US-based Westinghouse Electric Co could be awarded a multi-billion dollar contract for a set of nuclear reactors during the upcoming visit of Chinese President Hu Jintao to Washington, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

Westinghouse is the US nuclear arm of British Nuclear Fuels PLC, and has been vying with companies from France and Russia for contracts to build four pressurized water reactors in China.

The paper said a Chinese official at China National Nuclear suggested a deal could be in the works, but Westinghouse executives said they hadn’t heard about their bid.

Hu will meet with his counterpart George W. Bush in Washington on September 7 and is expected to visit the US companies of Boeing and Microsoft in Seattle, Washington.
Full: spacewar.com

Boise, Idaho affiliates CBS and FOX have refused to air a television ad in which Cindy Sheehan asks President Bush questions about the Iraq war.

Sheehan “claims the President lied about, among other things, the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq,” said Jeff Anderson the Vice President of sales at Fisher Broadcasting Inc., which owns KBCI (CBS). “There is no proof that we are aware of regarding the truthfulness of her claim. We require proof of claims such as this. Until that is provided, our station will not carry this ad.”
Full: huffingtonpost.com

TONY Blair is expected to join one of the most exclusive groups of businessmen in the world after he leaves Downing Street.

The PM is being lined up for a highly lucrative position with the Carlyle Group – an American-based investment giant with strong links to the White House and the defence industry.

The firm has been nicknamed “The Ex-Presidents Club” because it has had a host of former world leaders on its books including George Bush Senior, his former secretary of state James Baker and former British PM John Major. There a also a large number of former US Army top brass.
Full: sundaymirror.co.uk

Suicide bomber Hasib Hussain ate a last meal at McDonald’s before blowing up the No. 30 bus on 7 July, killing 13 people.

Hussain also made a number of telephone calls, at least one of which was to one of his fellow bombers, before carrying out his attack on the bus which exploded in Tavistock Square in central London. There were reports last night he may also have spoken to the other two bombers.

The final minutes of the 18-year-old from Holbeck in Leeds are believed to have been captured by a CCTV camera as he entered the fast food outlet after coming out of King’s Cross station. Detectives have been attempting to piece together Hussain’s “missing hour” between the moment he split up from his fellow bombers at King’s Cross and got on the bus. The bus bomb exploded almost an hour after the three Tube bombs.
Full: independent.co.uk

Yeah well if I were a rabidly anti-Western suicide bomber for sure I’d go to MacDonalds for my last meal…all Halal meat all the time.

LONDON (AFP) – Avian flu will “inevitably” be brought to Britain by migrating birds, the president of the British Veterinary Association warned.

The warning came as European experts argued over how to deal with the spread of the virus, a version of which has killed more than 60 people in Asia.

“Wild birds that have migratory pathways over Europe and the UK will become infected. It is inevitable that bird flu will be carried to this country by migrating birds,” said Dr. Bob McCracken.

The H5N1 strain of bird flu has killed over 60 people in Asia, the majority in Vietnam, since 2003.

There are signs avian flu is moving west across Russia, where it has killed thousands of birds but has not been reported in humans.
Full: uk.news.yahoo.com

The giant orb of iron and nickel that anchors Earth’s center is spinning faster than the planet’s surface, according to a new study that confirms scientists’ expectations.

The finding is based on analyses of earthquake pairs that occur at roughly the same spot on Earth but at different times. On seismic recoding instruments, the earthquake signatures from waveform doublets, as they are called, look nearly identical.

When earthquakes strike, their seismic waves can travel through the planet and surface all over the globe.

The researchers analyzed 18 sets of waveform doublets — some separated in time by up to 35 years — from earthquakes occurring off the coast of South America but which were recorded at seismic stations near Alaska.
livscience.com

Deadly Tsunami Reached Around the Globe

…As a result of the influence of Israel’s neoconservative supporters and evangelicals expecting The Rapture, conservatives and Republicans are focused on the Middle East. They are apoplectic over Iran’s nuclear power program. If Iran has a nuclear power program, Iran might be able to produce a nuclear weapon in ten years. Vice President Cheney has ordered a plan for the US to use tactical nuclear weapons to take out Iran’s capability should an excuse arise.

