| Interleague |
| Boston vs Washington, 7:05 p.m. |
| Chicago Cubs vs Detroit, 7:05 p.m. |
| Cleveland vs Pittsburgh, 7:05 p.m. |
| Cincinnati vs Toronto, 7:07 p.m. |
| Philadelphia vs Tampa Bay, 7:08 p.m. |
| Baltimore vs Florida, 7:10 p.m. |
| N.Y. Yankees vs Atlanta, 7:10 p.m. |
| Kansas City vs Houston, 8:05 p.m. |
| Minnesota vs Milwaukee, 8:05 p.m. |
| L.A. Dodgers vs … |
Now that she's Mrs. Ted Turner, Jane Fonda might think she'sdumped her radical past. But a new book rehashes all the '60s dirt,plus adds a few new wrinkles. Former Newsweek White Housecorrespondent Porter Bibb's It Ain't As Easy As it Looks, out thisfall, reveals Fonda was heavily influenced by the politics of VanessaRedgrave, as well as her first husband, French director Roger Vadim.
Redgrave was such a big influence, Fonda named her daughter,born in 1968, Vanessa.
Bibb's book also points out Vadim and Fonda had an open marriageand even tells a tale about Jane turning up for dinner while incollege wearing pearls, high heels and . . . nothing else.
Bibb …
PARK CITY, Utah (AP) — Kevin Smith has premiered his latest movie at the Sundance Film Festival and sold it to the highest bidder — himself, for $20.
Smith had indicated he would auction off distribution rights to his fundamentalist horror film "Red State" after its Sundance premiere Sunday night, and he brought up the movie's producer, Jonathan Gordon, to handle the …
(Home teams listed first)
Quarterfinals
Second Leg
Manchester United (England) 3, Bayern Munich …
Barack Obama might get a race, after all.
Former GOP presidential candidate Alan Keyes told IllinoisRepublicans Monday that he is "open to the idea" of taking on theDemocrat in the U.S. Senate race -- a move that would pit twoeloquent, nationally known African Americans against one another.
"It would be a classic race of conservative vs. liberal," saidstate Sen. Dave Syverson, a member of the panel looking for acandidate to go up against Obama. "It would put this race on the mapin this country -- just for excitement."
Syverson spoke to Keyes several times Monday and said Keyes didnot commit to making the run. The former State Department officialand radio and …
External assessment began as an imposed activity to provide quality control for a process. This gatekeeping role has a norm-referenced focus. A second role, ensuring accountability, emerged to judge the quality of education, an activity that has remained essentially norm-referenced. A third role, instructional diagnosis, is a recent phenomenon driven by the need to improve education and to provide educational, not political, justification. Traced from a measurement perspective, two requirements must be met for external assessment to yield instructionally diagnostic information: a reconceptualization of reliability, and development of more detailed and facilitative mechanisms for test …
LSU's answer to avoiding this week's upset bug was to hand it off to Charles Scott.
Scott surpassed 100 yards rushing for a fourth straight game and punched in two short touchdowns, leading No. 5 LSU to a 34-24 victory over Mississippi State on Saturday night.
The Bulldogs turned in a feisty performance in a bid to add another surprising result to a week highlighted by upsets of No. 1 Southern California and No. 4 Florida, Mississippi State trailed by only 10 well into the fourth quarter.
But Scott's 27 carries for 141 yards kept LSU (4-0, 2-0 Southeastern Conference) moving and the clock rolling.
Jarrett Lee, who went the whole way with …
Cider helped keep a roof over a church 30 years ago in RodneyStoke. A cider-making demonstration even attracted visitors fromExeter to Richard Drane's Manor Farm in 1980.
The owner enlisted the help of retired master cider-maker ArthurSealey to entertain 300 people.
Aided by sons Robert and Richard and the help of Eddie Moore, thecider-maker pressed 150 gallons of apple juice.
The occasion turned into a fundraising event for roof repairs atSt Leonard's Church in the village.
Among displays were samples of cider apples including the StokeRed, developed by …
WASHINGTON - About 47 percent of parents in families earning less than $40,000 a year are offered health insurance through their employers - a 9 percent drop during the past decade.
The figure underscores concern that low-income parents are experiencing a dramatic erosion in employee benefits, said the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which funded the research.
The foundation says the research also shows the importance of the State Children's Health Insurance Program, which has been in effect for a decade. One of the biggest debates in Congress this year will be over how much funding to set aside for the program, which now covers about 6 million …
Egypt's president will skip a key Arab summit this week, the country's foreign minister announced Saturday, in a major blow to efforts at ending deep political divisions among the region's leaders.
President Hosni Mubarak's decision to not attend the meeting in Doha, Qatar, which gets under way Monday, comes as relations among some Arab leaders have been strained over Iran's influence and continued feuding among Palestinian factions.
Qatar and Egypt, in particular, have been at odds over Qatar's growing regional prominence as a meditator, a role Cairo has long dominated.
Saudi Arabia has been leading efforts at reconciling the Arab divisions …
The Illinois Housing Development Authority is set to issue $72million in tax-free bonds to finance a new round of loans, said RogerMorsch, single-family housing manager for the state agency.
