Wellington - This weekend will not be a good time for the Easter bunny in the central Otago region of New Zealand's South Island.

More than 10 000 of them currently leaping about on farms in the area will not see the light of day on Sunday after 390 shooters take part in the annual Alexandra Easter Bunny Hunt.

RALEIGH, N.C. -- The state bar association charged two former prosecutors with withholding evidence and lying to a judge in a 1998 murder trial resulting in a death sentence that was later thrown out.

NEW PORT RICHEY, Fla. - A 9-year-old girl accused of stealing a rabbit and $10 from a neighbor's home was arrested, handcuffed and questioned at a police station.

CRAWFORD, Texas (Reuters) - Under pressure from the 9/11 commission, the White House on Friday worked to declassify an intelligence memo that was used to inform President Bush on Aug. 6, 2001, that Osama bin Laden wanted to launch attacks inside the United States.

Four years ago, when the Justice Department deposed Al Gore in the Clinton fund-raising scandal, I poked fun at Gore's self-serving, hypocritical redefinitions of everyday words. Today, National Security Adviser Condi Rice resorted to similar tactics in her testimony before the 9/11 commission. Here's a glossary of her terms.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraqi insurgents fought U.S. troops at two mosques in Fallujah and held sway over all or part of three southern cities in the worst chaos and violence since Baghdad fell a year ago Friday. In an ominous turn, kidnappers seized 13 foreign hostages and threatened to burn three Japanese captives alive if Tokyo did not withdraw its troops.

The head of the US forces, Lieutenant-General Ricardo Sanchez, announcing the start of Operation Resolute Sword in Baghdad, said: 'Let there be no doubt, we will continue our attacks till the al-Sadr influence is eliminated.'

MSNBC - Condoleezza Rice statement: Troubling, yes. But they don't tell us when; they don't tell us where; they don't tell us who; and they don't tell us how."

More than 300 critically endangered species have no conservation protection in any part of their ranges, experts say.

Despite increases in the amount of protected land worldwide, many ecosystems fall outside this network of safe havens, scientists say in Nature.

This is because current protected areas do not represent enough of existing global biodiversity, the team claims.

They propose a shift in conservation planning to avoid species extinctions in coming decades.
...
They found the relationship between protected areas and patterns of biodiversity was uneven.

"Different countries need different levels of protection. Countries with many economic resources can afford that protection," Dr Rodrigues told BBC News Online.

"Most places where we've found these gaps are amongst the poorest countries in the world - poorest from an economic perspective, but richest in biodiversity."
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The authors claim the number of species covered by the current network in their paper may be an overestimate because they had to assume that protected areas are adequate for protecting all species and that species can be protected equally effectively in any part of their range.

Gustavo Fonseca, executive vice president for programs and science at Conservation International commented:

"We should focus specifically on those places with the greatest concentrations of threatened and endemic species."

Scientists have developed a device able to measure the weight of a single cell, and they intend to weigh a virus next.

Made at Cornell University, it is a small cantilever whose vibration depends upon tiny masses placed on it.

The mass of a single cell of the E coli bacterium, they say in the Journal of Applied Physics, is 665 femtograms.

A femtogram is one-thousandth of a picogram, which is one-thousandth of a nanogram, which is a billionth of a gram.

The scale of the researcher's work is straining the number of prefixes needed to describe the world of the very small.

They have moved beyond the prefixes "nano", "pico" and "femto" to "atto," and now they have "zepto" in their sights. Officially zepto means one sextillionth of something, or one prefixed by 21 zeros.

It was the smallest of prangs, but the minor traffic accident between a top-of-the-range BMW and a rickety farmer's tractor has prompted the Chinese authorities into drastic action to prevent a head-on collision between the top and bottom classes of its increasingly divided society.

'The BMW incident,' as it is now widely known, forced the authorities to hold a retrial and made the propaganda ministry slam the brakes on internet chat-rooms filled with public resentment.

