How Not To Fly (about)

Blame Game Begins Over Missing Arms

Al Qaqaa was on a classified list of Iraqi weapons facilities that the CIA provided to Pentagon and military officials before the invasion, said the US intelligence official.

But when the Pentagon and US Central Command produced their own list of sites that a limited number of US "exploitation teams" should search, priority was given to those identified by exiled Iraqi opposition groups... Al Qaqaa wasn't one of them.

Man Says Wife's Near-Death Experience Meant To Save Marriage

[La Crosse, WI] A man says he threw a live electrical wire into his wife's bath hoping a near-death experience would save their marriage. William Dahlby said in court he was only trying to scare his wife...

Dahlby's wife, Mary, testified Tuesday her husband drew her bath after they spent the day taking a walk and a long motorcycle ride. While she took her bath, her husband came into the bathroom and dropped the cord into the bath... She jumped out of the bath, but her husband tried to push her back in the tub...

Tennis Star Calls Candidate's Use Of Photo Out Of Bounds

How cool would it be to take a picture with Martina Navratilova? That's what Joe Renna thought when he bumped into the tennis great, who has friends in Union County, during a street fair in Garwood last month.

...Renna, a Republican candidate for Union County freeholder, submitted the photograph to a local newspaper....

Navratilova was so miffed at Renna, she tracked down his Democratic opposition to give them her support... "Quite frankly, we wouldn't have gotten this [endorsement] if she had not spoken with us..."

380 Tons Of Explosives Missing In Iraq

Saddam Hussein's regime used Al-Qaqaa [south of Baghdad] as a key part of its effort to build a nuclear bomb. Although the missing materials are conventional explosives known as HMX and RDX, the Vienna-based IAEA got involved because HMX is a "dual use" substance powerful enough to ignite the fissile material in an atomic bomb and set off a nuclear chain reaction.

Both are key components in plastic explosives such as C-4 and Semtex, which are so powerful that Libyan terrorists needed just a pound (0.45 kilos) to blow up Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, killing 170 people....

At the Pentagon, an official who monitors developments in Iraq said US-led coalition troops had searched Al-Qaqaa in the immediate aftermath of the March 2003 invasion and confirmed that the explosives, which had been under IAEA seal since 1991, were intact. Thereafter the site was not secured by U.S. forces...

Germans Say They've Found Luther's Toilet

[Wittenberg, Germany] "This is a great find," Stefan Rhein, director of the Luther Memorial Foundation, said. "Particularly because we're talking about someone whose texts we have concentrated on for years, while little attention has been paid to anything three-dimensional and human behind them...."

Luther, a professor of biblical theology at Wittenberg University, nailed his 95 Theses to the church door at Wittenberg, attacking the corrupt trade in indulgences.

Schwarzenegger Called 'Racist' For Anti-[American-Indian] Remarks

American Indian tribes in California are protesting Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's statement that Indians "are ripping us off" while criticising the spread of their casinos.

Teresa Heinz Kerry Apologizes For Laura Bush Comment

Teresa Heinz Kerry told a newspaper she doesn't know if Laura Bush has ever had "a real job." She apologized Wednesday for having forgotten about the first lady's 10-year stint as a schoolteacher and librarian.

No Kidding: Miami Herald's Barry To Take Year Off

Miami Herald humor columnist Dave Barry, who has poked fun at life's more bizarre aspects for 20 years, is giving up his weekly column from next January for at least a year, the paper said Wednesday.

Google 'Saved' Australian Hostage

An Australian journalist John Martinkus was working for Australia's SBS Television kidnapped in Iraq was freed after his captors checked the popular internet search engine Google to confirm his identity....

"They Googled him and then went onto a web site -- either his own or his book publisher's web site, I don't know which one -- and saw that he was who he was..."

Can Mattel Save Barbie?

It all started with the Barbie-Ken separation this year after 43 years as a couple. As a newly single girl -- Cali (read California) Barbie, deeply tanned, with pierced ears and trendy outfits -- is hanging at the beach with a new Australian fellow named "Blaine."

Lynne Cheney Indignant Over Kerry Remark

Asked Wednesday night whether homosexuality is a choice, Kerry noted that one of Vice President Dick Cheney's daughters is a lesbian, and said she would probably affirm that she was born that way....