The bond sale will make $67.5 million in mortgage moneyavailable starting in mid-September, from lenders throughout thestate. Interest rates should be a cut below the prevailing 10percent interest rate.
Details of the program haven't been set. But within the lastyear, when market rates were higher, the authority made loan moneyavailable at 8.58 …
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department says the government will not contest an appeals court ruling that investigators illegally seized a list of baseball players who allegedly tested positive for steroids.
Justice Department spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler says the solicitor general's office will not try to reverse the decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco.
The seizure of the list of ballplayers took place during a 2004 drug lab raid that was part of the government's eight-year sports doping investigation.
In September, the appeals court ordered investigators to return the list of 104 players, …
LONDON - Prince Charles warned that historic sites like the Towerof London have been "vandalized" by high-rise construction thatthreatens to ruin the character of the capital.
The heir to the British throne, who spoke at a conference on cityplanning, argued that poor planning could damage the integrity ofBritain's historical areas - particularly criticizing tall buildingsthat dwarf smaller structures.
"We seem to be determined to vandalize these few remaining siteswhich retain the kind of human scale and timeless character that soattract people to them and which increase in value as time goes by,"Charles said at St. James' Palace.
The speech was a challenge to London Mayor Ken Livingstone'ssupport for a project near the Tower. The building, known as the"Shard of Glass," would be Britain's tallest skyscraper.
Charles suggested tall buildings be clustered in corporate areas.He pointed to Paris' La Defense, a business district full ofskyscrapers kept separate from the city's famous museums andlandmarks.
"The key point I want to make is that I am not opposed to alltall buildings," he said. "My concern is that they should beconsidered in their context; in other words, they should be putwhere they fit properly."
His speech also took aim at plans to build more than 3 millionnew homes by 2020.
ISLAMABAD (AP) — Once-secret U.S. diplomatic cables have revealed concerns by Western governments that Islamist militants might get access to Pakistani nuclear material and American skepticism that Islamabad will sever ties to Taliban factions fighting in Afghanistan.
They also detail America's private doubts over the weak, unpopular civilian government and portray the country's army chief as an important behind-the-scenes player who once talked about ousting President Asif Ali Zardari, who himself is said to have expressed concern the military might "take me out."
The revelations were published Tuesday by newspapers working together with whistle-blower WikiLeaks, which obtained more than 250,000 leaked American diplomatic files from missions around the world.
U.S. and Western officials have expressed concern over Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, but in public have generally said they believed it was safe.
In a Feb. 4, 2009, cable, then-U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson wrote that "our major concern is not having an Islamic militant steal an entire weapon but rather the chance someone working in GOP (government of Pakistan) facilities could gradually smuggle enough material out to eventually make a weapon," according to The New York Times.
Britain's the Guardian newspaper reported that Russian and British officials shared the same concern.
The papers reported that in 2007 Pakistan had agreed "in principle" to an operation to remove highly enriched uranium from a Pakistani nuclear reactor, but it was never carried because of domestic opposition. Pakistan said Monday it refused the operation because its own nuclear security would prevent the material from getting into the wrong hands.
The cables also provide insight into American views on Pakistan's efforts to fight extremists.
The United States is pushing Pakistan to take action against insurgents in the northwest who are behind attacks in Afghanistan. But Islamabad has resisted because it views the groups as potential assets against the influence of archenemy India in Afghanistan once the Americans withdraw.
In one cable, Patterson said she was skeptical that Pakistan would abandon the militants. "There is no chance ... for abandoning support for these groups, which it sees as an important part of its national security apparatus against India," she wrote.
Zardari was elected after the death of his wife, Benazir Bhutto, in a suicide blast in 2008, but he has been hounded by the opposition, the media and the army, which remains the real power center in the country.
In February this year, Patterson wrote the civilian government "remains weak, ineffectual and corrupt. Domestic politics is dominated by uncertainty about the fate of President Zardari," according to an account in The New York Times.
In March 2009, during a period of political turmoil, Pakistani army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani told the ambassador that he "might, however reluctantly," pressure Mr. Zardari to resign, but revealed he had little time for the head of the opposition, Nawaz Sharif.
"Kayani made it clear regardless how much he disliked Zardari he distrusted Nawaz even more," the ambassador wrote.
Zardari emerges as a leader who is fearing for his position, and possibly his life — the wording is ambiguous.
The cables reveal that American Vice President Joe Biden told British Prime Minister Gordon Brown that Zardari had told him the country's main spy chief and "Kayani will take me out," according to an account in the Times.
Given the option, Rich Rodriguez would easily take an extra twodays' rest over trying to counter the unknown.
Still, East Carolina's delayed debut - today at Cincinnati - willcreate a few problems for Rodriguez's West Virginia University team.Those regular non-conference rivals meet 7 p.m. Saturday at EastCarolina.
"It changes things a little bit," Rodriguez said. "It's the samefor both teams in they'll get film from us on Tuesday. The differenceis we're completely in the dark."
Speaking on a teleconference Sunday, the day after WVU's season-opening 24-17 home loss to nationally ranked Wisconsin, Rodriguez andhis staff will be quickly pressed into comprising a strategy for thePirates.