This thoroughly modern Chinese tale of social inequality, dubious justice and appalling driving began innocuously one day last October when Liu Zhongxia, a peasant woman, and her husband Dai Yiquan were rattling through Harbin, in Heliongjiang province, in a tractor piled high with onions.

A few years ago they would have enjoyed the freedom of almost empty roads, but China's booming economy is increasing the traffic at the rate of more than 20% a year. In one of the many changes of direction prompted by oncoming cars, Mr Liu scratched the wing-mirror of a new BMW X5, prompting an altercation which has still to die down six months later.

The details of the road rage incident have become the stuff of myth, but according to the local media, the driver of the BMW, Su Xiuwen, hit Mrs Liu with her purse and screamed: 'How can you afford to scratch my car?'

The furious woman - the wife of a business tycoon - then got back in her car, slammed her foot on the accelerator and ran over Mrs Liu, killing her and injuring a dozen other bystanders.

Public anger at this display of petulance was only increased by the trial on December 20, when Mrs Su was cleared of manslaughter and given a suspended sentence. In a hearing that lasted only two hours, the court accepted her claim that she had accidentally put her car into the wrong gear.
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Not one witness turned up to testify, not even Mr Dai, who accepted an out-of-court settlement of 80,000 RMB (£6,000) - equivalent of eight years wages - for the death of his wife.

He told reporters he had had little choice. "I told police that she drove into the crowd on purpose," he said. "But no one dared stand up as a witness. I had to give up because I was helpless. I have no money, no power."
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Fearful that the BMW affair might become a cause celebre, the authorities ordered newspapers to play down or stop their coverage. The national propaganda department also instructed major chat-rooms to tone down the contributions they were receiving.

To placate opinion, Heilongjiang province ordered a retrial. But it was reported this week that the outcome was the same. With newspaper and website editors now under orders to dampen the emotions aroused by the affair, the verdict has been given scant coverage. But experts said it was unlikely to be the last China heard of such disturbances.[Nitpicker emphasis]

So now the president's war of choice has led to an occupation with no good options.
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In any event, the administration still shows scant desire to surrender its control of the growing chaos. Jeremy Greenstock, Britain's commissioner in Iraq, has just given up his post in reported frustration over his inability to affect any of Bremer's decisions. And rather than internationalize control, it's increasingly apparent that we've opted to privatize our force -- relying on private security guards to supplement our official force on the ground. The decision epitomizes much that's wrong with the Bush presidency -- in particular, its desire to evade responsibility and accountability for its actions. If the bodies of the security guards killed in Fallujah had not been mutilated, how many American voters would have noticed? One recent poll shows that near-plurality of Americans now favors our leaving Iraq. But precisely because this was not a war we had to fight, just up and leaving would be politically and morally duplicitous. We wrested control of Iraq when we did not have to, and leaving it to its own devices as sectarian violence grows worse would be a dismal end. The only unequivocally good policy option before the American people is to dump the president who got us into this mess, who had no trouble sending our young people to Iraq but who cannot steel himself to face the Sept. 11 commission alone.[Nitpicker emphasis]

A day after moving his News Corporation to the US, Rupert Murdoch got to work ingratiating himself
with the locals yesterday, telling George Bush he was on his way to an easy victory in this year's presidential election.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration has faced a steady exodus of counterterrorism officials, many disappointed by a preoccupation with Iraq they said undermined the U.S. fight against terrorism.

Former counterterrorism officials said at least half a dozen have left the White House Office for Combating Terrorism or related agencies in frustration in the 2 1/2 years since the attacks.

Some also left because they felt President Bush had sidelined his counterterrorism experts and paid almost exclusive heed to the vice president, the defense secretary and other Cabinet members in planning the "war on terror," former counterterrorism officials said.

"I'm kind of hoping for regime change," one official who quit told Reuters.
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The attrition among all levels of the Office for Combating Terrorism began shortly after the attacks and continued into this year. At least eight officials in the office -- which numbers a dozen people -- have left and been replaced since 9/11. Several of the officials were contacted by Reuters.[Nitpicker emphasis]

The wife of Enron's former finance chief pulled out of her plea bargain with prosecutors on Wednesday after a federal judge rejected a recommended prison term of five months, sending the case to trial.

