of Sheffield, said: “The idea of machine consciousness is a bit of a fairytale. I’m not certain it won’t happen, in the same way as when I was seven I wasn’t certain about Santa Claus not existing, but I was fairly sure.

“We need a proper debate about the safety of the robots that will come on to the market in the next few years. Military use of robots is increasing fast. What we should really be bothered about is public safety.”

Professor Winfield said a key issue around autonomous robots was who is responsible if one kills or injures someone. At present it was clear that such an event would be the fault of the designer or operator, but that may not be the case if robots start to act autonomously.

The three scientists will debate the issue this evening at the Dana Centre, part of the Science Museum in London.

It seemed like a good idea . . .

Maria a sleek, rather art deco female robot slave in the 1927 film Metropolis, who leads a rebellion against her human masters

Hal the charming computer in the spacecraft in 2001: A Space Odyssey, which turns into a megalomaniac

V.I.K.I The artificial brain in the film I, Robot, which runs the robots serving mankind, and which decides that part of its duty to protect humans involves protecting them from themselves. It tries to take over

Deep Thought a computer in Douglas Adams’s Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy, created to find the answer to the meaning of life. It finally computes the answer, 42, but no one knows what the question was

Skynet A computer network that becomes self-aware and declares war on the human race in the Terminator films

Source: Mark Henderson, Science Editor Times Database

Astronomers Find Planet Outside Solar System

The most enticing property yet found outside our solar system is about 20 light years away in the constellation Libra, a team of European astronomers said today.

The astronomers have discovered a planet five times as massive as the Earth orbiting a dim red star known as Gliese 581.

It is the smallest of the 200 or so planets that are now known to exist outside of our solar system, called extrasolar or exoplanets. Moreover, it orbits its home star within the so-called habitable zone where surface water, the staff of life, could exist if other conditions are right, said Stephane Udry of the Geneva Observatory.

“We are at the right place for that,” said Dr. Udry, the lead author of a paper describing the discovery that has been submitted to the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

But he and other astronomers cautioned that it was far too soon to conclude that liquid water was there without more observations. Sara Seager, a planet expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said, “For example, if the planet had an atmosphere more massive than Venus’s, then the surface would likely be too hot for liquid water.”

Nevertheless, the discovery in the Gliese 581 system, where a Neptune-size planet was discovered two years ago and another planet of eight Earth masses is now suspected, catapults that system to the top of the list for future generations of space missions.

“On the treasure map of the Universe, one would be tempted to mark this planet with an X,” said Xavier Delfosse, a team member from Grenoble University in France, according to a news release from the European Southern Observatory, a multinational collaboration based in Garching, Germany.

“It’s 20 light years. We can go there,” said Dimitar Sasselov, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who studies the structure and formation of planets.

The new planet was discovered by the wobble it causes in its home star’s motion as it orbits, the method by which most of the known exo-planets have been discovered. Dr. Udry’s team used an advanced spectrograph on a 141-inch diameter telescope at the European observatory in La Silla, Chile.

The smallest previous exo-planet was roughly six Earth masses, discovered by a team led by the American planet hunters Geoff Marcy of the University of California, Berkeley, and Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. The two astronomers are longtime rivals of the Swiss group founded by Michel Mayor, of the Geneva Observatory. Of the new result, Dr. Marcy said, “The Swiss do excellent work, so I’m sure that they have a strong case for it.”

The planet, officially known as Gliese 581c, circles the star every 13 days at a distance of about 7 million miles. According to models of planet formation developed by Dr. Sasselov and his colleagues, such a planet should be about half again as large as the Earth and be composed of rock and water, what the astronomers now call a “super Earth.”

The most exciting part of the new find, Dr. Sasselov said, is that it “basically tells you these kinds of planets are very common.” Because they could stay geologically active for billions and billion of years, Dr. Sasselov said he suspects that such planets could be even more congenial for life than the Earth. NASA’s coming Kepler mission, he added, would probably find hundreds of these super Earths.

Although the new planet is much closer to its star than the Earth is to the Sun, its star, a so-called red dwarf, is only about a hundredth as luminous as the Sun. So 7 million miles is a comfortable cuddling distance.