Compounding the "unknown" factor is that for the first time since1991, ECU is not coached by Steve Logan. Former Florida defensivecoordinator John Thompson replaced Logan, who was fired after lastseason.
"They'll at least be able to break us down because we'll do a lotof the same things (as last season)," Rodriguez said. "We'll bescrambling hard on Tuesday to put a game plan together."
Thompson kept two members of Logan's 2002 staff, recruitingcoordinator/running backs coach Jerry McManus and strength coach JimWhitten.
* n n
NOTHING BROKEN
The Mountaineers were hampered Saturday by minor injuries thattook downs away from critical players such as quarterback RasheedMarshall, tailback Quincy Wilson, linebacker Grant Wiley and freesafety Jahmile Addae.
Of all the ailments, it appears Addae's is the worst.
"He strained his (left) shoulder again," Rodriguez said. "It isday-to-day. Hopefully, he'll be OK by mid-week."
Sophomore Anthony Mims played in Addae's place after the fourth-quarter injury.
Marshall complained of sore ribs after a hard, high hit byWisconsin linebacker Alex Lewis. He missed about two quarters of thegame. Wilson hurt his right knee when leaping during a carry, but heis suffering only from a bruise. Some of Wiley's woes had to do withhelmet repair.
"I kind of yelled, 'Throw anyone's helmet on,' " Rodriguez said.
Wilson will return to practice today, albeit with a coating ofpain.
"It's a deep bruise," Rodriguez said. "Nothing that will keep himfrom practice or being able to play this weekend."
* n n
THE NEW GUYS
In Rodriguez's mind, WVU has five new offensive line starters. Thetwo expected back from last season are Tim Brown (season-endingAchilles' tendon injury last week) and junior Jeff Berk (who movedfrom guard to left tackle).
Against a veteran Wisconsin defense, the offensive line performedadequately, Rodriguez said.
"I thought they held up mentally," Rodriguez said. "But it wastough to move those big guys out of the way and create anyconsistency in the running game."
The true newcomer was sophomore Garin Justice, who assumed theright tackle job Wednesday night after Brown's in-practice injury.Rodriguez planned to split Justice's time with fellow sophomore JoshStewart, yet Justice, a Gilbert High graduate, played most of thecontest.
"Garin actually played pretty well," Rodriguez said. "I was goingto give them even time, but he was holding his own. A few times hegot beat, but that will happen."
* n n
ROD RAP:
* On WVU's punting, which suffered a first-quarter block: "I wasvery disappointed in the punting game. That was one of the keys towhy we didn't get the win. ... We want (punter Todd James) to be alittle quicker. He didn't have the type of day we know he's capableof."
* On depth and how injuries magnified that problem: "It shows usif we want to compete at the highest level week in and week out, wehave to have some depth. You can do it through recruiting and playingyoung guys. ... We didn't play our young guys as much as we wantedto."
* On the Lewis hit that knocked Marshall from the game: "I thoughtit was a clean shot. I thought (at first) it was a helmet-to-helmetblow, but it was more a shoulder pad under the throat. Another shoton (backup quarterback) Charles Hales was a helmet-to-helmet blow."
Writer Mike Cherry can be reached at 348-5170 or by e-mail atmikecherry@dailymail.com
The General Board of Mennonite Church Canada continued the enormous task of implementing the new Canadian structure at its meetings here November 15-17.
How to determine the budget, what to name the new mission program, relationship to the colleges, and lack of office space were just a few of the issues on the agenda. Sitting around the table were representatives of the three councils--Support Services, Christian Formation and Christian Witness--as well as area conference moderators ("area conference" will continue to be used for now).
The General Board "leads Mennonite Church Canada in developing its identity and vision," says the statement of purpose approved at the meeting. The board coordinates the work of the councils, engages in strategic planning, and fosters "partnerships with and between its area conferences."
The board agreed to publish a Canadian directory of churches, a practice that was discontinued in 1998 in favour of the binational Mennonite Directory. The database will be shared with Mennonite Church USA.
A recommendation to allot one percent of the MC Canada budget to Mennonite World Conference (MWC) evoked a lively debate. This would mean about $50,000, according to the current budget.
How much do other countries, especially the United States, give? asked board members. While there was affirmation of the principle, some were concerned that Canada not be perceived as "the main player" in MWC. The board will seek more information before deciding.
MC Canada will seek membership on the Mennonite Central Committee board, parallel to MC USA. Currently, the Canadian church is represented only through MCC Canada.
The board spent considerable time on the role of the Finance Committee, now under the Support Services Council, headed by executive secretary Pam Peters-Pries. Also generating interest was the proposal to build a fund for special projects into the annual budget. Members cautioned that this is not a "contingency" fund but a "discretionary" one that allows for specific projects each year.
Christian Formation, directed by Justina Heese, raised questions about youth assemblies (how often? what format?). The options continue to be explored as the council fills positions in youth and young adult ministries. Staff for peace and justice and Christian education are also being sought.
The large Christian Witness Council, which has virtually all its staff in place, reported great interest in its half-time position in Multi-cultural Ministry--11 excellent applicants and only one of them of "Anglo" background, reported Jack Suderman, executive secretary of the council.
