Jack's Newswatch

Somali pirates strike again and seize one of the largest ships afloat.

“The shipping intelligence company Lloyd’s List said the Maran Centaurus is a “very large crude carrier, with a capacity of over 300,000 tons.” Officials could not immediately say how many barrels of oil were on board, but its value would be in the millions of dollars.”

And STILL shipping companies refuse to protect their cargo and crews.

I don’t know what a “chain gun” costs but not much when you consider the value of the cargo.  It also does not cost much to train the crews to use them.  This ship could have carried a dozen of them and the question would then be “what pirates”?

Instead we get this stupid response:

“You’re sitting on a huge ship filled with flammable liquid. You don’t want somebody with a gun on top of that,” Middleton said. “Financially it’s a very costly exercise because the value of oil is so volatile. If it is held for a long time and the price of oil drops, they could lost millions of dollars.”

I just shake my head.  There’s no reasoning with people who think like this.

Popularity: 3% [?]

TORONTO — A Progressive Conservative is refusing to leave the legislature after calling Premier Dalton McGuinty a liar for not holding provincewide public consultations on tax harmonization.

The Conservative caucus surrounded Bill Murdoch in order to block any attempt to remove him and are drowning out debate in the legislature by pounding their desks and shouting.

Speaker Steve Peters has suspended Bill Murdoch and says he will suspend the other Tories who are blocking his path and disrupting the proceedings.

The Tories have pulled similar acts of protest in the legislature over the last few weeks to show their opposition to the HST.

The move came after Finance Minister Dwight Duncan said the public would have an opportunity on Thursday to comment on the province’s controversial plan to harmonize the eight per cent provincial sales tax with the five per cent federal GST.

He says it’s something the Liberals have always done with budget-related legislation, and isn’t a sop to the opposition parties who have been demanding public hearings on the HST plan for weeks.

[Source]

Popularity: 4% [?]

The Florida Highway Patrol is denying a report this morning on celebrity gossip Web site TMZ.com that police are trying to get hold of medical records from the hospital that treated Tiger Woods following his car crash early Friday morning in an attempt to zero in on the cause of his head injuries.

“Not true,” Capt. Mark Welch, a department spokesman, told the Herald.

Welch said the pro golfer, 33, arguably the most recognized athlete in the world – and now in the hands of criminal defense attorney Mark NeJame – has already declined to meet with them today for the fourth consecutive day.

“He’s only required to provide us with specific information, which he has complied with: driver’s license, registration, proof of insurance,” Welch said.

Regardless of whether Woods says why he was driving away from his manse in Windermere at 2:25 a.m., with Elin Nordegren, his wife of five years on foot in hot pursuit with a golf club in her hand, Welch said, “We’re looking at every aspect of the crash to find out its specific cause.”

Although the highway patrol would not be the ones to respond to any prior calls for help at Woods’ residence, Welch said, “I’m not aware of any.”

Welch declined to comment on how important Woods’ cooperation is to reaching a conclusion.

“It’s our job to investigate crashes,” he said, “and that’s what we’re going to do.”

[More]

Related:

Rachel Uchitel denies affair, seeks legal advice

Updates:

3:08 pm EST, November 30th, 2009 — Tiger Won’t Play in Upcoming Tournament

Notes:

I had family home for the afternoon yesterday and expressed my feelings regarding this outrage. 

“If I had the money Tiger has I’d walk into the most high powered law office I could find in New York, drop a cheque on the desk for around 50 million dollars and give them their instructions.

Bankrupt the National Enquirer, TMZ and all the outlets that carry their rags at the checkouts.  Enough of this bullshit.  I have a life and they don’t count.” 

You could have heard a pin drop in the room.

Perhaps I sound a bit extreme but famous people need time to themselves.  It first came to the fore with Diana’s death…chased by reporters.  In the years hence it is becoming a major problem and I cannot imagine why anyone would want to become famous because they do something well.  Why would a person seek elected office in the face of sensationalist media?  Better to sit back and let someone else do it.

