Even as some of the devastating brush and forest fires that have scorched Greece for the last six days and killed at least 64 continue burning, the country has begun to take stock of the damage." (Spiegel.de)

US Top Party Schools 2007

Since August 15th, the day when 80 thousand people were affected by a 7.9 degrees earthquake in the south of Peru, things have progressed insufficiently. There's a light of hope. But, It is just taking way too much time for people to reach that light.

Continue reading...

Now a website designed to monitor editorial changes made on Wikipedia has found thousands of self-serving edits and traced them to their original source. It has turned out to be hugely embarrassing for armies of political spin doctors and corproate revisionists who believed their censorial interventions had gone unnoticed.

Some of the guilty parties identified by the website, such as the Labour Party, the CIA, Republican Party and the Church of Scientology, are well-known for their obsession with PR. But others, such as the Anglican and Catholic churches or even the obscurely titled Perro de Presa Canario Dog Breeders Association of America, are new to the dark arts of spin.

The website, Wikiscanner, was designed by Virgil Griffith, a graduate student from the California Institute of Technology, who downloaded the entire encyclopedia, isolating the internet-based records of anonymous changes and IP addresses.

Stupid accountability, poor Exxon, always get the bad rap.

Chaos.

Lima, the capital city, has also been affected, but not as much as Pisco city, Ica city, Chincha city, among others. Some old abandoned houses in Lima collapsed, specially in the oldest districts and parts of the city, such as Rimac, and Lima Downtown.

Some places have been reported as flooded ever since. Fortunately, later on the night of the 15th, such warning was dismissed.

The epicenter was located near Pisco city, This city has been devastated in 70% to 80%. As a result, health system there has completely collapsed. There are not enough doctors, nor firefighters there to help. Also, because most of the houses were destroyed, people were left homeless, with nothing but what they had on themselves.

Many people have disappeared, and most of them are presumed to be under the shattered houses. Earthquake had such impact on the city because houses were not make of brick, but of a certain type of clay which is not resistant. Up to now, only 3 people have been found alive under the debris of buildings.

Sadly, many people have passed away at home, as the roofs and walls fell on them. In one location, people were participating in a mass, and the church collapsed on them due to the earthquake. As corpses are being rescued, they are collected in the city main square. Health authorities have already warned of a possible epidemic outburst due to corpses decomposition and are coordinating their removal ASAP.

Communications are still down in the emergency zone, and were not functioning in Lima in the night of the disaster for more than 2 hours: Mobiles, and landlines were down, except for the internet connection. Some highways have been destroyed, and are now officially closed.

I'm currently updating in my web log (however it is in Spanish - I'll try to at least include some brief comments in English). You may find it at: http://yacolca.nomadlife.org

Davo - AIESEC alumnus

My earlier column this week detailed the work of a volunteer team to assess problems with US temperature data used for climate modeling. One of these people is Steve McIntyre, who operates the site climateaudit.org. While inspecting historical temperature graphs, he noticed a strange discontinuity, or "jump" in many locations, all occurring around the time of January, 2000.
...
NASA has now silently released corrected figures, and the changes are truly astounding. The warmest year on record is now 1934. 1998 (long trumpeted by the media as record-breaking) moves to second place. 1921 takes third. In fact, 5 of the 10 warmest years on record now all occur before World War II. Anthony Watts has put the new data in chart form, along with a more detailed summary of the events.

• Bombshell? NASA revises recent U.S. temperatures downward after Y2K bug fix Updated
• Breaking News: Recent US Temperature Numbers Revised Downwards Today

Labels: academic review, climate, global warming, open source, science, temperatures, weather, Y2K

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Now, habilis and erectus are thought to be sister species that overlapped in time.

The new fossil evidence reveals an overlap of about 500,000 years during which Homo habilis and Homo erectus must have co-existed in the Turkana basin area, the region of East Africa where the fossils were unearthed.

"Their co-existence makes it unlikely that Homo erectus evolved from Homo habilis," said co-author Professor Meave Leakey, palaeontologist and co-director of the Koobi Fora Research Project." (BBC)

The palaeontologists should just accept that everybody comes from Adam and Eve instead of keep reivising their theory.

:)

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• lmbrunetti@hotmail.com (MSN)
• ohepcat (AIM)

The man, Kafeel Ahmed, 28, sustained severe burns over 90 percent of his body and had remained in critical condition since the failed attack on June 30. The Jeep was loaded with gasoline and burst into flames as it hit the airline terminal."(NY Times)

Do you say Rest in Peace for this type of occassion or no?