The council is currently seeking a name for its international program. In testing the words "witness" and "mission" with partners around the world, five language groups prefer "mission," while North Americans tend to shy away from that word.
The shift in funding from binational to national mission programs is raising some concern. Willard Metzger, who recently visited churches in Canada on behalf of the Commission on Overseas Mission, reported that some do not understand that overseas mission contributions now flow through MC Canada. Mennonite Church Eastern Canada has a funding formula in place for its churches, but in the rest of the country each congregation decides its giving.
The board spent time getting updated on the restructuring plans for Mennonite Publishing House, a binational entity which is in serious financial difficulty.
Alberta pastors came to share news of their congregations during a lunch at Foothills Mennonite Church, the site of the meetings. News from area conferences was part of the General Board sessions. Especially informative at this meeting was learning how various conferences are handling differences within their groups.--Margaret Loewen Reimer
Major events in Taiwan's modern political history:
_October 1945: Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists reclaim control of Taiwan for China, after 50 years of colonial rule by Japan.
_1949: Chiang and hundreds of thousands of Nationalist troops, officials and their families retreat to Taiwan after losing the Chinese civil war to Mao Zedong's Communists on the mainland. Martial law is imposed. Taipei becomes the seat of the government of the Republic of China.
_October 1971: As Nixon administration achieves detente with Mao's regime, Taiwan expelled from the United Nations and the world body's China seat goes to Beijing.
_April 1975: Chiang dies, succeeded by Vice President Yen Chia-kan.
_March 1978: Chiang's son, Chiang Ching-kuo, becomes president.
_January 1979: The U.S. switches diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing.
_September 1986: Leading Taiwanese dissidents found the Democratic Progressive Party.
_July 1987: Chiang Ching-kuo lifts martial law, setting the stage for gradual democratization.
_January 1988: Chiang dies, and is succeeded by Vice President Lee Teng-hui.
_March 1996: China fires missiles near Taiwan's coast days before the island holds its first direct presidential election, which Lee wins.
_March 2000: The Democratic Progressive Party's Chen Shui-bian is elected president, ending more than a half century of Nationalist rule.
_March 2004: Chen is re-elected.
_March 22, 2008: Taiwanese go to the polls to choose Chen's successor.
Winkler, Man.
Communion at Emmanuel Mennonite Church here is a sacred event celebrated eight or nine times a year.
[Graph Not Transcribed]
Every Maundy Thursday, just before Good Friday, the church holds a love feast. The evening begins with a meal of soup and bread, followed by the story of Jesus' betrayal and the last supper. Seated around tables, members break bread for one other and share grape juice.
The story of Jesus washing his disciples' feet in John 13 leads to an invitation for members to demonstrate their willingness to serve one another, and accept service, by participating in footwashing or hand washing.
A rugged cross is a focal point.
"People are invited to pray at the cross," said Marvin Koop, pastor. "There is continual movement to the cross. We try to connect our Lenten theme to the service. One year we had a broken pot and the pieces were placed on each table. People brought these pieces to the cross as symbols of their brokenness."
Another occasion when communion is celebrated is in midsummer, when the church family is more scattered.
"In a time when we're all going different ways it serves to draw us together," said Koop.
Emmanuel Mennonite also brings in the new year with a communion service.
In addition, Easter Sunday, World Communion Sunday in October, and the first Sunday of Advent are always celebrated with communion. Every baptism service includes a communion celebration.
"In 2002 we had four or five baptism services, but usually there aren't more than two," said Koop. Emmanuel Mennonite has two worship services every Sunday to accommodate a membership of over 200.
Koop recalled that when he came nine years ago, communion services were sometimes held Sunday evenings. Attendance, however, was low and now communion is part of morning worship, except for Maundy Thursday.
"At our communion services...all who are baptized are invited to partake," he said. "We begin with an explanation of what communion means, have a prayer of confession and then pass the peace of Christ."
Sometimes the two pastors and lay minister invite participants to come to the front in small groups to receive the communion elements and a blessing. Other times the deacons serve the elements to members in the pews.
"Sometimes, especially at our Easter Sunday communion service, we have a more celebratory communion," said Koop. "We have a banquet-type of display with special fruits. We have a large communion banner which we display at all communion services."
Guyana has fired air traffic controllers whose strike has limited flights in and out of the South American country to daylight hours.
Transport Minister Robeson Benn says dismissal letters have been sent to all 15 controllers who walked off the job last week to press for pay increases.
Benn said Thursday that the government is advertising for replacements. A new group of controllers is training but not expected to be ready before April.
Union leaders say they are likely to file a lawsuit challenging the government's authority to fire the airport workers.
Since the strike began Friday night, flights have been limited to daytime as the airport relies on a skeleton crew of senior staff.
A cold front hit western Russia Thursday, ending the exhausting two-month spell of of heat and clearing skies over Moscow from suffocating smog.
Colder temperatures and rains are expected to help firefighters put out the wildfires that have bedeviled Russia through the summer.
Russia's Emergency Situations Ministry said the amount of land on fire has been halved in the last 24 hours. It said fires burned Thursday on the territory of about 28,000 acres, nearly a 20th of the area they covered earlier this month when wildfires were at their peak.