Lea Fastow, a former Enron assistant treasurer, changed her plea to not guilty after U.S. District Judge David Hittner snubbed a deal the prosecution and defense had vigorously advocated.

As Lea Fastow stood before him, the judge said he saw no reason why she should not serve the 10 to 16 month term probation officials recommended in a pre-sentence report.
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It was history repeating itself between the judge and DeGeurin. In 2000, Hittner rejected a plea-bargained sentence of six months for a woman in a drug case and gave her nearly five years.

Two reporters were ordered Wednesday to erase their tape recordings of a speech by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia at a Mississippi high school.
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Scalia gave two speeches Wednesday in Hattiesburg, one at Presbyterian Christian High School and the other at William Carey College. The recording-device warning was made before the college speech.

In the latter years of the 19th century, Joseph Pulitzer stood out as the very embodiment of American journalism. Hungarian-born, an intense indomitable figure, Pulitzer was the most skillful of newspaper publishers, a passionate crusader against dishonest government, a fierce, hawk-like competitor who did not shrink from sensationalism in circulation struggles, and a visionary who richly endowed his profession. His innovative New York World and St. Louis Post-Dispatch reshaped newspaper journalism. Pulitzer was the first to call for the training of journalists at the university level in a school of journalism. And certainly, the lasting influence of the Pulitzer Prizes on journalism, literature, music, and drama is to be attributed to his visionary acumen. In writing his 1904 will, which made provision for the establishment of the Pulitzer Prizes as an incentive to excellence, Pulitzer specified solely four awards in journalism, four in letters and drama, one for education, and four traveling scholarships. In letters, prizes were to go to an American novel, an original American play performed in New York, a book on the history of the United States, an American biography, and a history of public service by the press. But, sensitive to the dynamic progression of his society Pulitzer made provision for broad changes in the system of awards. He established an overseer advisory board and willed it "power in its discretion to suspend or to change any subject or subjects, substituting, however, others in their places, if in the judgment of the board such suspension, changes, or substitutions shall be conducive to the public good or rendered advisable by public necessities, or by reason of change of time." He also empowered the board to withhold any award where entries fell below its standards of excellence. The assignment of power to the board was such that it could also overrule the recommendations for awards made by the juries subsequently set up in each of the categories. Since the inception of the prizes in 1917 the board, later renamed the Pulitzer Prize Board, has increased the number of awards to 21 and introduced poetry, music, and photography as subjects, while adhering to the spirit of the founder's will and its intent.[Nitpicker emphasis]

The White House has refused to provide the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks with a speech that national security adviser Condoleezza Rice was to have delivered on the night of the attacks touting missile defense as a priority rather than al-Qaida, sources close to the commission said Tuesday.

With Rice scheduled to publicly testify Thursday before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, the commission submitted a last-minute request for Rice's aborted Sept. 11 address, the sources told Reuters on condition of anonymity. But the White House has so far refused on the grounds that draft documents are confidential, the sources said.

BOB GRAHAM: Good morning and good afternoon and, Gerry, thank you very much for your kind introduction. I was saying I appreciate both your remembrance and your remarks.

I'm going to start at the outset this afternoon by saying that I will make some comments today that will not be well-received in the White House. I have observed the White House's reaction to comments that it does not well receive, and so in a matter of pre-emptive defense, I have a confession to make. When I was four years old, I was enrolled in the Winkin', Blinkin', and Nod Nursery School in Tallahassee, Florida. On a day in the spring of my enrollment in 1941, I kicked in a house made of blocks by some of the other students at Winkin', Blinkin', and Nod Nursery School. The director of the school told me, "Robert, we cannot have that behavior by the children at Winkin', Blinkin', and Nod. I am calling your mother and asking that she come and take you home, and that she not ever bring you back." Now, that's on the record, you can make whatever you wish of that confession.