How hot the planet would get, Dr. Udry said, would depend on how much light the planet reflects, or its albedo. Using the Earth and Venus as two extreme examples, he estimated that temperatures on the surface of the planet should range from 0 to 40 degrees centigrade. “It’s just right in the good range,” he said. “Of course, we don’t know anything about its albedo.”

One problem is that the wobble technique only gives masses of planets. To measure their actual size and thus their densities, astronomers have to catch them in the act of passing in front of or behind their stars. Such transits can also reveal if the planets have atmospheres and what they are made of. Earlier this month, such observations with the Spitzer Space Telescope returned the first tentative indications of water in the atmosphere of another exoplanet in the constellation Pegasus.

Dr. Udry said he and Dr. Sasselov would be observing the Gliese system with a Canadian space telescope named Most, to see if there are any dips in starlight caused by the new planet. Failing that, they said, the best chance for more information about the Gliese system lies with NASA’s Terrestrial Planet Finder and the European Space Agency’s Darwin missions, which are designed to study Earth-like planets, but have been delayed by political, technical and financial difficulties.

“We are starting to count the first targets,” Dr. Udry said.

This was found at New York Times

Discovery of new family of pseudo-metallic chemicals

The periodic table of elements, all 111 of them, just got a little competition. A new discovery by a University of Missouri-Columbia research team, published in Angewandte Chemie allows scientists to manipulate a molecule discovered 50 years ago in such as way as to give the molecule metal-like properties, creating a new, "pseudo" element. The pseudo-metal properties can be adjusted for a wide range of uses and might change the way scientists think about attacking disease or even building electronics.

Five decades ago, Fred Hawthorne, professor of radiology and director of the International Institute for Nano and Molecular Medicine at MU, discovered an extremely stable molecule consisting of 12 boron atoms and 12 hydrogen atoms. Known as "boron cages," these molecules were difficult to change or manipulate, and sat dormant in Hawthorne's laboratory for many years.

Recently, Hawthorne's scientific team found a way to modify these cages, resulting in a large, new family of nano-sized compounds. In their study, which was published this month, Hawthorne, and Mark Lee, assistant professor at the institute and first author of the study, found that attaching different compounds to the cages gave them the properties of many different metals.

"Since the range of properties for these pseudo-metals is quite large, they might be referred to as 'psuedo-elements belonging to a completely new pseudo-periodic table,'" Lee said.
Potential applications of this discovery are abundant, especially in medicine.

"All living organisms are essentially a grand concert of chemical reactions involving the transfer of electrons between molecules and metals,'" Lee said. "The electron transfer properties of this new family of molecules span the entire range of those found within living systems. Because of this, these pseudo-metals may be tuned for use as specific probes in living systems to detect or treat disease at the earliest state."

In addition, because the compounds possess such a wide range of flexibility, they might have ramifications for nanotechnology and various kinds of electronics.

"This single discovery could open entirely new fields of study because of the controlled variability of the compounds," Lee said. "We have the ability to change the properties of these pseudo-metals, which gives us the opportunity to tailor them to our needs, whether that is biomedical, chemical or electronic applications, some of which may utilize nanoscience."

Source: University of Missouri-Columbia

How the CIA Used a Fake Sci-Fi Flick to Rescue Americans from Tehran

How the CIA used a fake science fiction film to sneak six Americans out of revolutionary Iran.

November 4, 1979, began like any other day at the US embassy in Tehran. The staff filtered in under gray skies, the marines manned their posts, and the daily crush of anti-American protestors massed outside the gate chanting, "Allahu akbar! Marg bar Amrika!"

Mark and Cora Lijek, a young couple serving in their first foreign service post, knew the slogans — "God is great! Death to America!" — and had learned to ignore the din as they went about their duties. But today, the protest sounded louder than usual. And when some of the local employees came in and said there was "a problem at the gate," they knew this morning would be different. Militant students were soon scaling the walls of the embassy complex. Someone forced open the front gate, and the trickle of invaders became a flood. The mob quickly fanned across the 27-acre compound, waving posters of the Ayatollah Khomeini. They took the ambassador's residence, then set upon the chancery, the citadel of the embassy where most of the staff was stationed.