That would be the third Islamic country the US would have attacked in as many years. All hell would break loose. Meanwhile, the chairman of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has announced that the Commission will approve Westinghouse’s sale of two nuclear reactors to China.

Conservatives and Republicans think this is a good idea. Vice President Cheney has lobbied in behalf of the sale. It is good for private business. It means $2.4 billion in revenues for Westinghouse Electric Company.

Iran will never again be a world power, even if it has a few nukes. Persia was a power in ancient times, not today. If we don’t bother Iran, Iran won’t bother us.

China is a different matter. China already is a world power. China holds enough US government debt to have the dollar and US interest rates in its hand. Last month in an official briefing a top Chinese general, Zhu Chenghu, said that if the US messes around with China or tries to interfere with China’s reunification with Taiwan, China will nuke the US: “If the Americans are determined to interfere, then we will be determined to respond. We Chinese will prepare ourselves for the destruction of all the cities east of Xian. Of course, the Americans will have to be prepared that hundreds of cities will be destroyed by the Chinese.”

VP Cheney and the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission want to make sure China has what it takes to do the job.

The moronic Bush administration is all concerned about “weapons of mass destruction” where they aren’t, not where they are. Why in the world is the Bush administration using up the US military and its weapons systems in Iraq, a country that was no threat whatsoever to the US, while aiding and abetting China’s rapidly growing economic and military power?

…Bush’s supporters, of course, are busy at work demonizing landlocked Middle Eastern states that have nothing but fanatical insurgents to ward off US military attacks on their homelands.

The conservative movement has disappeared. The Republican Party has disappeared. The two have morphed into a brownshirt movement that worships coercion and a strutting little marionette who believes he can threaten peoples into submission.

Why does Cheney want to sell nuclear reactors to China, but order the US Strategic Command to prepare to nuke Iran’s nuclear power capability, a capability that would allow Iran to sell more oil to an energy-starved world?

What’s going on here?
Full: counterpunch.org

People are mistaken if they think all this is simply about what’s ‘good for business’ for robber-baron capitalists. Unforunately, we are witnessing the unfolding of a carefully laid out plan, that horrifyingly, appeals to Cheney-types on an ideological level which is deeper than any consideration of mere monetary profits. Whoever these people are, they are intent on drawing the world into nuclear war and a massive reduction in world population to serve their cracked Machiavellian ‘philosopher king’ delusions.

…In 2005, the Perseids are expected to reach their maximum on Aug. 12. Peak activity is unfortunately predicted for the daylight hours across North America. Sky watchers are thus encouraged to watch during the predawn hours of Friday, Aug. 12 and again during the early morning hours of Saturday.

Observers will be favored by an absence of bright moonlight during these intervals. At midnorthern latitudes, moonset occurs on the evening of Aug. 11 at around 11-p.m. local daylight time and around 11:20 p.m. the following night. Since dawn doesn’t break until around 4:30 a.m., that means there will be about 5 to 5½ hours of dark, moonless skies for the two best viewing nights for the Perseids.

Take full advantage of this year’s favorable lunar circumstances. Next year, a bright waning gibbous Moon will flood the after-midnight sky with its light and seriously hinder the Perseids.
Full: space.com

“That lying bastard, George Bush, is taking a five-week vacation in time of war,” Cindy Sheehan told 200 cheering members of Veterans For Peace at their annual convention in Dallas last Friday evening. She then announced she would go to Bush’s vacation home in nearby Crawford, Texas and camp out until he “tells me why my son died in Iraq. I’ve got the whole month of August off, and so does he.”

