Author: Trent

From The Moscow Times:

Vladimir Zhirinovsky has called for nuking Japan, dumping radioactive waste in Germany and reoccupying Alaska.

On Tuesday, the ultranationalist leader of the Liberal Democratic Party came up with yet another zinger: Great Britain, he declared, is now Public Enemy No. 1.

Here.

From the Daily Sun, Nigeria’s King of the Tabloids, women speak on excessive heat and their marital obligations:

My sister, this weather is something else. In fact, I sleep naked every night. My husband is worse because he complains about the weather so much because he is so used to the air conditioner. Mind you, that doesn’t disturb us from meeting at all. You are married, you are married. The weather would not make any responsible woman to deny her husband.

Here.

From The New York Times:

The Fatah project went ahead despite warnings from experts that it could not succeed because the underground terrain was shattered and unstable.

It continued chewing up astonishing amounts of cash when the predicted problems bogged the work down, with a contract that allowed crews to charge as much as $100,000 a day as they waited on standby.

The company in charge engaged in what some American officials saw as a self-serving attempt to limit communications with the government until all the money was gone.

And until Mr. Sanders went to Al Fatah, the Army Corps of Engineers, which administered the project, allowed the show to go on for months, even as individual Corps officials said they repeatedly voiced doubts about its chances of success.

The Halliburton subsidiary, KBR, formerly Kellogg Brown & Root, had commissioned a geotechnical report that warned in August 2003 that it would be courting disaster to drill without extensive underground tests.

“No driller in his right mind would have gone ahead,” said Mr. Sanders, a geologist who came across the report when he arrived at the site.

Here.

From the Washington Post:

As he left, national intelligence director John Negroponte, surrounded by stiff-armed bodyguards, ignored a reporter’s shouted question about leaks. The closest the director got to controversy was when he was asked by an audience member (the questions were filtered by a moderator) about the warrantless wiretapping program.

“Yes, well,” the director replied, then cleared his throat and started again. He assured his audience that “there are very, very rigorous safeguards and oversight that are built into the execution of these programs” — without mentioning that such safeguards did not include informing most members of Congress or the courts.

Here.

From the Cape Times:

Mossel Bay: The 1 046 cyclists in the 2006 Cape Epic had a baptism of rain, mud and more mud on the first day of their eight-day mountain bike race that started in Knysna on Saturday.

They were so dirty I’m sure even their mothers wouldn’t have recognised them.

Here.