The heat wave unseen in 130 years on record has triggered thousands of wildfires in Russia. Drought has cost Russia a third of its wheat crop, prompting the government to ban wheat exports through the year's end.
More than 50 people have died directly in the wildfires across Russia, and more than 2,000 homes have been destroyed.
The number of deaths recorded in Moscow had doubled to an average of 700 per day during the worst of the scorching heat and smog, city officials said.
Earlier this month, fires threatened Sarov, the birthplace of Soviet nuclear weapons, prompting Rosatom state nuclear corporation to move all explosive and radioactive materials as a precaution, and deploy aircrafts and robots to stem the blazes.
Rosatom chief Sergei Kiriyenko, who personally oversaw firefighting efforts in Sarov, told Prime Minister Vladimir Putin Thursday that at times emergency crews faced 10-kilometer (6-mile) long front of flames. He said some 1,000 nuclear center workers joined some 3,000 firefighters in fighting the blazes.
"We stopped work at key facilities and removed all nuclear, radioactive and explosive materials," Kiriyenko said in televised remarks. "Even if the fire had broken into the territory, that wouldn't have posed any nuclear, radiation or environmental danger."
Kiriyenko said the nuclear facility in Sarov has shifted back into its normal mode of operation.
In September of 1976, four thousand U.S. troops flew together from Fort Carson, CO, to form a new combat unit that would reinforce NATO forces in West Germany. In what has been called the only warlike thing President Jimmy Carter ever did, this armored brigade reinforced the Fulda Gap on the East-West border in then-divided Germany. For most of us, this three-year assignment seemed like just another training exercise. For this new tank commander and the rest of the armor crewmen in our 54-tank battalion, the sure signs that this deployment was "real" were the Soviet tanks on the other side of the border fence and phosphorus. More specifically, white phosphorus (WP) cannon rounds standing in the ready racks on the turret floor of our M60A1 tanks.
We all knew that WP rounds were dangerous both to the enemy and to us. Also called smoke, these rounds burn brilliantly spreading elemental phosphorus that we all knew burned even in water. Armor crewmen fear few things more than fire, and those seven light-blue painted rounds of 105-mm cannon ammo said more eloquently than any speech by the unit commander that we were loaded for war on a moment's notice. We had no particular fear of the other 56 rounds filling the ammo racks of our tanks, but those seven always got careful handling.
While we waited for the Cold War to turn hot, none of us knew that phosphorus was discovered three hundred years earlier just a few hundred kilometers north of our base in the German pott city of Hamburg. In 1669, a German alchemist looking for the secret of the Philosopher's Stone turned to the "golden stream" of urine as a possible source. Hennig Brandt was a former soldier and apprentice glassmaker who knew how to make hot fires. He boiled the urine down to a dry solid then heated the residue to a high enough temperature to form glowing fumes. The vapors he collected were white phosphorus, glowing as it reacted with atmospheric oxygen. Brandt kept the secret of the glowing element to himself at first; likely conducting failed experiments in turning base metals into gold.
As noted in the previous article on alchemy (CEP, Aug. 2005, p. 64), from the 17th century onward, alchemists had the reputation of being dreamers who wasted their family's substance. Most were secretive, and one can only imagine what the neighbors thought of a man boiling urine, an activity that cannot remain secret for long. Brandt was able to conduct his experiments because he married a woman with money. She died young and Brandt remarried, again to a woman with some means: a widow with children by her previous marriage. So Brandt got a lab assistant in his stepson and more money to fund his research. Six years after his discovering phosphorus, Brand! sold the secret for the modern equivalent of several thousand dollars, but his second wife's income was reported to be much higher than the sale price for the secret of phosphorus - a strong indication that Brandt had wasted the fortunes of both wives within just a few years after his great discovery. In the following decade, Brandt's recipe became widely known, causing a great demand for urine: liters of urine are necessary to make just grams of phosphorus.
Hamburg, the city that gave the world Felix Mendelssohn, Johannes Brahms, Heinrich Hertz, Otto Diels, and Gerhard Herzberg, could not count Brandt among its leading citizens. Yet Brandt's discovery came back to haunt Germany's second largest city in a week of horror numbered with the conflagrations in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Tokyo, and Dresden. At 1 a.m. on July 25, 1943, Royal Air Force (RAF) bombers dropped 1,400 tons of high explosive and 1,000 tons of incendiary weapons on the first night of Operation Gomorrah. The objective: destroy the city and its shipbuilding and other war-related industries. The incendiary weapons used on the first night included 27,000 thirty-pound phosphorus bombs.
Fires burned across the city, and more raids followed, both daylight raids by the U.S. Army Air Corps and attacks in the night by the RAF. Then on July 27, at 1 a.m. 738 RAF bombers dropped more than 3,000 tons of bombs and created what is now known as die Katastrophe, a firestorm that killed an estimated 30,000 residents of Hamburg in one night and made refugees of hundreds of thousands of others. In fact the fire was so bad that the raid the following night was called off - smoke completely obscured the city, and the bombers flew to secondary targets. The bombing campaign went on until Friday, but, after Tuesday, the subsequent raids just made the rubble bounce. Despite the death and devastation left in its wake, Operation Gomorrah achieved only infamy. Hamburg was crippled, but recovered to produce more U-boats on other weapons.