At first, the Lijeks hoped the consulate building where they worked would escape notice. Because of recent renovations, the ground floor was mostly empty. Perhaps no one would suspect that 12 Americans and a few dozen Iranian employees and visa applicants were upstairs. The group included consular officer Joseph Stafford, his assistant and wife, Kathleen, and Robert Anders, a senior officer in the visa department.

They tried to keep calm, and even to continue working. But then the power went out and panic spread throughout the building. The Iranian employees, who knew the revolutionary forces' predilection for firing squads, braced for the worst. "There's someone on the roof," one Iranian worker said, trembling. Another smelled smoke. People began to weep in the dark, convinced the militants would try to burn down the building. Outside, the roar of the victorious mob grew louder. There were occasional gunshots. It was time to flee.

The Americans destroyed the plates used to make visa stamps, organized an evacuation plan, and ushered everyone to the back door. "We'll leave in groups of five or six," the marine sergeant on duty said. "Locals first. Then the married couples. Then the rest." The consulate building was the only structure in the compound with an exit on the street. The goal was to make it to the British embassy about six blocks away.

It was pouring rain when they opened the heavy roll-down steel doors. The street was mercifully empty. One group turned north, only to be captured moments later and marched back to the embassy at gunpoint.

Heading west, the Staffords, the Lijeks, Anders, and several Iranians avoided detection. They had almost reached the British embassy when they encountered yet another demonstration. A local in their group gave some quick advice — "Don't go that way" — and then she melted into the crowd. The group zigzagged to Anders' nearby apartment, at one point sneaking single-file past an office used by the komiteh, one of the gun-wielding, self-appointed bands of revolutionaries that controlled much of Tehran.

They locked the door and switched on Anders' lunch-box radio, a standard-issue "escape and evade" device that could connect with the embassy's radio network. Marines were squawking frantically, trying to coordinate with one another. Someone calling himself Codename Palm Tree was relaying a bird's-eye view of the takeover: "There are rifles and weapons being brought into the compound." This was Henry Lee Schatz, an agricultural attach who was watching the scene from his sixth-floor office in a building across the street from the compound. "They're being unloaded from trucks."


The rest of the article can be found at Wired Magazine.

Scientists unearth Superman's "kryptonite"

LONDON (Reuters) - Kryptonite, which robbed Superman of his powers, is no longer the stuff of comic books and films.


A mineral found by geologists in Serbia shares virtually the same chemical composition as the fictional kryptonite from outer space, used by the superhero's nemesis Lex Luther to weaken him in the film "Superman Returns."

"We will have to be careful with it -- we wouldn't want to deprive Earth of its most famous superhero!," said Dr Chris Stanley, a mineralogist at London's Natural History Museum.

Stanley, who revealed the identity of the mysterious new mineral, discovered the match after searching the Internet for its chemical formula - sodium lithium boron silicate hydroxide.

"I was amazed to discover that same scientific name written on a case of rock containing kryptonite stolen by Lex Luther from a museum in the film Superman Returns," he said.

The substance has been confirmed as a new mineral after tests by scientists at the Natural History Museum in London and the National Research Council in Canada.

But instead of the large green crystals in Superman comics, the real thing is a white, powdery substance which contains no fluorine and is non-radioactive.

The mineral, to be named Jadarite, will go on show at the London's Natural History Museum at certain times of the day on Wednesday, April 25, and Sunday, May 13.

RIM's Statement on BlackBerry Outage

RIM's in-depth diagnostic analysis of the service interruption that occurred in North America on Tuesday night is progressing well and RIM will continue to provide further information as it's available. RIM's first priority during any service interruption is always to restore service and then establish, monitor and maintain stability. Proper analysis can take several days or longer and RIM's commitment is to provide the most accurate and complete information possible in such situations.

RIM is pleased to report that normal conditions returned on Wednesday and the BlackBerry service continues to operate normally today.

