Here I am again, you substitute editor of the Afternoon Edition. Our editor-in-chief, ek hornbeck is recharging his "batteries" and gearing up to Live Blog the NCAA Championships. I'm even more clueless about basketball than I am about Baseball or American football, ask me about sailing or le football, I'm much better versed.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. - The NCAA tournament is famous for the little guys shocking the marquee powerhouses and turning into the darlings of March.
Upsets happen.
In every region, every year.
With one lopsided exception: No. 1 vs. No. 16.
When brackets are e-mailed to the office staff after the 65-team field is set, typing the "W" in that 1-16 matchup is about as automatic an annual occurrence as ringing in the New Year on Dec. 31. With good reason: The Washington Generals have better odds at victory over the Harlem Globetrotters than a No. 16 seed does over a No. 1.
PORT-AU-PRINCE (AFP) - Haiti has unveiled the first draft of its grand reconstruction plan, saying 11.5 billion dollars would be needed to help the country rebuild after January's devastating earthquake.
Prepared by the government with the help of the international community, the Preliminary Damage and Needs Assessment (PDNA) will provide the framework for discussions at a major donors conference in New York on March 31.
The plan, published online Tuesday, goes far beyond the immediate priorities of post-quake reconstruction and looks at the massive economic and governance challenges Haiti faces if it wants to become a fully functional state.
O Paddy dear, and did ye hear the news that's goin' round?
The shamrock is by law forbid to grow on Irish ground!
No more Saint Patrick's Day we'll keep, his color can't be seen
For there's a cruel law ag'in the Wearin' o' the Green.
I met with Napper Tandy, and he took me by the hand
And he said, "How's poor old Ireland, and how does she stand?"
"She's the most distressful country that ever yet was seen
For they're hanging men and women there for the Wearin' o' the Green."
So if the color we must wear be England's cruel red
Let it remind us of the blood that Irishmen have shed
And pull the shamrock from your hat, and throw it on the sod
But never fear, 'twill take root there, though underfoot 'tis trod.
When laws can stop the blades of grass from growin' as they grow
And when the leaves in summer-time their color dare not show
Then I will change the color too I wear in my caubeen
But till that day, please God, I'll stick to the Wearin' o' the Green.
DOHA (AFP) - A booming black market in African ivory linked to Asian crime syndicates may scupper efforts by Zambia and Tanzania to hold a one-off sale of tusks, experts and delegates at a UN wildlife trade meeting say.
At its last gathering in 2007, the UN-backed Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) voted for a nine-year moratorium on exports of African ivory.
The ban went into effect in 2008, after South Africa, Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe carried out a one-time sale to Japan and China of stockpiled ivory.
MONROVIA (AFP) - Liberia's rainforests, once ravaged for blood timber sold to fund one of Africa's bloodiest civil wars, are being primed as a lucrative and legal industry using cutting-edge tracking technology.
One by one an electronic tag -- similar to bar codes used on consumer products -- is attached to trees in the thick woodlands covering 45 percent of the West African nation, a painstaking process that will allow consumers to trace the end-product right back to the stump.
While the use of "blood diamonds" to fund wars in the region is better known, it was timber that propped up armed factions, notably those of former president Charles Taylor, during 14 years of Liberian conflict that left over 250,000 dead.
Chew on this and have at it. I am done with these so-called Liberal/Progressives who support this crap of a bill and are willing to sacrifice their principles for Obama.
Arguably, healthcare reform has been the be-all and end-all of this website since June 2009. So we're almost at a full calendar year now since the monumental moment when this teeny, tiny, little hope-shaped baby was given to Congress by the White House, and President Obama basically said, "Do something with this! Make me proud!"
Unfortunately, both Congress (both houses, with more blame being placed upon the Senate rather than the House) and the White House have managed to fuck it up beyond all recognition.
After months of debating, and rolling the facts over in my head, I simply cannot support this healthcare "reform" package. Essentially, I think it's a crock of shit. Unless this bill can and will include a public option (or if Alan Grayson's bill gains any traction), then please (PLEASE!) kill this motherfucking piece of crap!
PARIS (AFP) - President Nicolas Sarkozy's party fought on Monday to recover from a first-round beating by opposition Socialists in French regional elections that also saw the far-right National Front surge back.
