Ama Sumani is slowing down. She is only 39 but moves like an elderly grandmother.

Ama came to the UK five years ago as a student
Her feet, legs and face are swollen.

A week ago Ama was lying in a hospital bed in Cardiff. Her kidneys damaged by cancer, she had just had a session of the dialysis treatment she needs three times a week to stay alive.

Then early in the morning, in walked three immigration officers.

BBC NEWS | Programmes | From Our Own Correspondent | Deported, abandoned and saved in Ghana

SAN FRANCISCO - Sun Microsystems Inc. plans to buy open-source software maker MySQL AB for $1 billion, beefing up the server maker's database offerings with a company whose technology is used by some of the world's biggest Web sites.

Santa Clara-based Sun is paying $800 million in cash and assuming $200 million in options to acquire MySQL.

Sun said the deal will help spread MySQL's software to large corporations, which have been the biggest customers of Sun's servers and software, and boost its distribution through Sun's relationships with other server makers such as IBM Corp. and Dell Inc.

MySQL competes with non-open-source offerings from Microsoft Corp. and Oracle Corp., which dominate database software for traditional businesses.

However, MySQL is the rapidly growing market leader in open-source database software, particularly among Web-based companies, where it commands about 80 percent of the global market, according to Sun Chief Executive Jonathan Schwartz.

Microsoft is less than 10 percent of that market, Schwartz said.

Sun to buy MySQL for $1 billion - Yahoo News

Late one night in the summer of 2005, Matthew Sepi, 20, an Iraq combat veteran, headed out to a convenience store in the seedy Las Vegas neighborhood where he had settled after leaving the U.S. Army.

By day, the area, littered with malt liquor cans, looks depressed but not menacing. By night, it becomes, in the words of a local homicide detective, "like Falluja."

Sepi did not like to venture outside too late. But, plagued by nightmares about an Iraqi civilian killed by his unit, he said he often needed alcohol to fall asleep. And so it was that night, when, seized by a gut feeling of lurking danger, he slid a trench coat over his slight frame - and tucked an assault rifle inside it.

"Matthew knew he shouldn't be taking his AK-47 to the 7-Eleven," Detective Laura Andersen said, "but he was scared to death in that neighborhood, he was military trained and, in his mind, he needed the weapon to protect himself."

As Sepi started home, two gang members, both large and both armed, stepped out of the darkness. Sepi later said that he spied the butt of a gun, heard a boom, saw a flash and "just snapped."
...
The New York Times found 121 cases in which veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan committed a killing in the United States, or were charged with one, after their return from war. In many of those cases, combat trauma and the stress of deployment - along with alcohol abuse, family discord and other attendant problems - appear to have set the stage for a tragedy that was part destruction, part self-destruction.

Iraq veterans leave a trail of death and heartbreak in U.S. - International Herald Tribune

When President Bush announced the surge of troops in support of a new counterinsurgency strategy a year ago, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Democratic Congressional leaders predicted failure. Obama, for example, told Larry King that he didn’t believe additional U.S. troops would “make a significant dent in the sectarian violence that’s taking place there.” Then in April, the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, asserted that “this war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything.” In September, Clinton told Gen. David Petraeus that his claims of progress in Iraq required a “willing suspension of disbelief.”

The Democrats were wrong in their assessments of the surge. Attacks per week on American troops are now down about 60 percent from June. Civilian deaths are down approximately 75 percent from a year ago. December 2007 saw the second-lowest number of U.S. troops killed in action since March 2003. And according to Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of day-to-day military operations in Iraq, last month’s overall number of deaths, which includes Iraqi security forces and civilian casualties as well as U.S. and coalition losses, may well have been the lowest since the war began.

Do Obama and Clinton and Reid now acknowledge that they were wrong? Are they willing to say the surge worked?
...
It’s apparently impermissible for leading Democrats to acknowledge — let alone celebrate — progress in Iraq.
...
it is driven by a refusal to admit real success because that success has been achieved under the leadership of ... George W. Bush. The horror!

i hate to say I agree however the hypocrisy here is that the writer doesn't also point out that likewise there is a complete refusal by Republicans to acknowledge that the whole fiasco could have been avoided in the first place and that the invasion should never have happened in the first place. And was fundamentally immoral and that the US and co launched a war of aggression. A crime for which individuals were prosecuted at Nuremburg. A plague on both your houses.

PS Is George W Bush really to be commended for successfully scrabbling himself out of the mess he created. After costing the lives of several thousand American lives, several tens of thousand Iraqi lives, and upteen billion dollars.

I admit to being wrong about the surge and I want George and all those with blood on their hands to admit they were wrong for starting the war in the first place.

The Democrats’ Fairy Tale - New York Times

Today I’d like to talk about a much-derided contender making a surprising comeback, a comeback that calls into question much of the conventional wisdom of American politics. No, I’m not talking about a politician. I’m talking about an economy — specifically, the European economy, which many Americans assume is tired and spent but has lately been showing surprising vitality.
...
But the next time a politician tries to scare you with the European bogeyman, bear this in mind: Europe’s economy is actually doing O.K. these days, despite a level of taxing and spending beyond the wildest ambitions of American progressives.

