Okami’s NewsCloud Journal

Charlton Heston, who won the 1959 best actor Oscar as the chariot-racing "Ben-Hur" and portrayed Moses, Michelangelo, El Cid and other heroic figures in movie epics of the ’50s and ’60s, has died. He was 84.

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NOAA deployed the final two tsunami detection buoys in the South Pacific this week, completing the buoy network and bolstering the U.S. tsunami warning system. This vast network of 39 stations provides coastal communities in the Pacific, Atlantic, Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico with faster and more accurate tsunami warnings.

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Gaza is under murderous assault and the United States is escalating regional threats while pushing new sanctions against Iran.

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Following the death of the Italian-French war veteran Lazare Ponticelli, a total of nine men who served in their countries’ armed forces during World War I are known to be still alive around the world.

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The latest annual count of hate groups operating in the United States rose to 888 last year, capping a 48 percent increase since 2000.

(THESE are the terrorists Americans should be worrying about.)

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America’s national security institutions have failed and the military has been left holding the bag in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan, conducting nation-building tasks for which it is ill-suited, according to the final report of a House Armed Services Committee panel established in 2007 to examine military roles and missions.

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ABC News’ Jonathan Karl Reports: The Bush Administration apparently does not want a U.S. military study that found no direct connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda to get any attention.  This morning, the Pentagon cancelled plans to send out a press release announcing the report’s release and will no longer make the report available online.

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NEW DELHI, 27 February 2008 (PlusNews) - The silence and taboo surrounding anal sex is putting millions of men and women at risk of HIV, delegates attending the fourth international microbicides conference in New Delhi, India, heard this week.

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As the presidential primary season winds down, The Interfaith Alliance has compiled a list of the 10 worst abuses of religion during the campaign so far.

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Creationism v. evolution in schools has been for many years a battle in the nation’s culture war, and these days it’s no different.

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More than six years after the Bush administration first introduced military commissions, finally we will learn whether they offer a plausible means of trying terrorists or whether the system really is the total flop it has seemed to be so far.

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David Miliband has admitted two US “extraordinary rendition” flights landed on UK territory in 2002.
The foreign secretary said in both cases US planes refuelled on the UK dependent territory of Diego Garcia.

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The College of William & Mary, the nation’s second oldest, lost its president last week after a culture-war clash that began when he ordered the removal of an 18-inch brass cross from the altar of the historic Wren Chapel.

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Presidents Day: It’s become so commercialized. But should we celebrate something other than 20 percent markdowns on clothes and furniture? However much Americans may revile individual presidents, many of us believe that the presidency itself gives us much to be thankful for.

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Kansas City Star | By Scott Canon | February 20, 2008
Truman had MacArthur. Kennedy stumbled into the Bay of Pigs. George W. Bush returned the force of nature that is Donald Rumsfeld to the Pentagon.

Whoever becomes the next commander in chief will wade into the sometimes uneasy world where admirals and generals cross paths, and sometimes swords, with presidents.

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