Weird Links

Opposition parties accused the Government of burying bad news and breaking the law today, after new figures revealed the ... cost of the controversial identity scheme has risen by at least £400 million in the last six months.

Conservatives and Liberal Democrats said the true rise was actually £640 million - to a staggering £5.55 billion over 10 years.

The Home Office was accused of breaking the law by publishing its compulsory twice-yearly update more than one month late, coinciding with the day Prime Minister Tony Blair announced his resignation.

Guantanamo has become a liability. The real and perceived injustices occurring there have given our enemies an easy example of our failures and alleged ill intent. The prison is so widely viewed as illegitimate, so plainly inconsistent with America's proud legal traditions; it has become a stinging symbol of our tarnished standing abroad.

On Tuesday, without note in the U.S. media, more than half of the members of Iraq's parliament rejected the continuing occupation of their country. 144 lawmakers signed onto a legislative petition calling on the United States to set a timetable for withdrawal, according to Nassar Al-Rubaie, a spokesman for the Al Sadr movement, the nationalist Shia group that sponsored the petition.

Presidential candidate and Ohio Congress Representative Dennis Kucinich revealed that the Democrats in Congress had made some secret concessions to the Republicans in the initial Bill to continue funding the Iraq War that was vetoed, and in a subsequent version that is currently being negotiated. They include:

>Privatization of Iraq’s Oil – in the original Bill, but not shared with the public. A rule was created that said this clause could not be removed during debate on House floor.

>Bush could invade Iran without approval of Congress. A clause that would require him to get approval from Congress first was removed.

>Timetable for troop withdrawal from Iraq to be removed from Bill (in post-veto version).

The human and chimpanzee genomes vary by just 1.2 percent, yet there is a considerable difference in the mental and linguistic capabilities between the two species. A new study showed that a certain form of neuropsin, a protein that plays a role in learning and memory, is expressed only in the central nervous systems of humans and that it originated less than 5 million years ago. The study also demonstrated the molecular mechanism that creates this novel protein.

The makers of a Channel 4 documentary which claimed that global warming is a swindle have been accused of fabricating data by one of the scientists who participated in the film.

Dr Friiss-Christensen said that a graph he had produced some years ago showing the link between fluctuations in global temperatures and changes in solar activity - sunspot cycles - over the past 400 years had been doctored.

From the article:

“Those of us who study the pre-human history of the Earth find the current debate over global warming difficult to fathom,” writes Martin Keeley, a geologist. “To expect permanent stability in climate patterns displays a fundamental lack of understanding of the complexity and instability of weather…. If the global climate were not getting warmer, it would be getting cooler; stasis is not an option.”

From the article..

President Bush, 23/04/07:

I believe artificial timetables of withdrawal would be a mistake. … I will strongly reject an artificial timetable withdrawal and/or Washington politicians trying to tell those who wear the uniform how to do their job.

Victory means exit strategy, and it’s important for the president to explain to us what the exit strategy is.

The Russian space agency [has] accused its old rival Nasa of rejecting a proposal for joint lunar exploration. The claim comes amid suspicion in Moscow that the United States is seeking to deny Russia access to an isotope in abundance under the moon's surface that many believe could replace fossil fuels and even end the threat of global warming.

While the Americans have either been coy or dismissive on the subject, Russia openly says the main purpose of its lunar programme is the industrial extraction of helium-3.

Mars is being hit by rapid climate change and it is happening so fast that the red planet could lose its southern ice cap. Scientists from Nasa say that Mars has warmed by about 0.5C since the 1970s. This is similar to the warming experienced on Earth over approximately the same period. Since there is no known life on Mars it suggests rapid changes in planetary climates could be natural phenomena.