from here

Chinese troops have been seen on the streets of Zimbabwe’s third largest city, Mutare, according to local witnesses. They were seen patrolling with Zimbabwean soldiers before and during Tuesday’s ill-fated general strike called by the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).Earlier, 10 Chinese soldiers armed with pistols checked in at the city’s Holiday Inn along with 70 Zimbabwean troops.

One eyewitness, who asked not to be named, said: “We’ve never seen Chinese soldiers in full regalia on our streets before. The entire delegation took 80 rooms from the hotel, 10 for the Chinese and 70 for Zimbabwean soldiers.”

This should be a veeeery interesting century. Hell, the remainder of this decade should be plenty entertaining. Link

“A German schoolboy, Nico Marquardt, has revised NASA’s figures for the chances that the Apophis asteroid will hit earth. Apparently if the asteroid hits a satellite in 2029, its path could be diverted enough to cause it to collide with Earth on the next orbit, in 2036. NASA had calculated the chances as 1 in 45,000 but the 13-year-old, in his science project, made it 1 in 450. NASA agreed.”

Nice going, Small German Kid. You couldn’t just build a baking soda volcano like everybody else, could you? Just had to go and destroy the Earth. Link

Update: NASA’s expert on near-earth-objects is now saying otherwise:

“We have not corresponded with this young man and this story is absurd, a hoax or both. During its 2029 Earth close approach, Apophis will approach the Earth to about 38,900 km, well inside the geosynchronous distance at 42,240 km. However, the asteroid will cross the equatorial belt at a distance of 51,000 km - well outside the geosynchronous distance. Since the uncertainty on Apophis’ position during the Earth close approach is about 1500 km, Apophis cannot approach an Earth satellite. Apophis will not cross the moon’s orbital plane at the Moon’s orbital distance so it cannot approach the moon either.”

I guess we’ll see, come 2036. Place yer bets, folks!

(via /.)

All of this is pretty strange. Of course, there are some plausible explanations: could an elite army of loyal rodents be the natural choice against the numerous threats issued by elephants against the Kremlin? Will the mice play a role in testing toxic and dangerous chemicals? Or are they there simply to feed the falcons, which are kept in the Kremlin to scare off crows?”

Link

from the highly successful FAIL Blog

Norway is concerned that its national animal, the moose, is harming the climate by emitting an estimated 2,100 kilos of carbon dioxide a year through its belching and farting.Norwegian newspapers, citing research from Norway’s technical university, said a motorist would have to drive 13,000 kilometers in a car to emit as much CO2 as a moose does in a year.

Link

(Thanks, The Wife!)

The Warehouse, a New Zealand retailer, issued a recall at the weekend for children’s pyjamas made in China after two children were burned when their flannelette nightclothes caught fire.The New Zealand investigation is the first time that the safety of Chinese clothes has been called into question; concerns have been raised over a series of Chinese products in recent months, including toys, food and toothpaste. Last week, Mattel said it was recalling 18.2m toys globally because of hazards such as the use of lead paint.

If this keeps up, our trade deficit with China might be fixing itself shortly. Link

The overall problems are structural, and include the greatly varying ratios between corporate debt loads and core earnings, which have grown substantially from four to six times over the past year because there are fewer legal clauses to protect investors from loss. They also keep companies from going bankrupt when they should. As long as interest rates have been low, leveraged loans. With these loans it is possible to buy a company with a very small have been the solution. Because of hedge funds and other financial instruments, there is now a market for incompetent and debt-ridden firms. When the Ford Motor Company announced last month that it was losing over $7bn annually, its bonds actually shot up 20%. The rules once associated with capitalism, such as probity and profit, no longer hold.

Call me old-fashioned, but I think this just goes to show what happens when you make money without adding value.

Link

(accolades and kudos to monochrom)

These graphs were created by NASA’s Reto Ruedy and James Hansen (who shot to fame when he accused the administration of trying to censor his views on climate change). Hansen refused to provide McKintyre with the algorithm used to generate graph data, so McKintyre reverse-engineered it. The result appeared to be a Y2K bug in the handling of the raw data.McKintyre notified the pair of the bug; Ruedy replied and acknowledged the problem as an “oversight” that would be fixed in the next data refresh.

NASA has now silently released corrected figures, and the changes are truly astounding. The warmest year on record is now 1934. 1998 (long trumpeted by the media as record-breaking) moves to second place. 1921 takes third. In fact, 5 of the 10 warmest years on record now all occur before World War II.

Huh. Link