Category: News

In his softly lit bedroom, former SJSU photojournalism professor Joe Swan looked down at the nonexistent bump in the bed sheet where his legs should be.

“I’m pretty well bedridden,” Swan said in his slow Texas twang. “If I keep getting healthier – if you can use that term for somebody fatally ill – I might try to convert to a wheelchair.”

Within the last year, Swan, 78, has had both legs amputated and has been on dialysis, a process of filtration used when the kidneys stop working, because of complications from diabetes.

He stopped dialysis almost one month ago.

According to the Kidney End-of-Life Coalition, most patients who stop dialysis die within eight to 12 days, although some do live weeks or months.

“‘Brave’ just comes to mind when you’re doing something that will probably actually take your life,” said Debbie Gorman, Swan’s daughter.

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A leading team of CGI experts hand-selected by blockbuster producer and director Michael Bay has pushed the limits of what can be accomplished with special effects and digital imaging by creating a computer- generated best-director Oscar for the 43-year-old filmmaker.

The $125 million project, funded entirely by Bay, has been called one of the most ambitious CGI undertakings to date, dwarfing even Bay’s most ambitious efforts in his 2007 robot-action film, Transformers. A crew of nearly 200 technicians working for nine months on a 15,000-square-foot soundstage was required to realize the director’s wildly imaginative fantasy world.

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In a move that legal experts said could present a major test of First Amendment rights in the Internet era, a federal judge in San Francisco on Friday ordered the disabling of a Web site devoted to disclosing confidential information.

The site, Wikileaks.org, invites people to post leaked materials with the goal of discouraging “unethical behavior” by corporations and governments. It has posted documents concerning the rules of engagement for American troops in Iraq, a military manual concerning the operation of prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and other evidence of what it has called corporate waste and wrongdoing.

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Yep, in a fit of incredible nervousness I asked her to marry me. And through an incredible fit of tears, she accepted! I’ll post the ring on Friday, when we get to pick it up.

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Today, 17 February. at 15 hours Kosovo province unilaterally declared its independence from Serbia. It been ten years now since I wrote my “Diary of a Political Idiot,” a book that started with riots in Kosovo. Although I’ve tried to stop writing that book, I have never been allowed to. The Balkan disorder became the model of world disorder.

I can hear the voice of my dead mother, who passed away in 1999 after the NATO bombings, with her last words: “take care of Kosovo.” She didn’t mention her granddaughter, my daughter, whom she loved more than herself or me. She instead scolded me, the traitor, severely: Kosovo is not yours and you cannot give it away. You and your similar traitors don’t have pants on their asses and you are giving Kosovo, our heritage, away.

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POCZERNIN, Poland — This wind-swept village is bracing for an invasion of demons, thanks to a priest who believes he can defeat Satan.

The Rev. Andrzej Trojanowski, a soft-spoken Pole, plans to build a “spiritual oasis” that will serve as Europe’s only center dedicated to performing exorcisms. With the blessing of the local Catholic archbishop and theological support from the Vatican, the center will aid a growing number of Poles possessed by evil forces or the devil himself, he said.

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The tale of the warehouse-turned-loft building by the banks of the East River in Brooklyn seemed a familiar one, at first.

Artists move into a decrepit building, quietly rehabilitate it, live and work there. The city eventually catches on and issues a flurry of violations, forcing the artists into the streets. Developers circle, landlords yield and sell. Condos ensue.

The roughly 200 residents of 475 Kent Avenue in South Williamsburg were determined that their story have a happier ending. After all, the landlords were on their side — an unusual alliance. So the residents tackled every violation they could at the building, an 11-story warehouse that had been home to artists, photographers and musicians for more than a decade.

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Polaroid Corp., the Massachusetts company that gave the world instant film photography, is shutting down its film manufacturing lines in the state and abandoning the technology that made the company famous.

“The Norwood plant is shutting down, and we will soon be winding down activities at the Waltham facility as well,” said Kyle MacDonald, senior vice president of Polaroid’s instant photography business segment. The closures, set for completion during this quarter, will eliminate about 150 jobs. In the late 1970s, Polaroid employed about 15,000 in Massachusetts.

The Norwood and Waltham plants make large-format films used by professional photographers and artists. Polaroid also makes professional-grade films in Mexico, and its consumer film packs come from a factory in the Netherlands. All these plants are slated for closure this year. Polaroid chief operating officer Tom Beaudoin said the company is interested in licensing its technology to an outside firm that could manufacture film for faithful Polaroid customers. If that doesn’t happen, Polaroid users would have to find an alternative photo technology, as the company plans to make only enough film to last into next year

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GENEVA—In what observers are calling an unprecedented opportunity for the international community to express its grievances against Iran’s controversial leader, dozens of world leaders and key U.N. delegates gathered Saturday to roast Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The event, which took place beneath U.N. headquarters in the historic Geneva Friars Club, brought together the heads of every G8 member state, as well as some of today’s top foreign policy makers and peace brokers. Roastmaster and former U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan kicked off the evening by welcoming President Ahmadinejad to “what [was] sure to be the first and last time Mahmoud would ever be surrounded by 72 virgins.”

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Not so very long ago, we winced every time we saw someone with facial hair or a backpack. Average people were terrified of opening their mail for fear of getting a face full of anthrax. Those were perhaps our country’s greatest days. Yet that once-phobic spirit that defined our times is drastically changing.

Today, people are making eye contact with strangers on the street. They are whistling on subway platforms, strolling down sidewalks, and generally behaving as if they do not feel they could be killed at any moment. Children can be seen running playfully in public parks, their parents smiling and watching idly from afar when they should be obsessing over an unseen child abductor who will snatch and rape their babies first chance they get. It breaks my heart to see the land I love fall into such a state of non-panic.

My God, what have we become?

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“When I woke up after several hours, I felt a pain in my right side,” Saleem recalled, sitting on a metal cot in a city hospital ward. “The men said, ‘We have removed your kidney, and you better not breathe a word about it.’ My life broke into pieces when I heard that.”

Saleem was the latest in a long list of poor laborers who had come to Gurgaon to work and lost their kidneys as a result. Police say they were victims of a major organ-trafficking racket based in this city for nearly a decade.

The scam was discovered last week after police, acting on a tip from a middleman, raided the bungalow where Saleem had been held. They said they found a labyrinthine kidney bazaar run by a group of men posing as doctors. Five suspects were arrested.

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Egyptian security forces tried unsuccessfully Friday to end the Palestinian exodus. Police cars drove through Egyptian border towns blaring the message: “Dear Palestinian brothers, when you have finished buying your goods, please return to Gaza. The border is closing.”

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The Sun News On-line | Wiveslive: “Ayobamidele Atinuke
I personally don’t support premarital sex. The Bible doesn’t support it but we must be very realistic. Sometimes, the situation might warrant it to happen probably once a week. I must make it very clear that if it must happen at all, then it must be with reasonable protection. However, if those involved are married, they can do it anytime and anywhere, even if she’s cooking in the kitchen.”

Nuruddin Farah, in the NYT:

My subsequent meetings with the Islamists and their sympathizers were equally frustrating. There was no discussion of the peace plan that had brought me back to Somalia. Instead, the discussions centered on matters they deemed important: whether theaters should be open; whether girls could be permitted to wear jeans or go about unveiled; whether tea houses should play music, or young men watch soccer on television. There was no serious talk of governance.

What struck me in these conversations was the presence of Arabic. These men, I surmised, had received their education in Sudan, Libya or Kuwait. For the first time since the Middle Ages, Arabic was the lingua franca in Mogadishu; Somali was practically a second language.

Here.