Of course there is much more to say about an element that is in our DNA and is necessary for every living thing to grow. To get more of the story of phosphorus, read, "The Shocking History of Phosphorus: A Biography of the Devil's Element by John Emsley."
[Author Affiliation]
"We're History" was prepared by Neil Gussman, communications manager for the Chemical Heritage Foundation (CHF; www.chemheritage.org).
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi condemned on Thursday vandalism and threats against members of Congress who voted to overhaul the U.S. health care system. Republicans joined in, telling people to calm down and saying they too were being targeted in an increasingly venomous political atmosphere.
"I don't want this to be a distraction" to the work of Congress, Pelosi said. She also asserted that such violence and threats of reprisal have "no place in a civil debate in our country" and must be rejected.
Her sentiments were echoed minutes later by the Republican leader in the U.S. House of Representatives, John Boehner, who said that while many are angry over the health care measure, "threats and violence should not be part of a political debate."
At least four Democratic offices in New York, Arizona and Kansas were struck and at least 10 members of Congress have reported some sort of threats, including obscenity-laced phone messages, congressional leaders have said. No arrests have been reported.
The House's No. 3 Republican, Eric Cantor of Virginia, said at a brief news conference Thursday that someone fired a bullet through a window of his campaign office in Richmond, the state capital, and he has received threatening e-mails.
Responding to Democrats who have accused Republicans of being too slow to condemn the attacks against lawmakers, he stressed that security threats are not a partisan issue. "To use such threats as political weapons is reprehensible," he said.
The actions against Democrats have included racial slurs thrown at black lawmakers, e-mail and phone death threats and bricks thrown through regional office windows.
Ohio Rep. John Boccieri, one of eight Democrats who switched to "yes" on the most recent House vote, said he had received threats. "Having flown missions in and out of Afghanistan, I know what it's like to be in harm's way. But I never imagined serving in Congress could feel the same," said Boccieri, a major in the Air Force reserve. He did not elaborate on the threats.
E-mails sent to Rep. Suzanne Kosmas, also a Democrat, another member who switched her vote, urged her to commit suicide and said she and her family should rot in hell.
Another called her a "two-timing, backstabbing whore."
Rep. Louise Slaughter, a New York Democrat and chairwoman of an influential House committee, said someone had left her a voice mail that used the word "snipers."
On the Republican side, the office of Rep. Jean Schmidt of Ohio released a tape of a profanity-laced phone message in which the caller said Republicans were racists.
Referring to an accident two years ago when Schmidt was hit by a car while jogging, the caller said, "You should have broke your back, bitch."
Some of the anger spilled over in a flood of threat-filled phone and fax messages to the office of Democratic Rep. Bart Stupak. He vowed to oppose the health care package unless given greater assurance that it would not allow federal funding of elective abortions, then voted in favor after the administration agreed.
Stupak's office released some of the messages, declining further comment.
"I hope you bleed ... (get) cancer and die," one male caller told the congressman between curses.
A fax with the title "Defecating on Stupak" carried a picture of a gallows with "Bart (SS) Stupak" on it and a noose attached. It was captioned, "All Baby Killers come to unseemly ends Either by the hand of man or by the hand of God."
And in Virginia, someone cut a propane line leading to a grill at the Charlottesville home of Democratic Rep. Tom Perriello's brother after the address was posted online by activists angry about the health care overhaul. Perriello also said a threatening letter was sent to his brother's house.
Senate Sergeant at Arms Terry Gainer told The Associated Press on Thursday that there was "no evidence that annoying, harassing or threatening telephone calls or emails are coordinated. Regrettably though, bloggers and twitters seem to feed off each other, leaving little room for creativity."
At the news conference, Pelosi said it is "important for us to be able to express ourselves freely, not to diminish that in any way, but also to hit a standard that says some of the actions ... must be rejected."
But the California Democrat also said she did not "subscribe to the theory that these acts sprang from the comments of my colleagues."
The vandalism and threats surprised a researcher at a think tank that monitors extremist groups.
"I think it is astounding that we are seeing this wave of vigilantism," said Mark Potok of the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center.
___
Associated Press writers Emily Wagster Pettus in Jackson, Miss.; David N. Goodman in Detroit, Michigan; Dena Potter and Bob Lewis in Richmond, Virginia; Ben Dobbin in Rochester, New York; Mark Carlson in Phoenix, Arizona; and Laurie Kellman and Ann Sanner in Washington contributed to this report.
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — Some families of the 29 New Zealand coal miners killed in an explosion one year ago say on the anniversary that their grieving is not over because the men's bodies remain entombed inside the mine.
Authorities say there is too much deadly gas in the Pike River mine near Greymouth for crews to enter and recover the bodies.
But Bernie Monk, whose 23-year-old son Michael died in the explosion, said Saturday that he and the other families are frustrated there hasn't been a more concerted effort made to recover the bodies.
About 2,500 people, including New Zealand Prime Minister John Key, were expected to attend a public memorial Saturday in Greymouth, culminating in a minute's silence at 3:44 p.m., when the methane-fueled explosion occurred Nov. 19, 2010.