RIM has been able to definitively rule out security and capacity issues as a root cause. Further, RIM has confirmed that the incident was not caused by any hardware failure or core software infrastructure.

RIM has determined that the incident was triggered by the introduction of a new, non-critical system routine that was designed to provide better optimization of the system's cache. The system routine was expected to be non-impacting with respect to the real-time operation of the BlackBerry infrastructure, but the pre-testing of the system routine proved to be insufficient.

The new system routine produced an unexpected impact and triggered a compounding series of interaction errors between the system's operational database and cache. After isolating the resulting database problem and unsuccessfully attempting to correct it, RIM began its failover process to a backup system.

Although the backup system and failover process had been repeatedly and successfully tested previously, the failover process did not fully perform to RIM's expectations in this situation and therefore caused further delay in restoring service and processing the resulting message queue.

RIM apologizes to customers for inconvenience resulting from the service interruption. RIM's root cause analysis and system enhancement process with respect to this incident is ongoing and RIM has already identified certain aspects of its testing, monitoring and recovery processes that will be enhanced as a result of the incident and in order to prevent recurrence.

This was found at BlackBerry Forums, thanks to NJBlackBerry for the info.

On this day 1955

1955: Albert Einstein dies
Albert Einstein has died in hospital in Princeton, New Jersey, aged 76.
The eminent scientist and originator of the theory of relativity was admitted to hospital three days ago with an internal complaint.

In recent years Dr Einstein had lived a secluded life although he was still a member of staff at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University.

In a statement issued following the scientist's death, US President Dwight Eisenhower said: "No other man contributed so much to the vast expansion of the 20th century knowledge.

"Yet no other man was more modest in the possession of the power that is knowledge, more sure that power without wisdom is deadly.

"To all who live in the nuclear age, Albert Einstein exemplified the mighty creative ability of the individual in a free society."

'Disruptive' behaviour

Albert Einstein was born on 14 March 1879 to Jewish parents at Ulm, Wurttenburg in Germany.

Soon afterwards the family moved to Munich where the young Einstein began his education at the Luitpold Gymnasium.

His early academic career was notable only for the fact he was asked to leave his school for "disruptive" behaviour.

But he had always excelled at mathematics - a subject which would later make him the most renowned scientist in the world.

In 1896 Einstein entered the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich to train as a physics and maths teacher.

But he struggled to get a job, largely due to the fact he was German, so, in 1902, he accepted a job as a technical assistant in the Swiss Patent Office.

It was during his seven years at the Patent Office that, in his spare time, he worked on his mathematical theories which would eventually take the world by storm.

The Special Theory of Relativity, which describes the motion of particles moving close to the speed of light, was published in 1905.

In the years that followed, Einstein took up senior academic posts in Berne and Zurich. In 1911 he became Professor of Theoretical Physics in Prague but returned to Zurich a year later.

However, well-known German physicists, Walter Nernst and Professor Planck, were eager for Einstein to return to Berlin.

In 1913 they persuaded him to take up the position of director of the projected research institute for physics in the University of Berlin and become a member of the Royal Prussian Academy of Science.

Einstein's General Theory of Relativity was published in 1916. In 1921 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for physics.

He kept the positions in Berlin until 1933, when he accepted a part-time post at Princeton University in America.

His plan was to divide his time between Germany and America but in the same year the Nazis came to power and Einstein, being a Jew, never returned to his birthland.

This was found at BBC.

Giant Bats Snatch Birds from Night Sky

Morning Edition, April 18, 2007

Every spring, billions of migratory songbirds in Europe fly north to their breeding grounds. Most of these birds fly at night when no predators are around — or so the experts thought. But researchers have now found evidence of a giant European bat that is plucking migrating birds out of the night sky.

Several months ago, a group of bat researchers spent the night recording the sounds of a marshy Spanish forest. When they played the recordings back at full speed, they could only hear the croaking of the frogs. But when the researchers played the recordings back at one-tenth their normal speed, they heard shrieks — the radar call of a creature called the giant noctule bat or Nyctalus lasiopterus.

