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Obama Drastically Scales Back Goals For America After Visiting Denny’s

From BBC News:

The authorities in six German states have ordered retailers to stop selling Red Bull Cola energy drinks after traces of cocaine were found in it.

The recall came after a sample analysis conducted in North-Rhine Westphalia found one litre of the drink contained 0.4 micrograms of the banned substance.

Officials said the cocaine levels were too low to pose a health threat but were not permitted in foodstuffs.

Red Bull said its cola was “harmless and marketable” in both the US and EU.

From Yahoo! News:

OSWIECIM, Poland – A note hidden in a bottle by Auschwitz prisoners 65 years ago in a desperate attempt to preserve a small piece of themselves was added Wednesday to the archives of the Polish state-run museum dedicated to the memory of the former Nazi death camp’s victims.

Museum Director Piotr Cywinski hailed the document — a list of the names of seven camp inmates that was discovered last month — as a rare discovery and a cause for celebration, given that at least three of the prisoners are still living today.

“This is a very clear sign of hope,” Cywinski said. “These young people put the message in a bottle to leave a sign. But not only the bottle survived — some of them also survived. This is very moving.”

The note, written in pencil on a scrap from a cement bag, was discovered by a construction crew renovating a cellar that was used by Nazis during World War II as a bunker and place to store food. The building is now on the grounds of a vocational school in Oswiecim, a town the Nazis called Auschwitz, whose director handed the note over to Cywinski in a ceremony.

One of the survivors, Waclaw Sobczak, recalled that he and his fellow inmates never expected to survive the camp and wanted to leave behind a trace of their lives.

“We did it so a sign of us would remain after we died,” said Sobczak, a diminutive 85 year old with thick white hair. “It was very risky and we had to be very careful putting it in the wall. We wanted at least our names and numbers to be left behind.”

From The Guardian:

It’s not elegant and it’s not sexy – it looks like a large photocopier – but the Espresso Book Machine is being billed as the biggest change for the literary world since Gutenberg invented the printing press more than 500 years ago and made the mass production of books possible. Launching today at Blackwell’s Charing Cross Road branch in London, the machine prints and binds books on demand in five minutes, while customers wait.

Signalling the end, says Blackwell, to the frustration of being told by a bookseller that a title is out of print, or not in stock, the Espresso offers access to almost half a million books, from a facsimile of Lewis Carroll’s original manuscript for Alice in Wonderland to Mrs Beeton’s Book of Needlework. Blackwell hopes to increase this to over a million titles by the end of the summer – the equivalent of 23.6 miles of shelf space, or over 50 bookshops rolled into one. The majority of these books are currently out-of-copyright works, but Blackwell is working with publishers throughout the UK to increase access to in-copyright writings, and says the response has been overwhelmingly positive.

Looks like Franken is going to win after all.

And this will make Franken the funniest Senator since Strom Thurmond did his ingenious caricature of a racist fucktard, a joke that he kept up for 90+ years and that his corpse kept up for another ten and a half. Now that was a commitment to comedy!

BTW, if the opportunity shall ever arise, Franken has to filibuster as Stuart Smalley.

Plenty of reporters still in their Britney Spears Department though:

CNN, the Cable News Network, announced yesterday that it will cut its entire science, technology, and environment news staff, including Miles O’Brien, its chief technology and environment correspondent, as well as six executive producers. Mediabistro’s TVNewser broke the story.

“We want to integrate environmental, science and technology reporting into the general editorial structure rather than have a stand alone unit,” said CNN spokesperson Barbara Levin. “Now that the bulk of our environmental coverage is being offered through the Planet in Peril franchise, which is produced by the Anderson Cooper 360 program, there is no need for a separate unit.”

A source at the network, who asked not to be named, said the move is a strategic and structural business decision to cut staff, unrelated to the current economic downturn. Financially, “CNN is doing very, very well,” the source said, and none of the health and medical news staff has been cut. Yet the big question, of course, is whether or not the reorganization will decrease the overall amount of CNN’s science, technology, and environment coverage. CNN says no, but it’s hard to imagine that it won’t—Anderson Cooper or not, fewer people is fewer people.

(via Gerry Canavan)

From the NY Times:

The throng of Wal-Mart shoppers had been building all night, filling sidewalks and stretching across a vast parking lot at the Green Acres Mall in Valley Stream, N.Y. At 3:30 a.m., the Nassau County police had to be called in for crowd control, and an officer with a bullhorn pleaded for order.

Tension grew as the 5 a.m. opening neared. Someone taped up a crude poster: “Blitz Line Starts Here.”

By 4:55, with no police officers in sight, the crowd of more than 2,000 had become a rabble, and could be held back no longer. Fists banged and shoulders pressed on the sliding-glass double doors, which bowed in with the weight of the assault. Six to 10 workers inside tried to push back, but it was hopeless.

Suddenly, witnesses and the police said, the doors shattered, and the shrieking mob surged through in a blind rush for holiday bargains. One worker, Jdimytai Damour, 34, was thrown back onto the black linoleum tiles and trampled in the stampede that streamed over and around him. Others who had stood alongside Mr. Damour trying to hold the doors were also hurled back and run over, witnesses said.

Some workers who saw what was happening fought their way through the surge to get to Mr. Damour, but he had been fatally injured, the police said. Emergency workers tried to revive Mr. Damour, a temporary worker hired for the holiday season, at the scene, but he was pronounced dead an hour later at Franklin Hospital Medical Center in Valley Stream.

From the BBC News:

2120 local time (1550 GMT): Gunfire starts at the Chhatrapati Shivaji railway station when at least two gunmen storm the crowded terminal, firing indiscriminately. Many of the deaths and injuries occurred in this attack.

2120-2200: Gunmen raid the Cama and Albless Hospital, shooting indiscriminately. Two attackers later killed and two captured.

2120-2200: Gunmen seize control of the Nariman House business and residential complex. Police surround the complex, which houses the Jewish Chabad Lubavitch outreach centre.

2120-2200: Gunmen storm the Cafe Leopold and open fire on diners, causing numerous causalities.

From The Guardian:

The gunmen, most of them apparently in their twenties, wearing T-shirts, black shirts and jeans, came ashore in black and yellow inflatable rubber dinghies. Armed with automatic weapons, and carrying rucksacks packed with hand grenades and explosives, they abandoned their landing-craft on the beach, from where they would have been able to make out the outlines of their targets, some of Mumbai’s most famous buildings.

It would appear that they had landed earlier, around 8pm, in a larger vessel at Sasoon dock and then used the dinghies to get closer to their targets in the heart of the city.

“Six young men with large bags came ashore, after which the two who remained in the boat started the outboard motor again and sped off,” said one witness. “They were fair, chikna [well-off] and looked around 20, 22, 25 years old. They said they were students. When we tried to find out what they were doing, they spoke very aggressively, and I got scared.”

Within two hours, the young gunmen were causing mayhem in the city that has always prided itself as being the hospitable gateway to India.

A huge collection of the front pages of newspapers from around the world the day after Obama’s win.

(via Gerry Canavan)