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SEOUL (AP) | North Korea might release two convicted American journalists if the United States offers a gesture such as an official apology, a U.S.-based scholar who visited Pyongyang said in interviews published Friday. Laura Ling and Euna Lee were detained in March near the North Korean border with China and sentenced last month to 12 years of hard labor for entering the country illegally and for "hostile acts." The two work for former Vice President Al Gore's California-based Current TV media group. University of Georgia political scientist Han Park said that the two are being kept at a guesthouse...

Jackson death may have been 'homicide', says police chief MIchael Jackson is reported to have been taking a cocktail of drugs James Bone in New York The Los Angeles police chief has raised the prospect of a homicide charge over the death of Michael Jackson. Homicide does not necessarily mean murder — it could mean a manslaughter charge against a doctor. Jackson, 50, died last month in mysterious circumstances but is reported to have been taking a cocktail of drugs including the potent anaesthetic Diprivan, also known as propofol. Los Angeles police are investigating Jackson’s prescription drug history and have...

LET there be no doubt: Democrats are the party with two ideas: borrow and spend. The only vigorous internal debate on the left revolves around two questions: How much and how much more? Even as the first trillion-dollar stimulus craters, the debt-o-crats are floating yet another grand act of generational theft to create the illusion of jumpstarting the economy. White House economic adviser Laura D'Andrea Tyson told an international economic conference: "We should be planning on a contingency basis for a second round of stimulus." Team Obama flack Robert Gibbs says the president isn't "ruling anything out, but at the...

Sometimes the only surprising thing is that anyone is surprised. “Power of Stimulus Slow to Take Hold,” The Washington Post reported on July 8. “Senior administration officials acknowledged that the effects of the stimulus package have been overshadowed by an unexpectedly sharp drop-off in employment since the measure passed in February,” the paper reported. In fact, the unemployment rate now is almost 20 percent higher than the Obama administration warned it would be if we didn’t pass the stimulus package. But that’s no surprise, since the $787 billion “stimulus” bill was never intended to stimulate job creation. Consider that the...

Rogue Algorithms And Other Mutually Assured Destruction Program Trading Alternatives Posted by Tyler Durden at 12:54 PM Submitted By Joe Saluzzi Of Themis Trading Why Institutional Investors Should Be Concerned About High Frequency Traders By Sal L. Arnuk and Joseph Saluzzi A Themis Trading LLC Mini White Paper It is now generally understood that high frequency traders (HFTs) are dominating the equity market, generating as much as 70% of the volume. HFTs are computerized trading programs that make money two ways, in general. They offer bids in such a way so as to make tiny amounts of money from per...

The Spiritually Vigorous Saint ". . . that I may know Him . . ." —Philippians 3:10 A saint is not to take the initiative toward self-realization, but toward knowing Jesus Christ. A spiritually vigorous saint never believes that his circumstances simply happen at random, nor does he ever think of his life as being divided into the secular and the sacred. He sees every situation in which he finds himself as the means of obtaining a greater knowledge of Jesus Christ, and he has an attitude of unrestrained abandon and total surrender about him. The Holy Spirit is...

L'AQUILA, Italy -- President Obama's debut performance at a G-8 summit is playing to rave reviews from his counterparts Friday, with Italian President Silvio Berlusconi telling reporters the American "has done everything absolutely right" on foreign policy so far. "I was impressed but so were all our colleagues. I can tell you that we are all very favorably impressed with President Obama," he said. The praise follows a day after the leaders gathered here for the Group of Eight leading economies summit greeted Mr. Obama with applause when he showed up for their traditional group photo.

Frankly, I’m beginning to feel a lot like Howard Beale, the character portrayed by Peter Finch in the 1976 release, “Network.” He insisted that people get up right now and go to the window, open it, stick their heads out and yell, “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!” I’ve always heard that misery loves company. If true, misery in America has more company these days than it knows what do with. I realize that conservatives have felt this way ever since the Democrats nominated the Chicago crony of Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, Tony...

http://bigpicture.ru/?p=2824

In an attempt to gain their release, the United States has shifted its carefully crafted language to imply the culpability of two American journalists who were convicted by North Korea of illegally entering the Stalinist country earlier this year.

THE financial system col lapsed. Housing prices cra tered. Unemployment is at a record high for the last quarter-century. The Democratic president has a solidly positive job rating. Yet we Americans haven't suddenly become collectivists. The economic distress of the 1930s led Americans to favor less reliance on markets and more on government. The economic distress of the 1970s led us to favor less reliance on government and more on markets. It doesn't seem unreasonable to expect, as many political liberals have predicted, that the economic distress of the late 2000s will produce a shift in the '30s direction. But...