Final results showed the Socialists set to crush Sarkozy's governing UMP party in Sunday's second-round polls -- the last major ballot before the 2012 presidential vote.
In a vote seen as a key test of Sarkozy's popularity, the Socialists picked up 29.5 percent in the first round in the 22 regions, ahead of the UMP with 26.3 percent, the interior ministry said.
BANGKOK (AFP) - Anti-government demonstrators vowed Sunday to march on military barracks housing Thailand's top leaders as their icon, deposed premier Thaksin Shinawatra, urged them from exile not to give up.
The red-clad protesters -- assembled amid tight security in public spaces near government offices in Bangkok -- have vowed to step up their campaign if the government does not dissolve parliament within 24 hours.
"We will leave here to listen to the government's answer at the 11th Infantry Unit," Red Shirt leader Nattawut Saikuar told reporters. "If they fail to answer our demands we will announce our next step."
DOHA (AFP) - Atlantic bluefin tuna is in crisis and meets the criteria for a total ban on international trade, the head of the UN wildlife trade organisation said on Saturday in opening a 13-day meeting.
The 175-nation Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), convening for the first time in the Middle East, is the only UN body with the power to outlaw commerce in endangered wild animals and plants.
Besides the sharply disputed proposal on bluefin, the Convention will debate the status of African elephants, polar bears and tigers.
LAHORE, Pakistan (AFP) - Twin suicide attacks seconds apart targeted the Pakistani military Friday, killing up to 45 people in the second attack to hit security forces in the country's cultural capital this week.
The bombers walked up to army vehicles in the crowded R A Bazaar area of Lahore, blowing themselves up as people sat down to eat before the main Muslim weekly prayers were to begin, a senior official said.
Lahore, a city of eight million near Pakistan's border with India, has been increasingly subject to Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked attacks in a nationwide bombing campaign that has killed more than 3,000 people in three years.
ATHENS (AFP) - Greek police clashed with hooded youths on Thursday as thousands demonstrated against austerity measures aiming to end a crippling debt crisis and the country was gripped by a new general strike.
Violence broke out around a union demonstration in the capital with riot police firing tear gas at hooded youths who hurled firebombs and vandalised stores near parliament and other areas of the city centre.
Police said they had detained 16 people, of whom nine were later arrested, and that 13 officers were hurt after being hit by objects thrown by protesters.
They are hounded down
To the bottom of a bad town
Amid the ruins
Where they learn to fear
An angry race of fallen kings
Their dark companions
While the memory of
Their southern sky was clouded by
A savage winter
Every patron saint
Hung on the wall, shared the room
With twenty sinners
JOS, Nigeria (AFP) - Pope Benedict XVI on Wednesday denounced the "atrocious" bloodshed in Nigeria after a massacre of Christian villagers, as police said 49 people would be charged over the killings.
As new gunfire added to the tensions around the flashpoint city of Jos, the Catholic Pontiff added his voice to a chorus of international revulsion over the weekend slaughter which police now say left 109 people dead.
About 8,000 Nigerians have also fled their homes around Jos in the wake of the violence, the International Committee of the Red Cross said.
SAN IGNACIO, Mexico (AFP) - When the massive, barnacle-spotted head of a Pacific gray whale slid alongside Pachico Mayoral's wooden boat, he nervously reached out to touch it.
Like other fishermen, he usually beat his boat with a stick to try to frighten the giant mammals away, but for once he hesitated.
"The whale insisted, going from one side of the boat to the other, and at one point I was curious and, very gently, I stroked the whale's face. And nothing happened. It stayed calm," Mayoral said, driving a boat of tourists across the San Ignacio lagoon some 40 years later.
NOW ZAD, Afghanistan (AFP) - US Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Tuesday said a new strategy in the Afghan war showed promise after he visited a former ghost town where American forces recently cleared out Taliban militants.
As US Marines stood guard on roof tops and a small number of bemused Afghan men and boys looked on, Gates took a brief stroll along the dusty main street of Now Zad in southern Afghanistan, where a handful of humble shops have reopened since the Taliban retreated in December.
The mud-brick town remains mostly deserted and a long way from the bustling centre that once was home to about 30,000, but US officials hope life will gradually return as part of a NATO-led bid to push back the Taliban from its southern strongholds.
A guerilla does not stand and fight, they swim like a fish in the ocean.
Reform Immigration -
March on Washington