This bat is hairy and brown, with a wingspan slightly bigger than a blue jay's. It is one of Europe's largest bats and it has a huge mouth full of scary-looking teeth. It is one of the least-known bats in all of Europe — it spends its days hiding out at the tops of tall trees.

"They are not so easy to see if you don't know that they are there, so most people don't know that they exist," says Ana Popa-Lisseanu of the Doñana Biological Station in Sevilla, Spain.

Popa-Lisseanu is an expert on giant noctules, and says it has long been known that these bats feed on flying insects. What wasn't known until recently is that the giant noctule may be the only bat that eats birds on the wing. Popa-Lisseanu thinks it starts when the noctules fly thousands of feet up into the night sky. Then they use radar calls to lock in on a migrating songbird beneath them. Then the bat swoops in for the kill.

"They wrap the prey between their wings and the tail membrane," Popa-Lisseanu says, "so they make kind of a cage for the bird."

She says the bats eat just the "most profitable parts" of the migrating bird, such as the breast, where birds accumulate fat and muscle.

When they get close to the ground, the bats open their wings and drop the mangled carcasses. No one has ever seen one of these meals on the fly, but researchers have been pulling feathers out of the bat's feces for years. Now, in the journal Public Library of Science, Popa-Lisseanu and her colleagues say blood and tissue tests show that birds are a major food source for the giant noctule bats.

"It was something that shocked all bat scientists," she says.

The team compared the different chemical fingerprints that insects and birds leave in the bats that have eaten them. The researchers found that in the summer, the bats ate only insects, but during the spring and fall migrations, they ate many birds.

Giant noctule bats are far too rare to pose a major threat to migratory songbirds, but the recent paper is still attracting plenty of attention. Peter Marra, a songbird expert with the Smithsonian Institution, says that's because the bat's behavior is so interesting.

"It makes complete sense," Marra says, "because there's so much biomass that it's not surprising that there's a species taking advantage of it. And it's really neat that a bat is doing it."

Popa-Lisseanu says her research team is continuing its studies. The researchers are working with electronic radars, and hoping to catch one of the giant bats as it homes in on a flying songbird.

This was found at NPR.

Fax Prompts Presidential Visit

TIPP CITY, Ohio (AP)
A contractor in Tipp City, Ohio, faxed the White House a couple of weeks ago to invite President Bush to come speak, and was flabbergasted when the White House faxed back, accepting.

Bush plans to speak there tomorrow.

Steve Bruns is former head of the Tipp City Area Chamber of Commerce and is a Bush backer. He says he wanted the president to explain why the "fight against the terrorists and victory in Iraq are so important."

White House spokesman Alex Conant says it's a "good opportunity to visit Ohio and talk about the war."

Bruns says when he looked at the fax accepting his invitation, he thought, "You've got to be kidding me."

The president is to speak at Tippecanoe High School to local businessmen and students who take an advanced government class.

BlackBerry owes this guy a girlfriend

By Paul McNamara on Wed, 04/18/2007 - 3:01pm

It's just like in that series of AT&T/Cingular TV commercials where the gaps of silence created by dropped calls lead to terrible misunderstandings - only this case involves BlackBerry and real life.

Just as the smoke is starting to clear from today's massive BlackBerry blackout, Rafael Paz, a loss control specialist for a car rental agency, writes to tell me that he has been "getting my e-mails about one to four hours late minimum since yesterday." And it hasn't just been loss control that has suffered, he adds: "This issue sucks. I've been getting grief about it from my now ex-girlfriend thanks to this delay. She thought I was ignoring her e-mails when I was receiving them hours late."

So I write back expressing my fervent hope that he was kidding about the "ex" part. No chance.

"We got into a really bad argument earlier in the day," he replies. "She sent me a few e-mails and when I didn't respond right away, she thought I was ignoring her and called it off. I didn't get the e-mail it was over until around 2 a.m. today."

Not knowing what else to say, I suggest that perhaps this situation might be covered by his BlackBerry service-level agreement. His reply:

"I'll call RIM and tell them to give me an upgrade on a new girlfriend."

Article found at NetWorkWorld.

What Went Wrong?

