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The U.S. Public Health Service said a prison morgue near New Orleans was expecting 1,000 to 2,000 bodies. And more than 125 were known dead in Mississippi. [snip] And the secretary of homeland security, Michael Chertoff, warned that there will be gruesome sights in the days ahead. "We need to prepare the country for what's coming," Chertoff told Fox News . "We are going to uncover people who died hiding in the houses, maybe got caught in the floods. It is going to be as ugly a scene as you can imagine." Meanwhile, help for the living was an uphill...

The Red Cross has set up a Family Links Registry here, or Call 1-877 LOVED-1S (1-877-568-3317) As a result of Hurricane Katrina's passage through the Southern coast of the United States, thousands of persons within the United States and abroad have lost contact with their loved ones. In an effort to help restoring family links, the ICRC in close cooperation with the American Red Cross offers the following services to all those seeking information about their relatives possibly affected by the hurricane. Locate your relatives This website is managed by the ICRC in close cooperation with the American Red Cross...

Paramedic Patrick Keathley of Benicia happened to be in New Orleans with seven colleagues for an industry convention as a small storm called Katrina, off the coast of Florida, changed course and picked up steam. "We didn't realize the storm was going to be as big as it was, or that it would turn and hit Louisiana," Keathley said. "By the time we did, we couldn't get a rental car, even though we had one reserved, because everyone was fleeing," he said by rapidly dying cell phone as he made his way back to California. The eight paramedics were forced...

As the National Guard delivered food to the New Orleans convention center yesterday, American Red Cross officials said that federal emergency management authorities would not allow them to do the same. Other relief agencies say the area is so damaged and dangerous that they doubted they could conduct mass feeding there now. "The Homeland Security Department has requested and continues to request that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans," said Renita Hosler, spokeswoman for the Red Cross. "Right now access is controlled by the National Guard and local authorities. We have been at the table every...

Justifying Suicide Bombings Generally, people in the largely Muslim nations surveyed are divided over whether suicide bombings and other violence against civilian targets are justified in order to defend Islam against its enemies. Fully three-quarters of those interviewed in Turkey (76%) say such attacks are rarely or never justified. But more people in Pakistan and Morocco say suicide attacks in the defense of Islam are justifiable: roughly four-in-ten in each country say these attacks are often or sometimes justified (41% Pakistan, 40% Morocco). There is broader agreement that suicide attacks in specific circumstances – against Americans and other Westerners in...

Cos and Effect Bill Cosby Sparked a Debate. Will His Own Troubles Snuff It Out? The program was set for 7 p.m. But by 4:30, several hundred Detroit residents were waiting in the freezing rain, senior citizens in wheelchairs, parents with small children, the hopeful and the hopeless huddled in line together... What had drawn 1,900 people downtown on a yucky night was the sheer star power of a 67-year-old comedian who hadn't come to do comedy. Bill Cosby had come to give a stern lecture -- free of charge -- about the failures of black parents, and the failures...

China Aviation Oil lost millions in derivativesAP , SINGAPORE Thursday, Dec 02, 2004,Page 12 Singapore financial markets were jolted yesterday after a Chinese jet-fuel supplier listed in the city-state said it had racked up US$550 million in losses on derivative trades and was seeking protection from its creditors. China Aviation Oil, whose shares have been suspended since Monday, said late Tuesday it was facing a "financial crisis," and had suspended chief executive Chen Jiulin while accountants PricewaterhouseCoopers investigated what went wrong. The unit's state-linked parent, China Aviation Oil Holding Co, has extended a US$100 million emergency loan to the troubled...

"Regrettably, we have seen an erosion in the Senate of centrists on both sides of the aisle," said Sen. Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, a Republican moderate whose leverage may drop substantially in the next Congress. She said she hoped Bush will push for cooperation between the two parties. Another GOP moderate, Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee (R.I.), expressed even deeper disappointment, telling the Providence Journal he would not rule out switching to the Democratic Party. [snip]

After a decision from a federal judge not to send out new state absentee ballots without Ralph Nader’s name on them or to extend the deadline for overseas absentee ballots to be included in the upcoming election, a partisan debate has sprung up concerning military service people overseas. [snip] Service people overseas make up an overwhelming proportion of where those ballots would go. With recent polls showing a prevailing support of President Bush in the military, state Republican leaders are crying politics and pressing Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell to issue an executive order to override the decision and extend the...

Got what follows from a homeschool discussion group I belong to: Hi Everyone -- Sorry about the cross-posting, but this should be a pretty cool educational event. Disclaimer -- I am only posting this to let homeschooling families know of a great educational opportunity. Nothing more, nothing less. Please do not make this a big political thread -- that's not the intention. I am a firm believer in "Take what you want and delete the rest". I'm 100% flame proof. Former President Bill Clinton will be speaking with John Kerry at LOVE Park, 16th and JFK Blvd in Center City...

