Eideard

Freed hostage Marc Gonsalves explains how he carved a chess set with a broken machete

Thanks, K B

A US air strike killed 47 civilians, including 39 women and children, as they were travelling to a wedding in Afghanistan, an official inquiry found today. The bride was among the dead…

Fighter aircraft attacked a group of militants near the village of Kacu in the eastern Nuristan province, but one missile went off course and hit the wedding party, said the provincial police chief spokesman, Ghafor Khan.

The US military initially denied any civilians had been killed…

The US is facing similar charges over strikes two days earlier in another border area of Afghanistan.

The nine-member inquiry team appointed by the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, to look into the wedding party incident found only civilians had been killed in the attack.

There’s no shock and amazement here. Well, maybe, shock.

When, of course, we have our fair share of all of the above. But, the culture of complicity and corruption is so thoroughly a part of our everyday life and economy, we have become an nation of accepting, compliant sheep. Most of us.

The head of the Federal Communications Commission says he will recommend that the nation’s largest cable company be punished for violating agency principles that guarantee customers open access to the Internet.

The potentially precedent-setting move stems from a complaint against Comcast Corp. that the company had blocked Internet traffic among users of a certain type of “file sharing” software that allows them to exchange large amounts of data.

“The commission has adopted a set of principles that protects consumers access to the Internet. We found that Comcast’s actions in this instance violated our principles.”

Kevin Martin said Comcast has “arbitrarily” blocked Internet access, regardless of the level of traffic, and failed to disclose to consumers that it was doing so.

Martin will circulate an order recommending enforcement action against the company among his fellow commissioners.

Martin’s order would require Comcast to stop its practice of blocking; provide details to the commission on the extent and manner in which the practice was been used; and to disclose to consumers details on future plans for managing its network going forward.

Overdue. Comcast behaves with the same sort of dog-in-the-manger attitude characteristic of greedy thugs like the MPAA and RIAA.

They would be better served – as would their customers – if they spent their energies on providing better quality, affordable high-speed broadband.

McBush and snooty Gramm

Senator John McCain has spent a week trying to tell people that he feels their economic pain. So it was more than a little unhelpful when one of his top economic advisers was quoted as saying that the United States was only in a “mental recession” and that it had become a “nation of whiners.”

The adviser, former Senator Phil Gramm, Republican of Texas, tried to clarify his remarks Thursday by saying he had been referring only to some of the nation’s leaders.

But it was too late to keep from complicating things for McCain, who has been trying to strike a more empathetic tone after sometimes struggling to maintain a balance between displaying optimism about the nation’s future and demonstrating an understanding of Americans’ economic hardships.

Senator Barack Obama, noting that McCain had previously said an expansion of offshore oil drilling might have a “psychological” benefit for the country, seized on Gramm’s remarks, made in an interview with The Washington Times.

“You know, America already has one Dr. Phil,” Obama said at a campaign stop in Fairfax, Virginia, referring to a talk show host. “When it comes to the economy, we don’t need another.”

McCain’s offered one of his patent leather, too lame, too late excuses for Gramm, of course.

Just mean-spirited Christian Crusaders and the greedy Oil Mafia.

The Vatican made a loss last year as the weaker dollar reduced the value of donations from the faithful in the United States.

Almost a quarter of the $79.8 million worth of offerings it received came from collections made in US churches. But as the dollar lost 15% of its value against the euro, the Catholic Church’s governing body made a loss of $14.3 million in 2007.

The Vatican Television Centre, which broadcasts the Pope’s regular audiences in St Peter’s Square and reports on his visits abroad, made a profit of almost 500,000 euros, while the Vatican Publishing House ended the year with a surplus of 1.6m euros.

Doesn’t everyone worry about religions going out of business?

Police in the US have uncovered cocaine with a street value of $400,000 – in a police car.

An undercover officer in Dallas discovered nearly 50lb of the drug as he was cleaning the car his squad had been using for two months. The cocaine was hidden in hydraulically controlled secret compartments.

The vehicle was seized at a crime scene earlier this year. It was put into police service after a search by the narcotics squad found nothing unusual…

I suppose if he wasn’t a tidy copper, the car eventually would have ended up being sold.

Thanks, K B

Rival Santa Claus leaders have been engaged in a decidedly unfestive power struggle that has polarised the lucrative US grotto market and forced hundreds of Father Christmases to choose between warring rival groups.

The hostilities have spilled on to the internet, in this case Elf Net, an online chat group where Santas go to exchange information on belt supplies and beard dyeing.

Organisers of the annual convention in Kansas of the Amalgamated Order of Real-Bearded Santas, fear it will be disrupted by splitters from rival groups such as the Fraternal Order and the Red Suit Society.

In turn, Mr Connaghan’s new group, the Red Suit Society, has accused the Amalgamated Santas of a “vindictive and persecutory” attitude towards members, and “engaging in Un-Santa like dialogue”.

Is this really how you think of Xmas?.

Thanks, Helen

Taken at the entrance to a “beautification” project in DuBai. Work being done by the Bin Ladin Construction Company.

From one of a series of Funny Signs.

Guests at an Israeli wedding hall can now insert a credit card into a machine at its entrance, tap in a sum and leave a gift for the bride and groom.

“It’s new in Israel and the world,” Aya Alon Kaufman of the Gan Oranim hall in Tel Aviv said on Israel’s Channel 10 television. “It’s very convenient … guests can give a gift even if they forget their chequebooks.”

She said couples pay 500 shekels ($155) to rent the device, which resembles an automated teller machine, and the recorded funds are transferred into their bank account the next day.

The machine…prints out a “deposit” slip with the guest’s name, which can be put into an envelope along with a congratulatory note and inserted into a slot in the device for the couple to retrieve.

L’chaim!