James N. Bay Sr., 74, president of Bay's English Muffin Corp.,died Wednesday at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.
A North Shore resident, he became head of the family-runbusiness in 1968.
Bay's was founded by his family in a Loop bakery in 1933. Afew years later, Bay's became the first to package muffins incellophane.During his tenure, Mr. Bay was approached by Ray Kroc ofMcDonald's. Kroc proposed that Mr. Bay's Chicago-based companyprovide English muffins for a new dish called the Egg McMuffin. Mr.Bay sold his product to the hamburger chain until 1984.Mr. Bay served in the Army Air Forces in World War II. Heattended Northwestern University and graduated from the AmericanaInstitute of Baking. In 1951, he joined Bay's.He is survived by two sons, James Jr. and George, and twograndchildren.Visitation will be from 2 to 9 p.m. Friday at Blake-LambFuneral Home, 1035 N. Dearborn. Services will be at 11 a.m. Saturdayat St. Chrysostom Church, 1424 N. Dearborn.
BAGHDAD, Iraq - A suicide car bomber turned a venerable book market into a deadly inferno and gunmen targeted Shiite pilgrims Monday as suspected Sunni insurgents brought major bloodshed back into the lap of their main Shiite rivals. At least 38 people died in the blast and seven pilgrims were killed.
The violence - after a relative three-day lull in Baghdad - was seen as another salvo in the Sunni extremist campaign to provoke a sectarian civil war that could tear apart the Shiite-led government and erase Washington's plans for Iraq.
The Shiite Mahdi Army militia has so far resisted full-scale retaliation through a combination of self-interest and intense government pressure. But the militia's leader, the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, is now being cornered in new ways that have put him on the defensive.
An expected Cabinet reshuffle could take a serious bite out of al-Sadr's voice in government - a move strongly encouraged by Washington.
Al-Sadr also opened the door for U.S. and Iraqi troops to enter the Mahdi stronghold of Sadr City in Baghdad - under a painstaking deal with authorities - but his loyalists are still being hunted outside the capital.
"Al-Sadr and his forces could be feeling under siege," said Alireza Nourizadeh, chief researcher at the London-based Center for Arab-Iranian Studies. "That makes them less predictable. That means they are more dangerous."
One possible sign of brewing troubles was 30 bullet-ridden bodies found across Baghdad. Many of those killings are blamed on Shiite death squads, and Monday's figure was the highest in weeks.
And the Sunni extremists keep pressing.
The suicide mission tore through booksellers and other stores on narrow Mutanabi Street, a mostly Shiite-run commercial area in Baghdad's historical heart along the Tigris River.
Within seconds, flames engulfed open-air stalls and shops brimming with books and magazines. Gas-powered generators - needed because of frequent power cuts - exploded one by one.
Bloodstained pages that escaped the fire were carried away in a wind-whipped pillar of black smoke.
Firefighters had to spray huge arches of water from blocks away because their trucks were took large for the warren of lanes in old Baghdad. At least 38 people died and 105 were injured, said Raad Jabar, a Health Ministry official.
But the final casualty count may not be clear until Tuesday. Fire crews still battled the blazes more than 12 hours after the attack, said civil defense Maj. Gen. Abdul Rasoul al-Zaidi.
"Papers from the book market were floating through the air like leaflets dropped from a plane," said Naeem al-Daraji, a Health Ministry worker who was driving about 200 yards from the blast and was slightly injured by broken glass from his car window.
"Pieces of flesh and the remains of books were scattered everywhere," he said.
A worker at a nearby shoe store, Youssef Haider, 24, said the blast flipped burning cars with charred bodies trapped inside. He and co-workers used two-wheel pushcarts for shoe boxes to carry away the wounded.
In other violence, gunmen opened fire on Shiite pilgrims in several places around Baghdad, killing at least seven people, police said.
The Shiites were apparently heading to shrines and holy sites in southern Iraq for the annual commemoration to end a 40-day mourning period for the death of a revered 7th century Shiite martyr, Imam Hussein.
It was the bloodiest day in the capital in more than a week, and came on the heels of a major push by nearly 1,200 U.S. and Iraqi troops into teeming Sadr City as part of a nearly 3-week-old security offensive across Baghdad.
The sweeps seek to drive out militants and establish permanent stations in troubled areas. Search teams also uncovered a nearly tenfold increase in hidden weapons stashes in the past week, the military said.
More than 21,000 small arms rounds were confiscated last week, up from 2,160 the previous week; 937 mortar rounds were discovered, up from 89 the week before, it said. Attacks on soldiers in some Shiite districts are also down sharply.
That's mostly because al-Sadr ordered his fighters to pull back after coming under strong government arm-twisting to allow the security plan to proceed.
In Sadr City, Iraqi troops set up checkpoints and took a far more visible role than Americans, who led the push into the area Sunday. The move was an apparent attempt to avoid Shiite anger in a place of past street battles with U.S. forces.
The troops plan to establish outposts in Sadr City that will bring together Iraqi police, military and U.S.-led forces, said U.S. Brig. Gen. Terry Wolff, who oversees training of Iraqi soldiers.
"It's about presence," he said.