Why would anyone want to become a famous movie star and let their talent show when they realize they can be eaten alive by wolves?

Why would anyone give up their privacy for the greater good?

The truth is this.  Maybe (or maybe not) Tiger and his wife had a spat because of a story that first appeared in the National Enquirer.  A couple of pictures they took and all of a sudden he’s into an “affair” and “wee wifie” goes ballistic when he gets home if the “rags” are to be believed (and they are not). 

That’s not Tiger and she should have known that.  More to the point it was noted in the conversation that when a man is married to such a beautiful woman and has two children by her why would he look elsewhere?

Exactly so and end of message.

Popularity: 2% [?]

As the suspect in the ambush execution of four police officers remains on the run, questions are swirling as to how and why Maurice Clemmons — an ex-con who at one time faced more than 100 years behind bars — was allowed to live free.

Clemmons, 37, of Tacoma, Wash., has an extensive, violent criminal history marked by volatile and unstable behavior, according to court records and news reports.

His criminal history includes at least five felony convictions in Arkansas and at least eight felony charges in Washington, according to The Seattle Times. He had a lengthy prison sentence commuted in 2000 by former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who cited Clemmons’ youth.

Rhonda Sharp, a spokeswoman for the Arkansas Parole Board, said then-Gov. Huckabee commuted Clemmons’ 108-year prison term to a sentence of 47 years, five months and 19 days.

“[Huckabee's commutation] made him eligible for parole at that point,” Sharp told FoxNews.com on Monday.

Clemmons later violated his parole and was returned to prison until his release in 2004.

[More]

Updates:

2:51 pm EST, November 30th, 2009 – In The Memory of The Lakewood Officers

2:53 pm EST, November 30th, 2009 — Lakewood Police Department

Notes:

There’s not much I can say about this at the moment.  The jerk is still on the run.  For now, a couple of links you can go to in order to express your condolences to the families involved. 

Popularity: 3% [?]

Presidential politics is about storytelling. Presented with a vivid storyline, voters naturally tend to fit every new event or piece of information into a picture that is already neatly framed in their minds.

No one understands this better than Barack Obama and his team, who won the 2008 election in part because they were better storytellers than the opposition. The pro-Obama narrative featured an almost mystically talented young idealist who stood for change in a disciplined and thoughtful way. This easily outpowered the anti-Obama narrative, featuring an opportunistic Chicago pol with dubious relationships who was more liberal than he was letting on.

A year into his presidency, however, Obama’s gift for controlling his image shows signs of faltering. As Washington returns to work from the Thanksgiving holiday, there are several anti-Obama storylines gaining momentum.

The Obama White House argues that all of these storylines are inaccurate or unfair. In some cases these anti-Obama narratives are fanned by Republicans, in some cases by reporters and commentators.

But they all are serious threats to Obama, if they gain enough currency to become the dominant frame through which people interpret the president’s actions and motives.

Here are seven storylines Obama needs to worry about:

[More]

Updates:

6:19 pm EST, November 30th, 2009 — “Between a rock and a hard place”

Popularity: 5% [?]

Scientists at the University of East Anglia have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.

It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.

The UEA’s Climatic Research Unit CRU was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation.

The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected. The revised figures were kept, but the originals — stored on paper and magnetic tape — were dumped to save space when the CRU moved to a new building.

The admission follows the leaking of a thousand private emails sent and received by Professor Phil Jones, the CRU’s director. In them he discusses thwarting climate sceptics seeking access to such data.

In a statement on its website, the CRU said: “We do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (quality controlled and homogenized) data.”

[More]

Related:

Global Warming Consensus: Garbage In, Garbage Out

Al Gore’s Inconvenient Lie

Updates:

1:44pm EST, November 30th, 2009 – Document Reveals U.N.’s Goal

1:45 pm EST, November 30th, 2009 – Leaked emails won’t harm UN climate body, says chairman

1:48 pm EST, November 30th, 2009 — Goldstein: ’Botch after botch after botch’

Popularity: 6% [?]