Sheehan left the VFP meeting on Saturday morning and is now in Crawford with a couple dozen veterans and local peace activists, waiting for Bush to talk with her. She said in Dallas that if he sends anyone else to see her, as happened when national security adviser Steve Hadley and deputy White House chief of staff Joe Hagin did later that day, she would demand that “You get that maniac out here to talk with me in person.”

She told the audience of veterans from World War Two to today’s war in Iraq, that the two main things she plans to tell the man she holds responsible for son Casey’s death are “Quit saying that U.S. troops died for a noble cause in Iraq, unless you say, ‘well, except for Casey Sheehan.’ Don’t you dare spill any more blood in Casey’s name. You do not have permission to use my son’s name.”

“And the other thing I want him to tell me is ‘just what was the noble cause Casey died for?’ Was it freedom and democracy? Bullshit! He died for oil. He died to make your friends richer. He died to expand American imperialism in the Middle East. We’re not freer here, thanks to your PATRIOT Act. Iraq is not free. You get America out of Iraq and Israel out of Palestine and you’ll stop the terrorism,” she exclaimed.

“There, I used the ‘I’ word – imperialism,” the 48 year-old mother quipped. “And now I’m going to use another ‘I’ word – impeachment – because we cannot have these people pardoned. They need to be tried on war crimes and go to jail.”

As the veterans in Dallas rose to their feet, Sheehan said defiantly, “My son was killed in 2004. I am not paying my taxes for 2004. You killed my son, George Bush, and I don’t owe you a penny…you give my son back and I’ll pay my taxes. Come after me (for back taxes) and we’ll put this war on trial.”

The co-founder of Gold Star Mothers for Peace objected to hearing that her son was among the soldiers lost in Iraq. “He’s not lost,” she said tearfully. “He’s dead. He became an angel while I was sleeping.”

She railed against the notion expressed by officials in the Bush administration that bringing the troops home now would dishonor the sacrifice of those who have died. “By sending honorable people to die, they so dishonor themselves. They say we must complete our mission…but why would I want one more mother to go through what I have, just because my son is dead?”

The Vacaville, California resident said she first heard of Veterans For Peace in early May last year, during a CNN report about an exhibit of white crosses arranged in rows in the Santa Barbara beach. The exhibit was organized by VFP Chapter 54 to memorialize each U.S. soldier killed in Iraq. Her son had died the month before. “I decided there was only one place I wanted to be on Mother’s Day that year, and it was Santa Barbara,” she told the VFP members in Dallas.

Retired Special Forces Sgt. and VFP member, Stan Goff, today initiated a “Talk to Cindy” campaign to get Bush to meet with Sheehan. Contact information for the White House is: (202) 456-1111 or comments@whitehouse.gov
Full: informationclearinghouse.info

‘This is where it all began,” says Tommy Jacquette, extending a lanky arm in the direction of the run-down two-storey apartment block on the corner of Avalon Boulevard and 116th Street.

He is pointing to the spot in Watts, a district of Los Angeles, where 40 years ago, on August 11 1965, a young African-American named Marquette Fry was arrested along with his brother and mother, sparking the worst rioting ever seen in the US. When it ended six days later, 34 people were dead and 1,000 injured. An estimated 50,000 people took part in the disturbances, eventually brought under control by 22,500 police supported by almost 14,000 members of the National Guard. The cost of the disturbances was estimated at $50-100m.

…”It’s like the land where time stood still,” says Mr Hutchinson. “In 40 years, what the hell [has] changed? If anything, it could be worse. Forty years ago I don’t remember bars on homes. Despite the poverty and the segregation, I do remember a more tranquil, peaceful community. I hope 40 years from now we don’t stand on this same corner saying nothing has changed.”

“Not much has changed,” says Najee Ali, director of Project Islamic Hope, a Watts community group. “There are cosmetic changes but the solution is to help those in poverty have meaningful employment, healthcare and quality of life. Until that happens, there could be a riot here at any time.”
Full: guardian.co.uk