The outage that hit Research in Motion's BlackBerry wireless email network was a shock to those hooked on the wireless devices. The Waterloo, Ont., company hasn't issued much information about the cause of the outage. Carmi Levy, Senior Research Analyst, with InfoTech Research Group in London, Ont., answers a few questions on what happened.

Q. How does the system work?

A. Research In Motion manages messaging traffic through its Waterloo-based network operations centre. The technology uses a massive amount of computing power and network capacity to manage BlackBerry service for users across the Western hemisphere. Other regions have centralized operations centres as well.

Q. Why is everything channelled through Waterloo?

A. This is how Research In Motion originally built the architecture for its network, and as the subscriber base has grown, the organization has elected to continue to place the majority of its operational eggs in one basket for this part of the world.

Centralizing network operations is one way of reducing cost and improving the organization's ability to manage far-flung technology. Technicians can easily monitor the entire network from one place, while the company avoids the cost of building and staffing multiple operations centres.

Q. Isn't this risky putting everything through one location?

A. Given the scope of the current outage, it's a safe assumption that routing all traffic for the entire Western hemisphere through one central operations centre is somewhat risky. If that centre goes down, Research In Motion has a significantly limited ability to maintain service to its user base.

Although the initial driver of this strategy is usually efficiency and cost containment, it must be balanced against the risk of a significant failure that takes down that one site. Unlike the Internet, whose distributed architecture allows other segments to take over when things fail, a centralized approach offers no such redundancy. If it goes down, everyone goes down with it.

Q. Do you think RIM had a back-up plan or system that failed?

A. It is inconceivable that a company responsible for such a large customer base would not have comprehensive backups, failovers and alternative technologies and processes in place to maintain service in the event of an outage. In this day and age, not having a backup plan is equivalent to jumping out of a plane without a parachute: it's simply not done.

Thus, it's quite clear from the scope and depth of the outage that whatever backups or failovers RIM had in place obviously failed to remain functional. This is clearly a worst-case scenario for any company, especially one with the market profile and current agenda of RIM.

Q. Do you think that the company might consider changing this approach now that it has had this failure, i.e. build a back-up system in a separate location? And better response for customers?

A. I would expect that a catastrophic, high-profile outage such as this would prompt RIM to reassess how it builds and manages its global network. Despite the day-to-day efficiencies of a centralized operations centre, the risk of a total service outage is simply too high if that one site is taken out for whatever reason.

The redundancies that were built into the network have obviously failed to contain the outage, and future events of this type will potentially do serious and permanent damage to RIM's reputation and future subscriber and revenue growth. In the coming days and weeks, customers will be pressing RIM for details on how it will fundamentally change its operational strategy to avoid widespread outages like this in future. Considering the degree to which BlackBerry service has infiltrated today's economy, customers have every right to ask these hard questions, and I expect RIM to devote significant engineering and media resources to this response.

More than any event in RIM's recent past, this outage holds the potential to change the direction of the company's support organization. It needs to do this if it hopes to continue to grow its subscriber base and fight for dominance in the mobile messaging space. It cannot afford to be seen as a weak manager of infrastructure, as enterprise customers will not accept weakness from a messaging vendor.

This was found at The Globe and Mail

Google Apps to take on PowerPoint

Presentation app joins Google's Docs & Spreadsheets, but CEO Eric Schmidt maintains Google is not trying to compete with Microsoft Office

By Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News Service

April 17, 2007

Google is adding a presentations application to Docs & Spreadsheets, narrowing the competitive space between this productivity and collaboration hosted suite and Microsoft's Office suite.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt made the announcement at the Web 2.0 Expo event in San Francisco Tuesday during a keynote appearance. The move had been widely expected, as Google has embarked on developing hosted communication and collaboration products for organizations.

Prior to breaking the news, Schmidt demonstrated the application to the attendees, showing several slides with mock Google announcements for the day. "None of these [slides] are really the announcement, but in fact the thing that is doing this presentation is the announcement," Schmidt said.

Now, Docs & Spreadsheets will feature a word processor, a spreadsheet, and a presentations application, but Schmidt said the suite isn't a direct competitor to Office because Docs & Spreadsheets doesn't have all of Office's functionality. Also, it's more focused on Web collaboration than Office, which is a desktop-centric product.