My favorite moment in the Climategate/Climaquiddick scandal currently roiling the “climate change” racket was Stuart Varney’s interview on Fox News with the actor Ed Begley Jr., star of the 1980s medical drama “St. Elsewhere” but latterly better known, as is the fashion with members of the thespian community, as an “activist.”

Mr. Begley currently is in a competition with Bill Nye (“the Science Guy”) to see who can have the lowest “carbon footprint.” Pistols at dawn would seem the quickest way of resolving that one, but presumably you couldn’t get a reality series out of it.

Anyway, Mr. Begley was relaxed about the mountain of documents recently leaked from Britain’s Climate Research Unit in which the world’s leading climate-change warm-mongers e-mail each other back and forth on how to “hide the decline” and other interesting matters.

Nothing to worry about, folks. “We’ll go down the path and see what happens in peer-reviewed studies,” said Mr. Begley airily. “Those are the key words here, Stuart. ‘Peer-reviewed studies.’ ”

Hang on. Could you say that again more slowly so I can write it down? Not to worry. Mr. Begley said it every 12 seconds, as if it were the magic charm that could make all the bad publicity go away. He wore an open-necked shirt, and, although I don’t have a 76-inch high-definition TV, I wouldn’t have been surprised to find a talismanic, peer-reviewed amulet nestling in his chest hair for additional protection.

[More]

Popularity: 5% [?]

#1 — Fox | Police Surround Home After 4 Officers ‘Executed’

SEATTLE —  Police searching for the killer of four officers gunned down in a suburban coffee shop used a loudspeaker and explosions early Monday morning to prod a man apparently holed up in a Seattle house to give himself up. Later, gunshots rang through the neighborhood.

[...]

Telegraph | Man wanted for shooting police officers was granted clemency by Mike Huckabee

#2 — Fox | Obama Cool to Surge in Afghanistan’s Own Force

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has soured on a call from its top commander to double the size of the Afghan police and army, reflecting the White House’s continued skepticism about the Afghan government even as the U.S. prepares a surge of troops into the country, people familiar with the matter say.

[...]

#3 — Fox | Pirates Hijack Oil Super Tanker Headed for U.S.

NAIROBI, Kenya —  Somali pirates seized a tanker carrying crude oil from Saudi Arabia to the United States in the increasingly dangerous waters off East Africa, an official said Monday, an attack that could pose a huge environmental or security threat to the region.

[...]

#4 — Fox | Tiger Woods Cancels Meeting With Florida Police

Tiger Woods canceled yet another meeting with the Florida Highway Patrol on Sunday, the same day police released the 911 calls from his early Friday morning single-vehicle accident.

[...]

#5 — Fox | Conservative Wins Post-Coup Honduras Election

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras  —  Conservative rancher Porfirio Lobo won Honduras’ presidential elections Sunday in voting that many Hondurans hope will end a crippling crisis and others fear will whitewash the overthrow of a leftist leader in a June coup.

[...]

#6 — BBC | France’s FM Bernard Kouchner condemns Swiss minaret ban

France’s foreign minister has condemned Switzerland’s referendum vote to ban the building of minarets.

[...]

#7 — Times | Radioactive isotope put in water-cooler by nuclear power worker

India’s atomic power agency is investigating after a disgruntled nuclear power plant worker added a radioactive isotope to a workplace water-cooler.

[...]

#8 — Times | Dubai silence on debt reignites market fears

Market confidence that contagion from Dubai’s debt crisis will be contained waned today as the Emirate’s government failed to issue a statement to calm investors.

[...]

Telegraph | Dubai, Abu Dhabi markets post record one-day falls

#9 — Telegraph | Mysterious Saddam Hussein channel hits Iraq TV

Saddam Hussein is the star of a mysterious channel on satellite TV in Iraq that began broadcasting on the Islamic calendar’s anniversary of his 2006 execution.