"Now, you know, I did have a chance to assess John Kerry once more and now the only thing I could conclude: This is not a good man," [Lynne Cheney] said. "Of course, I am speaking as a mom, and a pretty indignant mom. This is not a good man. What a cheap and tawdry political trick." She was not more specific. The vice president did not raise the matter in his remarks.

Rumsfeld: A Partial Pullout Is Possible / He Suggests Withdrawals May Begin By Early 2005

"Our hope is that as we build up Iraqi forces we will be able to relieve the stress on our force and see a reduction in coalition forces over some period of time, probably close to Iraqi elections," Rumsfeld said.

Second 2004 Presidential Debate

Question: Mr. President, if there were a vacancy in the Supreme Court, and you had the opportunity to fill that position today, who would you choose, and why?

George W Bush: ...I would pick somebody who would not allow their personal opinion to get in the way of the law. I would pick somebody who would strictly interpret the Constitution of the United States.

Let me give you a couple of examples, I guess, of the kind of person I wouldn't pick. I wouldn't pick a judge who said that the Pledge of Allegiance couldn't be said in a school because it had the words, "under God," in it. I think that's an example of a judge allowing personal opinion to enter into the decision-making process, as opposed to strict interpretation of the Constitution.

Another example would be the Dred Scott case, which is where judges years ago said that the Constitution allowed slavery because of personal property rights. That's personal opinion; that's not what the Constitution says. The Constitution of the United States says we're all -- it doesn't say that, it doesn't speak to the equality of America.

FDA Accused Of Silencing Vioxx Warnings

"Dr. Graham described an environment where he was 'ostracized,' 'subjected to veiled threats' and 'intimidation,'" Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said in a statement after Finance Committee investigators interviewed the researcher Thursday....

The Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress, already has been asked to look into whether the FDA muzzled another staffer who linked antidepressants to raising the odds of children suffering suicidal tendencies....

"Merck knew it had trouble on its hands and took action. At the same time, instead of acting as a public watchdog, the Food and Drug Administration was busy challenging its own expert and calling his work 'scientific rumor...'" [Grassley said.]

Vice Presidential Debate

Gwen Ifill: I will talk to you about health care, Mr. Vice President.... I want to talk to you about AIDS, and not about AIDS in China or Africa, but AIDS right here in this country, where black women between the ages of 25 and 44 are 13 times more likely to die of the disease than their [white] counterparts. What should the government's role be in helping to end the growth of this epidemic?

Dick Cheney: Well, this is a great tragedy, Gwen, when you think about the enormous cost here in the United States and around the world of the AIDS epidemic -- pandemic, really. Millions of lives lost, millions more infected and facing a very bleak future.

In some parts of the world, we've got the entire, sort of, productive generation has been eliminated as a result of AIDS, all except for old folks and kids -- nobody to do the basic work that runs an economy.

The president has been deeply concerned about it. He has moved and proposed and gotten through the Congress authorization for $15 billion to help in the international effort, to be targeted in those places where we need to do everything we can, through a combination of education as well as providing the kinds of medicines that will help people control the infection.

Here in the United States, we've made significant progress. I have not heard those numbers with respect to African-American women. I was not aware that it was -- that they're in epidemic there, because we have made progress in terms of the overall rate of AIDS infection, and I think primarily through a combination of education and public awareness as well as the development, as a result of research, of drugs that allow people to live longer lives even though they are infected -- obviously we need to do more of that.

Vibrating Trousers Help Angina Patients, Enhanced External Counterpulsation

The trousers have long inflatable cuffs, similar to those used for blood pressure measurements. The cuffs wrap themselves snugly around the calves, thighs and buttocks. As your heart beats the cuffs inflate and deflate.

Orgies Are The Way To Ease Social Tensions, Claims US Judge

He is the conservative bastion of the US supreme court, a favourite of President Bush, and a hunting partner of the vice-president. He has argued vociferously against abortion rights, and in favour of anti-sodomy laws. But it turns out that there is another side to Justice Antonin Scalia: he thinks Americans ought to be having more orgies.

Challenged about his views on sexual morality, Justice Scalia surprised his audience at Harvard University, telling them: "I even take the position that sexual orgies eliminate social tensions and ought to be encouraged."