In fact, Docs & Spreadsheets is an example what Schmidt called a new Web-based, hosted architecture for applications designed to let users collaborate and share information. Collaboration, he said, "is the killer application."

The presentations application will be delivered in the U.S. summer timeframe, said Jonathan Rochelle, product manager of Google Docs & Spreadsheets, in an interview after the keynote ended. He expects that as soon as it becomes available, the presentation application will also become part of Google Apps, the company's communication and collaboration suite for organizations. Google Apps includes Gmail and other hosted services, including Docs & Spreadsheets.

Like the other two components of Google Docs & Spreadsheets, the presentations application is being designed with collaboration and sharing in mind so that multiple users can participate in the creation and delivery of presentations, Rochelle said.

Google decided to add a presentations component to Docs & Spreadsheets as a result of user demand, Rochelle said, adding that Google isn't providing details of the application's features and functionality yet.

The presentations component will have import and export capabilities for Microsoft's PowerPoint, the presentations application in Office, in the same way that the word processor and spreadsheet applications have those capabilities for Office's Word and Excel, respectively, said Rajen Sheth, product manager in Google's enterprise unit. In this manner, Google's productivity applications give Office users the ability to share files and collaborate on them, Sheth said. In that way "we're adding functionality to existing Office tools," he said.

Also on Tuesday, Google announced it has acquired Tonic Systems, a company based in San Francisco and Melbourne, Australia, that has technology to create presentations and converting documents. "It will be a great addition as we add presentation sharing and collaboration capabilities to Google Docs & Spreadsheets," Google said in an official blog posting.

Docs & Spreadsheets is free, unlike Office. Google Apps has a free version and fee-based version.

Glow in the Dark Energy Drink

Glow in the Dark Energy Drink
Radioactive Energy is a new energy drink that comes in a glow in the dark can. It appears the drink itself also glows in the dark, but it is tough to tell for sure based on the product website. According to the product website:

Radioactive Energy emerges with a new 16 oz. glowing can in vibrant yellow-green and redorange
fluorescent colors that stand out in a crowd. The product line features our unique patented
glow-in-the-dark can technology. With a righteous taste like no other, this great tasting energy
drink comes in regular and sugar free/zero carbohydrate varieties.

Having some of this on hand seems like the perfect way to 0wn some n00bz at your next LAN party, and be the envy of nerds everywhere. Also, what right-minded female could resist a guy walking around the club/bar with a glow in the dark drink?

My Kind of Car Security

Ex-Wal-Mart worker admits to spy campaign

A Wal-Mart employee, who was fired last month for intercepting a reporter's calls, says he was part of a sophisticated surveillance operation.

April 4 2007: 11:18 AM EDT

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- A former Wal-Mart Stores Inc. worker said he was part of a large surveillance operation that included snooping on employees, stockholders and others, according to a Wall Street Journal report Wednesday.

Security worker Bruce Gabbard was fired last month after 19 years with the company for intercepting a reporter's phone calls, the paper said.

Gabbard said he recorded the calls because he felt pressured to stop embarrassing leaks. But he said his spying activities were sanctioned by superiors.

Gabbard said that as part of the surveillance, the retailer infiltrated an anti-Wal-Mart group to determine if it planned protests at the company's annual meeting last year and deployed monitoring systems to record the actions of anyone connected to its global computer network.

Many of Gabbard's statements were confirmed by other former Wal-Mart employees, the paper said.

Wal-Mart conducted an internal investigation of Gabbard and his group's activities, fired his supervisor and demoted a vice president over the group, the paper said.

"This group is no longer operating in the same manner that it did prior to the discovery of the unauthorized recording of telephone conversations. There have been changes in leadership, and we have strengthened our practices and protocols in this area," the company said in a statement.

Wal-Mart has since disconnected some systems and an internal investigation of the group's activities was launched earlier this year, the paper said citing an executive in the security-information industry.