The Comeback Continent - New York Times

Obama embodies more than he can know. "Change" is his mantra, but the potential for transformation goes far beyond the kinds of policies pursued in Washington. Those policies are rooted in assumptions sunk deep into the national psyche, and into the structure of memory that gives it shape. War is not necessarily redemptive. Africans are not necessarily disadvantaged. African-Americans are not mere victims. Race, for that matter, need not be definitive. An old story is offered a new ending - which is the beginning America has been awaiting. The day has come.

The ghosts of racism - International Herald Tribune

hi, it's Tim,

This is an email I hoped I would never have to send.

As you probably know, in July of 2007 we had to block usage of Pandora outside the U.S. because of the lack of a viable license structure for Internet radio streaming in other countries. It was a
terrible day. We did however hold out some hope that a solution might exist for the UK, so we left it unblocked as we worked diligently with the rights organizations to negotiate an economically
workable license fee. After over a year of trying, this has proved impossible. Both the PPL (which represents the record labels) and the MCPS/PRS Alliance (which represents music publishers) have
demanded per track performance minima rates which are far too high to allow ad supported radio to operate and so, hugely disappointing and depressing to us as it is, we have to block the last
territory outside of the US.

Based on your email address, we believe you may be listening from the UK. If you are in fact listening from the U.S., please disregard this email.

It continues to astound me and the rest of the team here that the industry is not working more constructively to support the growth of services that introduce listeners to new music and that are
totally supportive of paying fair royalties to the creators of music. I don't often say such things, but the course being charted by the labels and publishers and their representative organizations
is nothing short of disastrous for artists whom they purport to represent - and by that I mean both well known and indie artists. The only consequence of failing to support companies like Pandora
that are attempting to build a sustainable radio business for the future will be the continued explosion of piracy, the continued constriction of opportunities for working musicians, and a worsening
drought of new music for fans. As a former working musician myself, I find it very troubling.

We have been told to sign these totally unworkable license rates or switch off, non-negotiable...so that is what we are doing. Streaming illegally is just not in our DNA, and we have to take the
threats of legal action seriously. Lest you think this is solely an international problem, you should know that we are also fighting for our survival here in the US, in the face of a crushing
increase in web radio royalty rates, which if left unchanged, would mean the end of Pandora.

We know what an epicenter of musical creativity and fan support the UK has always been, which makes the prospect of not being able to launch there and having to block our first listeners all the more
upsetting for us.

We know there is a lot of support from listeners and artists in the UK for Pandora and remain hopeful that at some point we'll get beyond this. We're going to keep fighting for a fair and workable
rate structure that will allow us to bring Pandora back to you. We'll be sure to let you know if Pandora becomes available in the UK. There may well come a day when we need to make a direct appeal
for your support to move for governmental intervention as we have in the US. In the meantime, we have no choice but to turn off service to the UK.

Pandora will stop streaming to the UK as of January 15th, 2008.

Again, on behalf of all of us at Pandora, I'm very, very sorry.

-Tim Westergren (Pandora founder)

Pandora: Changes to Availability in the UK

John Holloway received a diagnosis of AIDS nearly two decades ago, when the disease was a speedy death sentence and treatment a distant dream.

Yet at 59 he is alive, thanks to a cocktail of drugs that changed the course of an epidemic. But with longevity has come a host of unexpected medical conditions, which challenge the prevailing view of AIDS as a manageable, chronic disease.

this just seems so unimaginably cruel

AIDS Patients Face Downside of Living Longer - New York Times

1. Obama beat Hillary among women voters 35 to 30 percent.
2. Amid record Democratic turnout, as many people under 30 showed up to caucus as those over 65.
3. Sixty percent of the GOP electorate in Iowa were born-again Christians.
4. Rudy Giuliani finished with a mere 4,013 votes, in sixth place, with less than half of the support of Ron Paul.

Maybe he's not so Ready after all.

Iowa By the Numbers

Boys in nursery schools should not be discouraged from playing with toy guns and other weapons, the government says.

In guidance for nurseries in England, the Department for Children, Schools and Families says staff should resist a "natural instinct" to stop such play.
...
Teachers have condemned the advice, saying toy guns "symbolise aggression".

in which case the government is showing sense and the teachers are full of crap

' "natural instinct" to stop such play ' -- they are just being boys

playing with guns, toy swords and fighting is not about learning to be aggressive but about learning how to cope with aggression and negotiate a social hierarchy. By using violence literally or symbolically boys are reenacting a stage of our social evolution when hierarchies were established through physical aggression (in certain geopolitical contexts we still haven't escaped that ) but largely now in the 21st century we have established better strategies, better morally and better for the health of society and social cohesion

i would certainly let my sons play with toy guns and i would try and get them to learn a martial art (similarly daughters) because i think it is better to redirect rather than suppress instincts

BBC NEWS | Education | Toy weapons 'help boys to learn'