View of packs of cigarettes, unveiled by European Health and Consumer Protection Commissioner David Byrne, at a news conference in Brussels October 22, 2004. Byrne unveiled new violent images for cigarette packs to warn consumers of the health risk of smoking. REUTERS/Handout

A two-day-old Hippopotamus swims at Dusit Zoo in Bangkok Friday, Oct. 22, 2004. It is highly protected by its five-year-old mother ‘Mayom.’ The baby Hippopotamus’s sex still cannot be identified. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)

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For Griffith, it took a lot of altering.
    She went to Valle Del Norte Community Center in Albuquerque, planning to vote for John Kerry. “I pushed his name, but a green check mark appeared before President Bush’s name,” she said.
    Griffith erased the vote by touching the check mark at Bush’s name. That’s how a voter can alter a touch-screen ballot.
    She again tried to vote for Kerry, but the screen again said she had voted for Bush. The third time, the screen agreed that her vote should go to Kerry.
    She faced the same problem repeatedly as she filled out the rest of the ballot. On one item, “I had to vote five or six times,” she said.

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Michael Moore’s searing examination of the Aragorn administration’s actions in the wake of the tragic events at Helms Deep.

With his characteristic humor and dogged commitment to uncovering – or if necessary fabricating – the facts, Moore considers the reign of the son of Arathorn and where it has led us.

He looks at how – and why – Aragorn and his inner circle avoided pursuing the Saruman connection to Helms Deep, despite the fact that 9 out of every 10 Orcs that attacked the castle were actually Uruk-hai who were spawned in and financed by Isengard.

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A federal appeals court decided Wednesday that marine mammals have no standing to sue to stop the U.S. Navy from using sonar.

In upholding a lower court decision, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said the world’s cetaceans — whales, porpoises and dolphins — have no standing under the Endangered Species Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act or the National Environmental Policy Act.

If lawmakers “intended to take the extraordinary step of authorizing animals as well as people and legal entities to sue, they could, and should, have said so plainly,” said Judge William A. Fletcher, writing for the panel.

Right. Because taking the step of authorizing legal entities (corporations) who are by definition not people at all, to sue wasn’t extraordinary at all.

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I have said a luppolo of the hip, hippie to the hippie, the hip, hip a luppolo and not arrested, one cliff it
To the boogie of explosion of explosion as an example on the jump the boogie, to rhythm of the boogie, the beat. 
Hour, than what felt is not a test, I I am rappin ‘ to the beat,
And me, the rabbet and my friends they are going to try to move your feet. 
It sees, are microphone of wonder and I would want to say hello, to the black one, the white man, the red color and the color brown,
Viola and yellow. But in the first place, I have obtained to strike the explosion, the boogie to the boogie,
It says on the jump the boogie to the boogie of explosion explosion, we oscillate, you are not arrested,
The that’ oscillates ll of rhythm makes your cliff of the body. 

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Before he went on CNN’s “Crossfire” program and made news by lecturing its hosts, “The Daily Show” comedy anchor Jon Stewart complained about cable news to 60 Minutes Correspondent Steve Kroft.

Kroft’s profile of the Comedy Central star and his satirical news show will be broadcast Sunday, Oct. 24, at 7 p.m. ET/PT

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Like most of the bulk of the military, aside from officers and non-coms, they’re kids really — 18, 19, 20 years old. They switch from playing imaginary war games on an Xbox in the base rec rooms to living and fighting in a real war. They flip from astounding maturity, trusting each other with their lives, brotherly bonds, to head-shaking juvenile antics — belittling each others manhood, intelligence, haircuts–whatever presents itself as an appropriate weakness.

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Back in August, the President of Sun Microsystems posted a little dig at HP on his blog, saying:

To me, HP’s problems spawn from the death of… their operating system, HP/UX. Like IBM, they’ve elected to ask their customers and ISV’s to move to Red Hat Linux or Microsoft Windows on x86 systems. And if you’re an ISV, how does that differentiate HP? – they’re a box vendor. If you’re a customer, where does that leave you with your HP/UX investments? Facing untimely change – with a vendor no longer in charge of their OS.

Pretty innocuous, right?

Well, HP didn’t think so. They had their jackass lawyers send a nastygram to Sun, demanding that they take down the blog entry. Riiiiight.

Give it to Sun — they didn’t waver. Instead, they sent their own nastygram right back, and promptly delivered both letters to the ChillingEffects clearing-house for public humilation.

Once again, in certain of the places this is a statement of opinion by Jonathan Schwartz. His opinion is based on his good faith assessment of the current climate of HP. Alternatively, however, Sun will also stand behind this as a statement of fact that is true and accurate based on the above substantiation. As detailed by the above facts, we have seen signs that HP is abandoning HP/UX.

Jonathan Schwartz’s opinions and even his vigorous debate on this subject as well as Sun’s product comparisons and dialog on these commercial matters are inherent in Sun’s competition with HP and are part of the free market system in which our companies operate. For our statements of fact, Sun has valid, objective and verifiable evidence. Accordingly, and based on the above, Sun affirmatively stands by its claims regarding HP/UX and will not agree to cease making such truthful and/or subjective claims.

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Parliamentarians from Dutch ruling and opposition parties unanimously agreed that (most) images currently owned by Dutch public broadcasters should be released into the public domain and allowed to be distributed online.