Wal-Mart has always had strict limits on what its employees can do while at work. Store employees are prohibited from using personal cell phones on the job. And managers receive a list of email addresses and phone numbers their employees have used as well as a list of Web sites visited, the paper said citing current and former employees.

The company also limits Internet access and blocks social-networking and video sites, according to Gabbard.

"Like most major corporations, it is our corporate responsibility to have systems in place, including software systems, to monitor threats to our network, intellectual property and our people. These situations are limited to cases which are high risk to the company or our associates, such as criminal fraud or security issues," Wal-Mart said in a statement.

A U.S. attorney is investigating whether any laws were violated as a result of the phone and pager intercepts, according to the Journal.

Suit: Police killed man as he tried to kill self

Allentown officers shot work release inmate in back during arrest.

By Matt Birkbeck Of The Morning Call

A federal lawsuit accuses two Allentown police officers of ''outlandish and outrageous conduct'' in what it calls the unprovoked shooting of a man who tried to kill himself with a box cutter.

James H. Stewart, 24, died from two gunshots to his back after the officers tried to arrest him for failing to return to Northampton County Prison after a work-release assignment. He had been jailed for failing to make child support payments.

The suit, filed by attorney John P. Karoly Jr. on March 19, exactly two years after Stewart's death, alleges officer Jeremy Moll shot Stewart twice and that Moll's partner, Wesley Wilcox, yelled at him, ''What the f--- are you doing?''

Filed on behalf of Stewart's estate and his sister, Tonya Stewart, the suit accuses both officers of brutality and using excessive force. Besides Moll and Wilcox, it names former Chief Joseph Blackburn and the city as defendants, and seeks at least $300,000 in punitive and compensatory damages.

Allentown spokesman Joe McDermott said the city would issue no statement on the suit. ''It's litigation, so we can't comment on it,'' he said. ''Our solicitors and lawyers will look over it and proceed accordingly.''

Karoly, of South Whitehall Township, who has won multimillion-dollar settlements against Easton and Bethlehem in police brutality cases, could not be reached for comment.

Stewart, a handyman and father of three, had fallen behind on child support payments and in February 2005 was sent to Northampton County Prison, where he was placed in a work-release program. But he failed to return to the prison March 4, and a warrant was issued for his arrest.

Early on March 19, 2005, police received an anonymous tip that Stewart was at his sister's home at 510 Auburn St., Allentown.

According to the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court:

Moll and Wilcox arrived minutes later and ''pushed their way'' into the home, where they found Stewart ''sitting harmlessly'' on his bed. The officers ordered him to stand, asked his name and checked his identifying tattoos. When they told Stewart to turn around, he took a box cutter from his belt and ''tried to stab himself.''

One of the officers wrestled the box cutter away and threw it to the floor.

As Stewart stood with his back to the officers and arms to his sides, Moll shot him. Stewart fell to his knees, and Moll shot him again in the back. Stewart dropped to the floor, where he lay dying in a pool of blood.

When Wilcox yelled at Moll, asking what he was doing, Moll replied, ''I don't know! I don't know!'' Tonya Stewart, who stood behind the officers, screamed, ''You killed my brother!''

Wilcox and Moll forced Tonya Stewart to the floor, beside her brother, where she was handcuffed. The officers also handcuffed James Stewart, who was moaning and ''bleeding profusely.''

Wilcox turned to Moll, according to the suit, and said, ''My God, what did you do?''

Stewart was taken to Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest, where he died about 30 minutes later.

At the time of the incident, police said the city's communications center received a call at 2:39 a.m. from the Auburn Street home. The caller told police a wanted man was there and he might have a gun.

As two officers tried to arrest Stewart, according to the police account, he held up a box cutter and a struggle began. One of the officers fired at Stewart, hitting him twice in his upper back.

Besides excessive force and brutality by the officers, the lawsuit alleges wrongful death, unlawful seizure, false imprisonment, denial of medical care, civil conspiracy and assault and battery.

The suit also claims Tonya Stewart suffers from a variety of emotional ailments, including ''severe fright, horror and grief.''

matthew.birkbeck@mcall.com

610-820-6581

Reporter Dalondo Moultrie contributed to this story.