Friends, this has been a painful week for our nation. The horrible tragedy of September 11 has been revisited, first in hearings by the [9/11] Commission and, second, by the revelations in the book ["Against All Enemies: Inside the White House's War on Terror--What Really Happened"] of the former White House counterterrorism director, Richard Clarke.

More painful than the memories which these events have resurrected, I believe is the growing realization that our leaders did not do everything that they could have done and should have done to protect Americans from a terrorist attack. The 9/11 Commission, for example, has reported that they endorse the recommendations of the Joint Congressional Inquiry [into the 9/11 terrorist attacks], which I co-chaired with my friend and colleague and fellow Floridian, Porter Goss. We found that failures of intelligence collection and analysis, compounded by a lack of information-sharing within the intelligence community and between the intelligence community and the law enforcement community, cost us the chance to detect and disrupt the plot of the 19 hijackers. In short, September 11 could have--indeed, should have--been prevented.

I share Richard Clarke's view that since September 11, President Bush and his key members of his administration have failed to keep their eye on the ball on the war on terrorism. Frankly, we had al Qaeda on the ropes in the spring of 2002. But rather than finishing the job and crushing the operational command structure of al Qaeda, we shifted our focus.

Let me share a personal story. [U.S.] Central Command, which has responsibility for our military actions in both Afghanistan and Iraq, is headquartered in Tampa, Florida, at MacDill Air Force Base. It has been my practice to periodically visit the Central Command, to receive a briefing as to what they are doing. I did that in February of 2002. After the formal briefing with PowerPoint [presentations] and all that goes with a military briefing, I was asked by one of the senior commanders of Central Command to go into his office. We did, the door was closed, and he turned to me, and he said, "Senator, we have stopped fighting the war on terror in Afghanistan. We are moving military and intelligence personnel and resources out of Afghanistan to get ready for a future war in Iraq." This is February of 2002. "Senator, what we are engaged in now is a manhunt not a war, and we are not trained to conduct a manhunt."

To draw a historical analogy, I think that what the Bush administration did, beginning as early as February of 2002, was to make a decision that we would fight a pre-emptive war against Mussolini and let Hitler run free. I agree with Richard Clarke, who concludes in his book that Iraq was a complete and unnecessary tangent. I have described [it] as a distraction.

Now, I don't mean to suggest, and I do not believe Richard Clarke means to suggest, that Saddam Hussein is anything other than a bad, evil person who did bad and evil things to his own people and his neighbors and would hoped to have done it more broadly. But the question was not a singular question about Saddam Hussein. It was, rather, a comparative question. Of all the evils in that neighborhood of the Middle East and Central Asia, which evil deserved to have our primary military attention?

As we have learned since the war in Iraq, our intelligence on Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction was deeply flawed, and my good friend and former colleague, Senator [Charles S.] Robb [D-Va.], is going to be at the front seat of trying to determine why that was--if it was the case and, if so, why. [Robb co-chairs a bipartisan commission established in February by President Bush to examine U.S. intelligence-gathering.]

There has never been a shred of evidence that Saddam Hussein's regime had any ties to al Qaeda, despite the suggestions from the president and other key administration officials that they were, in some way, married. And at his campaign kickoff in my state of Florida on last Saturday, March 20, the president again gave the American people the clear impression that Saddam Hussein was, in some reason, linked to 9/11. In fact, Iraq and al Qaeda represented opposite ends of Islamic thought: Iraq, a secular government based in Baghdad with the traditional ambitions of a nation-state; al Qaeda, a shadowy, extremist movement that relied on the protection of the Taliban in Afghanistan.

As Gerry said, I voted against the resolution to go to war in Iraq. Let me explain why I did it and what I think it says about the Bush administration. I did it because I thought the standard as to which of the many evils in the Middle East and Central Asia we should apply our military force against was a rather--[inaudible]--strategy and a simple one. Which of those evils had the greatest capability to kill Americans? Now, you can argue--maybe you would have--a different standard. That was my standard.

And then I thought that there were three factors that would help answer that question. Which of the evils in the region had the greatest capability to kill Americans, particularly, had the number of trained persons in the art and skills of terrorism to do so? There was no question as to who had the greatest capability, particularly in light of the fact that, as we now know, Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction available for immediate use. It was al Qaeda.