There they go again. Democrats have controlled the White House and both chambers of Congress for less than six months, yet already their tax-and-spend ways are hurting America’s economy – and taking away jobs. Their first act of business was to pass a so-called “stimulus” package they promised would save or create 3.5 million jobs and keep the national unemployment rate below eight percent. Instead, last week the rate jumped to 9.5 percent, its highest level in more than 25 years. Rather than reversing course, however, Democrat leaders continued down this perilous path by forcing through the House a climate...

CNN is responding to a claim that correspondent Karl Penhaul, who is covering the situation on Honduras, interviewed a man who'd already been accused of staging what was happening at a protest for "dramatic effect." On Wednesday, the blog Legal Insurrection wrote: Reuters ran a staged photo of a bloodied Honduran protester. Contrary to the clear implication of the Reuters story, the protester was not bloodied from the protests, but as reported by Hunter Smith at Honduras Abandoned, the protester deliberately wiped blood on his shirt from the ground in order to get photographed. Now this same protester, identified as...

`NK Cyber Warfare Unit Masterminding DDoS Attacks` JULY 11, 2009 09:20 The North Korean military`s cyber warfare unit is believed to be responsible for this week`s massive cyber attacks on major South Korean and U.S. government and civilian Web sites. South Korea`s National Intelligence Service said this to lawmakers yesterday. Park Sung-do, second deputy director of the service, told an unofficial meeting with members of the National Assembly’s intelligence committee yesterday morning that a research center called "No. 110," under the Reconnaissance Bureau of the North Korean People’s Army is believed to have masterminded the distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. The...

WASHINGTON -- The White House had been working for months to talk Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan into running for President Obama's former Senate seat to keep it from falling into Republican hands. Madigan is popular, has high voter-approval poll results, and was seen as the strongest Democrat who could hold the seat. But in an unexpected blow to the White House's political recruiting efforts, she turned down the president's request and decided to run instead for re-election to her present job. Within hours of her decision Wednesday, Republican Rep. Mark Kirk saw his chance and sent out word that...

While ousted President Manuel Zelaya carries out a raucous public battle to return and finish the last six months of his term, the Honduran attorney general is quietly collecting evidence that might put Zelaya behind bars -- or keep him at bay -- for years. Zelaya and interim President Roberto Micheletti traveled to Costa Rica on Thursday to begin negotiating a way out of the political crisis in which both claim the presidency. But congress and other branches of government have suggested that some things are not on the table -- namely, dropping charges so Zelaya can return. Deputy Attorney...

Why does Peggy Noonan find Sarah Palin so distasteful? Presumably, I am told, it's because Noonan worships at the altar of Ronald Reagan, and Palin is no Reagan. Female friends of mine tell me of a deeper hatred: Noonan is troubled by Palin's family first policy -- that nagging and annoying call from nature which reminds humanity of its proper priorities. Whatever the case, in today's Wall Street Journal Noonan assembles her arsenal, sharpens her nails, and unleashes her most disturbing and unhealthy attack so far on Sarah Palin. Here are a few tidbits: "In television interviews she was out...

Good morning!Are cracks beginning to appear in the O agenda??Some Dems are putting the brakes on health care "reform"....others on Cap and Tax....there's significant disagreement over the need for a Second stimulus bill...and a few warning signs are even appearing in the MSM...Stay tuned to this channel and its coverage of the Obama Chronicles: Dangerous Delusions

It hit me this morning walking the dog.....something everyone had missed, the pondits, TV clowns, writers, et al: America Wants Sarah to be President. Period. We don't care what her background is, what her experiecne is, where she's from what she wears, who backs her, etc. We want her to be our President and that's all that matters.... I mean, look what we have now: Barney Frank, Al Franken, the Bomb....where is the criteria there? HOW could she be any worse than them......She is more honest than any of these clowns, has more administrative experience than the Bomb, has more...

There’s no question that current government policies for taxes, spending, and regulation are causing the U.S. to lose competitiveness in the global race for capital, prosperity, and growth. Of course, China has been moving in the direction of free-market capitalism for years. To some extent, this shows the positive benefits of America’s free-trade policies and its open-mindedness in helping nurture not only China growth, but also middle-class prosperity worldwide. But what’s particularly galling about Obamanomics is that we may well be losing our competitive edge with Europe. While Europe is ever so slightly moving toward Reagan and Thatcher, the U.S....