[...]

#10 — Telegraph | Demjanjuk Nazi war crimes trial begins

John Demjanjuk, 89, has been wheeled into a Munich court accused of being a Nazi camp guard who herded 27,900 people to their death in the gas chambers.

[...]

Popularity: 2% [?]

#1 — CBC | Als take last-second Grey Cup victory

Saskatchewan Roughriders fans are used to disappointment, but this one has to be a hurt for the ages.

[...]

#2 — CBC | 6 missing in B.C. float plane crash

Search and rescue officials say six people are missing, including an infant, after a float plane crashed Sunday afternoon in the Southern Gulf Islands. A female passenger and the pilot were rescued.

[...]

MG | 6 bodies found in sunken float plane

#3 — CTV | Ottawa readies back-to-work legislation for CN strike

OTTAWA — The Harper government is prepared to introduce back-to-work legislation Monday to end the CN Rail strike, if the two sides don’t reach an agreement.

[...]

#4 — CTV | Bosses now firing workers who talk on cell while driving

EDMONTON — Tough rules are being adopted by a growing number of companies dissatisfied with provincial laws that still allow drivers to use hands-free cellphones.

[...]

#5 — CTV | Harper says he stands behind troops, opposition doesn’t

PORT-OF-SPAIN — Prime Minister Stephen Harper assured Canada’s military Sunday that he and most Canadians stand behind them, even if his political opposition does not.

[...]

#6 — Globe | Less than 1 per cent of $1.9-billion fund for social housing spent so far

Less than 1 per cent of a $1.9-billion federal fund for social housing has actually been spent – more than a year after it was announced by the Harper government in the midst of the 2008 election campaign.

[...]

#7 — OC | Independent PS unravelling: expert

OTTAWA-The Harper government’s attack on diplomat Richard Colvin could be the final blow in the unravelling of Canada’s once-sacred tradition of an independent, non-partisan public service, warn experts.

[...]

#8 — MG | Torch relay brings Olympic dreams to Quebec

RIVIERE-DU-LOUP, Que. — The Olympic flame began its first of a 13-day stint in Quebec on Sunday and brought with it a Canadian medal hopeful who made his hometown of Riviere-du-Loup stand up and cheer.

[...]

#9 — MG | Petitions demand inquiry into construction industry

MONTREAL – A Université de Montréal student is hoping online pressure will convince Premier Jean Charest to head calls for a public inquiry into alleged corruption in the construction industry.

[...]

#10 — Star | Torture claims weren’t probed, official testified

OTTAWA–Claims by senior Conservatives that Canadian officials investigate credible claims of torture in Afghan jails are called into question by court testimony last year, documents obtained by the Star show.

[...]

Popularity: 2% [?]

Canada is sticking to a 2011 end date for its combat mission in Afghanistan even as the United States prepares to significantly boost its military presence in the war-torn country.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper, speaking at the conclusion of a Commonwealth leaders’ summit in Trinidad, said he doesn’t see any enthusiasm among Canada’s 308 MPs for prolonging or expanding this deployment.

“I don’t sense any desire on the part of Parliamentarians to do that,” he said.

Polls have shown that support for the military mission has eroded in recent months so that generally less than 50 per cent of Canadians surveyed back the deployment

Still, the Conservatives are keeping mum on exactly what portion of Canada’s 2,700 troops in Afghanistan would remain behind after 2011 in what Ottawa would designate as a non-combat role, such as training local army and police or protecting aid projects.

Mr. Harper said Canada is preparing the boost the civilian-heavy development and reconstruction program for Afghanistan, a measure that could require more soldiers to defend even after 2011. Some military analysts have predicted this could require 500 to 800 troops to stay behind.

Mr. Harper said he will consult opposition parties as Ottawa as it proceeds.

[More]

Popularity: 4% [?]