Second, who had the greatest will to use that capability? In the National Intelligence Estimate that the consensus of our intelligence agencies produced in September of 2002 [and], after some effort, was finally willing to release publicly, they made the collective judgment of the American intelligence community that Saddam Hussein was not a threat to the United States unless he was attacked. And so what did we do? We attacked him.

On the other hand, al Qaeda, without provocation, had just killed 3,000 Americans on September 11. But I think the most significant criterion is not just capability and will, but rather presence. Unless we were engaged in a war like we were in the Cold War, where the Soviet Union had massive missiles to deliver their weapons of mass destruction, it is difficult to attack the United States with weapons of mass destruction unless you have some capacity inside the United States to do so.
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Via The Poor Man

The White House will vet "line by line" the report of an independent commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks before it is publicly released, the commission chairman said on Sunday.
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The disclosures indicate that although the White House has made concessions to the panel, including allowing national security adviser Condoleezza Rice to testify publicly this week, it still retains significant influence over the process.[Nitpicker emphasis]

A German man was forced to invite the police to his wedding after they arrested him for drunk driving the day of his marriage and had to escort him to the registry office, authorities said Monday.

'The police escort also offered the bridal pair his most heartfelt congratulations,' said police from the northern city of Bremen in a statement.

Police arrested the inebriated 36-year-old after he crashed his car and failed to disguise that he had been drinking heavily. He told police he had been out on his stag night and was on the way to pick up wedding flowers for his bride.

An Iraqi defector nicknamed Curveball who wrongly claimed that Saddam Hussein had mobile chemical weapons factories was last night at the centre of a bitter row between the CIA and Germany's intelligence agency.

German officials said that they had warned American colleagues well before the Iraq war that Curveball's information was not credible - but the warning was ignored.

It was the Iraqi defector's testimony that led the Bush administration to claim that Saddam had built a fleet of trucks and railway wagons to produce anthrax and other deadly germs.

In his presentation to the UN security council in February last year, the US secretary of state, Colin Powell, explicitly used Curveball's now discredited claims as justification for war. The Iraqis were assembling 'mobile production facilities for biological agents', Mr Powell said, adding that his information came from 'a solid source'.

These 'killer caravans' allowed Saddam to produce anthrax 'on demand', it was claimed. US officials never had direct access to the defector, and have subsequently claimed that the Germans misled them.

Yesterday, however, German agents told Die Zeit newspaper that they had warned the Bush administration long before last year that there were 'problems' with Curveball's account. 'We gave a clear credibility assessment. On our side at least, there were no tricks before Colin Powell's presentation,' one source told the newspaper.

In the botanical world, orchids are famed not only for their great beauty, but also for their powers of deceit, well established as the liars and cheats of the plant kingdom, making false promises of food, drink and even sex to the bees and other pollinators flying by.

Many orchids have a sweetly alluring fragrance but not a drop of the expected nectar. Others look and smell just like female bees, attracting male bees that try hopelessly to mate with the blossom.

Yet for more than a century, scientists have been unable to figure out why these species have evolved to be so unpleasant and unwelcoming to pollinators.

Now scientists report that the reason orchids treat their insect visitors so shabbily is that they want them to fly away.

A team from South Africa and Sweden says that once an insect visits an orchid flower and picks up a packet of pollen, the ideal outcome from an orchid's point of view is that the insect flies away and fertilizes other plants.

If the bee hangs about, visiting other flowers on the same plant, it will fertilize the plant with its own pollen, producing defective, inbred seeds that are unlikely to sprout into healthy offspring.

The study found that the amount of income growth devoured by corporate profits in this recovery is 'historically unprecedented,' as is the 'low share ... accruing to the nation's workers in the form of labor compensation.'

I have to laugh when I hear conservatives complaining about class warfare. They know this terrain better than anyone. They launched the war. They're waging it. And they're winning it.[Nitpicker emphasis]