But pressure on al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army continued on other fronts.
In the southern city of Karbala, the home of a Mahdi Army leader was raided in a joint U.S.-Iraqi operation, the U.S. military said.
Al-Sadr's followers also warned they would fight any Cabinet changes that would single them out.
"We will not give up our share and any of our ministerial posts under any circumstances unless all other blocs are subjected to the same procedure," said Saleh al-Ukaili, head of Sadrist faction in parliament, where the bloc controls 30 of the 275 seats.
An adviser to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said 10 of the 39 ministry posts soon would be replaced - including five of the six ministers loyal to al-Sadr. The adviser spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not supposed to release the information.
Relations between al-Sadr and the government are already tense. Late last year, the prime minister withdrew his official protection for al-Sadr and the Mahdi Army and allowed U.S.-led forces to close in.
NEW YORK - Three U.S. economists, one of them a 90-year-old professor emeritus from Minnesota, will share this year's Nobel prize in economics for their work on how people's knowledge and self-interest affect their behavior in the market or in social situations such as voting and labor negotiations.
Leonid Hurwicz, who lives in south Minneapolis, is the oldest winner ever of the Nobel, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in their announcement on Monday.
His work - along with that of Eric S. Maskin and Roger B. Myerson, who both are 56 - led to a theory that plays a wide-ranging role in contemporary economics and political science, touching on areas as diverse as labor contract negotiations, auctions of government bonds, voting procedures and the structuring of insurance policies.
In its citation, the academy said that their work on "mechanism design theory" has made it possible to "distinguish situations in which markets work well from those in which they do not." This, it added, helped economists identify efficient trading mechanisms, regulatory schemes and voting procedures.
They will share a $1.5 million prize, to be awarded in December.
Hurwicz, who is an emeritus economics professor at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, started work on this area in 1960.
"I really didn't expect it," the Moscow-born researcher said of the Nobel announcement. In fact Hurwicz, who is hard of hearing, said he initially thought the call from Sweden about the prize was a hoax.
"There were times when other people said I was on the short list, but as time passed and nothing happened I didn't expect the recognition would come because people who were familiar with my work were slowly dying off," he said.
Maskin is a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, N.J., and Myerson is a professor at the University of Chicago in Illinois. Maskin and Myerson both finished their Ph.Ds at Harvard University in 1976.
Maskin said he was relieved Hurwicz was among the winners.
"Many of us had hoped for many years that he would win," Maskin told reporters in Stockholm in a conference call. "He is 90 years old now, and we thought time was running out. It is a tremendous honor to have the opportunity to share the prize with him and with Roger Myerson."
Maskin said he received the unexpected call at his Princeton home - a house once occupied by physicist Albert Einstein - early Monday, then headed to his office.
"There are so many people who could win," Maskin said. "It's like winning the lottery basically."
Myerson, who has been at University of Chicago since 2001, becomes the 24th professor, researcher or student with ties to the school to win the Nobel in economics, according to the university. He earlier had been at Northwestern University in nearby Evanston.
Myerson said he had been inspired by the work of his fellow laureates and described his work as investigating "how does information get used in society to allocate resources."
Essentially, the three men studied how game theory can help determine the best, most efficient method for decision-making.
Game theory was advanced by John Nash, the subject of the film "A Beautiful Mind" and who received the prize in 1994.
Stephen Morris, an economics professor at Princeton University, said a big part of why the winners were chosen was their proof of how people deciding as a group can lead to a best outcome for many transactions, whether it's in a marketplace or in the political arena.
He added that he thought the academy's choice would be popular among economists, saying: "I think it was seen as inevitable that this work should be recognized somehow."
Much like game theory, mechanism design is applied to situations where perfect markets cannot be found, such as a political give-and-take between different interest groups or even within companies themselves.
The trio's work showed how to reach a desired outcome, such as improvements in social welfare or fatter profits, and what sort of government regulation should be put into place.
Myerson explored the concept in detail in his work, "Game Theory: Analysis of Conflict," and built a mathematical model that analyzed elections. Myerson has even extended his work to examining how best to rebuild a government in Iraq.
"Chances for successful democracy may depend critically on introducing the right kind of transitional structures," he wrote in a May 2003 editorial titled, "How to build democracy in Iraq."
Maskin, meanwhile, was cited for his work on determining what kinds of auctions, or selling procedures, could bring in the most revenue to sellers.
Americans have dominated the economics prize in recent years. The last non-American to win the prize was Canada's Robert A. Mundell in 1999.
Last year American Edmund S. Phelps won the prize for explaining the relationship between inflation and unemployment, work that has had a profound impact on macroeconomic policy.
The award, known officially as the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, is not one of the original Nobel Prizes, which were established in the will made by Alfred Nobel more than 100 years ago. Nobel invented dynamite.
The economics prize was created in 1968 by the Swedish central bank in Nobel's memory. The award will be presented by the Swedish king on Dec. 10.
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Associated Press writers Matt Moore, Karl Ritter, Malin Rising and Louise Nordstrom in Stockholm; Jeff Baenen in Minneapolis; Michael Tarm in Chicago; and Geoff Mulvihill and Mike Derer in Princeton contributed to this report.
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