The four politicians – Kees Vendrik (Green Left), Ankie Broekers-Knol (Liberal Democrat), Martijn van Dam (Labour) and Nicolien van Vroonhoven (Christian Democrat) – who were participating in a debate at a symposium on copyright in Amsterdam last Friday also promised to ask the government to take action.

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Apple has been nominated for three Billboard 2004 Digital Entertainment Awards, which will be presented on Nov. 5 in Los Angeles. The company is up for Innovator of the Year, Brand of the Year, and Best Downloadable or Subscription Music Service. Apple CEO Steve Jobs was also nominated for Visionary of the Year. In the Innovator of the Year category, Apple’s iTunes will go up against BitTorrent, Sony’s Eyetoy, and XM Radio. In the Brand of the Year category, Apple will compete with EA Sports, Virgin Mobile, and XM Radio. In the Music Service category, iTunes is up against Musicmatch, Napster, and Rhapsody. Finally, Jobs will go up against Dallas Mavericks owner and HDNet chairman Mark Cuban, RealNetworks CEO Rob Glaser, and Sims creator Will Wright.

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U.S. Sen. Jim Bunning said yesterday that he was unaware of reports that a unit of Army Reserve soldiers in Iraq had refused an order to deliver fuel for reasons including that their trucks were lightly armored.

“I don’t know anything about that,” Bunning said during a news conference after a speech he gave to the Rotary Club of Louisville.

Bunning added that Congress had approved money to upgrade body and vehicle armor. “And I believe that has all been accomplished. And I don’t know about your reservists,” he said. “Unfortunately, we’ve had some reports, but I don’t know the one you’re specifically talking about.”

When reporters told him that the unit’s refusal was a national news story and involved a soldier from Louisville, Bunning said, “Let me explain something: I don’t watch the national news, and I don’t read the paper. I haven’t done that for the last six weeks. I watch Fox News to get my information.”

Even Fox reported this…

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More than 800 former soldiers have failed to comply with Army orders to get back in uniform and report for duty in Iraq or Afghanistan, the Army said Friday. That is more than one-third of the total who were told to report to a mobilization station by Oct. 17.

Three weeks ago the number stood at 622 amid talk that any who refused to report for duty could be declared Absent Without Leave. Refusing to report for duty normally would lead to AWOL charges, but the Army is going out of its way to resolve these cases as quietly as possible.

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The Pentagon knows exactly where Osama bin Laden is hiding in Pakistan, it just can’t get to him, John Lehman, a member of the 9-11 commission, said Thursday.

Lehman’s remarks echoed those made Tuesday by Secretary of State Colin Powell, who asserted that the al-Qaida leader was alive and operating in the western part of Pakistan.

Bin Laden is living in South Waziristan in the Baluchistan Mountains of the Baluchistan region, Lehman told The San Bernardino Sun after delivering a keynote speech on terrorism at Pitzer College in Claremont.

In the exclusive interview, Lehman noted, “There is an American presence in the area, but we can’t just send in troops. If we did, we could have another Vietnam, and the United States cannot afford that right now.”

It’s a bit like Elvis sightings…

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Pasco elections officials have a warning for the county’s absentee voters: Don’t give your ballot to a stranger claiming to be from the elections office.

They’re not who they say they are.

“The people who are soliciting your ballots in this manner are not elections officials,” Pasco Elections Supervisor Kurt Browning warned Thursday.

The warning came after a phone call from a west Pasco woman. Other Florida counties have gotten similar complaints.

“We’ve had a bunch of them – 100 at least,” said Bob Sweat, elections supervisor for Manatee County. “It’s probably going on all over the state of Florida.”

The Pasco woman said someone came to her home to collect her absentee ballot earlier this week. She said she was led to believe they were from the elections office. The woman told the strangers she hadn’t completed the ballot, but they took it anyway.

The deception is the latest sign of the lengths to which some partisans appear ready to go in this election. Elections officials worry there will be many more complaints of overly aggressive behavior in attempts to affect the outcome of the presidential race.

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epublican Party officials in Ohio took formal steps yesterday to place thousands of recruits inside polling places on Election Day to challenge the qualifications of voters they suspect are not eligible to cast ballots.

Party officials say their effort is necessary to guard against fraud arising from aggressive moves by the Democrats to register tens of thousands of new voters in Ohio, seen as one of the most pivotal battlegrounds in the Nov. 2 elections.

Election officials in other swing states, from Arizona to Wisconsin and Florida, say they are bracing for similar efforts by Republicans to challenge new voters at polling places, reflecting months of disputes over voting procedures and the anticipation of an election as close as the one in 2000.

Ohio election officials said they had never seen so large a drive to prepare for Election Day challenges. They said they were scrambling yesterday to be ready for disruptions in the voting process as well as alarm and complaints among voters. Some officials said they worried that the challenges could discourage or even frighten others waiting to vote.

Ohio Democrats were struggling to match the Republicans’ move, which had been rumored for weeks. Both parties had until 4 p.m. to register people they had recruited to monitor the election. Republicans said they had enlisted 3,600 by the deadline, many in heavily Democratic urban neighborhoods of Cleveland, Dayton and other cities. Each recruit was to be paid $100.

And you thought Florida 2000 was a mess….

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The federal government has begun conducting background checks on all foreigners seeking to attend U.S. flight schools, the Transportation Security Administration said Friday.

Well, it only took them 37 months to come up with this..