Waving white flags, Iraqis fled the city of Samarra on river boats on Sunday as U.S. forces claimed victory over insurgents in the first step of an offensive aimed at taking control of rebel-held cities and that left 125 people dead. Overnight, American warplanes hammered Fallujah, another rebel-held city, killing at least four people, hospital officials said ... The U.S. strategy of "precision strikes" also came in for criticism from Iraqi President Ghazi al-Yawar who described the air assaults as collective punishment. ... Air strikes on cities are a very annoying issue and not acceptable in any way. I consider...

Ingush Fear Retribution After Bloody School Hostage Taking AFP: 9/6/2004 CHERMEN, Russia, Sept 7 (AFP) - Along with the rest of the world Issa Evloyev watched with horror as an armed band took a school full of children hostage near his hometown in southern Russia. But his horror was two-fold. Evloyev is an ethnic Ingush, a Muslim, living in mostly Christian North Ossetia. In 1992 armed battles between the two peoples left dozens dead on both sides and Evloyev knew that if some of the hostage takers turned out to be Ingush, he and his family would face the threat of...

    Hold the bacon     Apart from Hurricane Charley, we've been following a most intriguing story out of Orlando, Fla., where a woman says she was fired from her job because she ate a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich at work, offending Muslim employees.     According to the Orlando Sentinel, Lina Morales has filed a religious-discrimination lawsuit against Rising Star Telecommunications, saying she lost her administrative position because she violated a policy banning pork and pork products from the workplace.     She says the rule "constitutes religious discrimination because it is based in Islamic law for the benefit of some Muslim employees who were...

 Abu Gharib: A Product of the “War on Terror” By Yamin ZakariaAl-Jazeerah, May 8, 2004 As the obscene pictures depicting sexual abuse, torture and execution of the Iraqi prisoners continues to surface it only confirms the scale of the horror, obscenity, deceit, arrogance and the sheer hypocrisy of this war! Then the US has the gall to expect the Arabs/Muslims to condemn the human rights violation of Saddam Hussein’s regime but simultaneously expects the US forces to be excused for the same behaviour! Furthermore, one of the justifications for the carnage in Iraq was Saddam’s violation of human rights, but yet...

Buffett Criticizes Hedge Funds in OmahaSaturday May 1, 6:28 pm ETBy Philip Klein OMAHA, Neb. (Reuters) - Warren Buffett (News) on Saturday criticized hedge funds and warned of the dangers of derivatives and looming inflation in front of nearly 20,000 shareholders who trekked to Omaha, Nebraska for the annual meeting of his Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE:BRKa Buffett, the world's second richest person, took questions from shareholders for nearly six hours along with his longtime partner, Charlie Munger. He also responded to shareholder groups who criticized his role on the board of directors at Coca-Cola Co. (NYSE:KO - News). Buffett called...

From a tangle of recent accusations about Iraqi oil profiteering and international deceit that stretches from Washington's Beltway to Baghdad, one name keeps popping up: Shakir Al-Khafaji, an Iraqi-born metro Detroiter [snip] The West Bloomfield father and Southfield business owner has become entangled in a simmering scandal that now threatens to overtake the United Nations' biggest humanitarian mission, the oil-for-food program. Hearings were held this week in Congress following a congressional report earlier this month that said that much of the money generated by the program was skimmed off before it reached the Iraqi people. [snip] The GAO estimated that...

<p>LONDON — Police arrested eight men Tuesday and seized half a ton of ammonium nitrate , a fertilizer that can be used to make bombs, in anti-terror raids in and near London , the capital's Metropolitan Police force said.</p> <p>All the suspects were British and were arrested as part of an operation targeting alleged international terrorist activity, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke said.</p>

New Film May Harm Gibson's CareerBy SHARON WAXMANPublished: February 26, 2004 LOS ANGELES, Feb. 25 — Mel Gibson's provocative new film, "The Passion of the Christ," is making some of Hollywood's most prominent executives uncomfortable in ways that may damage Mr. Gibson's career. Hollywood is a close-knit world, and friendships and social contact are critical in the making of deals and the casting of movies. Many of Hollywood's most prominent figures are also Jewish. So with a furor arising around the film, along with Mr. Gibson's reluctance to distance himself from his father, who calls the Holocaust mostly fiction, it...

<p>NEW YORK - With a trio of guilty verdicts yesterday, the U.N. tribunal for Rwanda has established that men armed only with words can commit genocide.</p> <p>Three Rwandan media executives were convicted by the international tribunal of committing and inciting genocide, war crimes and persecution in a case that will set a precedent for the new International Criminal Court.</p>

Indian software industry buoyed by U.S. recovery By K.C. Krishnadas EE Times October 17, 2003 (12:33 p.m. ET) BANGALORE, India — The Indian software industry is smelling a turnaround in its main market, the United States. The long-anticipated rebound, coupled with a marked uptick in outsourcing, is sending stocks surging here and sparking a hiring boom. When Infosys Technologies Ltd., one of India's best-known software export firms, announced its quarterly results just over a week ago, the stock market bolted forward as it had not done in the last two years. Shares of Infosys and other tech firms rocketed, confirming...