Sunday, 10-8-06: Prosecutors in Italy have completed their investigation, and are preparing to ask for more than 2 dozen American CIA agents in order to put them on trial. The CIA kinapped a man off the streets of Milan in 2003 and took him to Egypt to be tortured. In late September Congress passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006. It allows government agents to seize and jail US citizens without charges, trial, proof of wrong doing or appeal. It limits or bans most appeals, including the right to know why you're imprisoned. It prohibits prosecution of government agents for any abuses of prisoners before December 31, 2005. It permits statements obtained through torture. In short, all the things the Supreme Court said were illegal, Congress has now made legal. It will take a year or two for these Consitutional Amendments to make their way back to the Supreme Court, and we'll see what happens then. Perhaps by then Bush will be out of office. Perhaps his brother will be president.... Monday, 10-9-06: In local news, a man got a letter from the Social Security Administration saying, "Our records show that Robert Charlan is deceased and was due Social Security payments at the time of his death." he went to his local office, and they told him the computer said he was dead. They gave him a $500 emergency check to tide him over till they get the glitch fixed. Tuesday, 10-10: A few native villages in Alaska are refusing free oil from Venezuala. Even though the homes are mostly lightly insulated plywood, and the people are desperately poor (with 25% unemployment), and heating oil prices are among the highest in the nation, (at least $300 a month per household). Their grounds for refusing are that no foreigner has the right to call their president "the devil." Scores of villages, on the other hand, say they have no choice but to accept. Our police commissioner estimates that 60% or more of the homeless in Portland are mentally ill or addicted. Wednesday, 10-11-06: The Confederated Tribes of the Colville have asked for federal help to deal with a suicide rate that's 20 times the national average. Nationally, it's one in 10,000 per year. The overall rate for Native Americans is four times that. The feds sent a crisis response team. A ban on child labor in India took effect yesterday. It bans hiring children younger than 14. Previous bans have had little effect. 13 million children work in India, many of them in hazardous industries such as glass-making. Activisits criticize the law for not having a safety net for children put out of work, and for not addressing the root cause of poverty. A study finds that seals shiver in cold air but not in cold water. When diving, it lets its body temperature drop in order to lengthen the dive time. Another study finds that hatchery bred fish have almost no hope of reproducing out in the wild. They lose the instincts and other traits that let wild fish thrive. The longer fish spend in hatcheries, the poorer they do in the wild. They lose 20% of their fitness each generation. A new strategy makes fish that do as well as wild ones. It consists of taking eggs from local wild fish, and raising the young in protection but turning them loose before they morph into creatures of captivity. More and more hatcheries are switching to the new strategy. In local news, one of the women who was asked to show her tattoos to a Multnomah County deputy filed a lawsuit yesterday in state court. Aviv Schwartz is seeking $310,000 in damages. Deputy Green remains on paid leave. He made her pull down her pants to show him a tattoo on her "lower abdomen." This is the second lawsuit against Green. The first one was settled for $6000 in January. Green made that woman take her bra off. Thursday, 10-12-06: Derrick Foxworth, one of our former police chiefs, is suing the city for more than a million dollars in damages. He currently works as a commander, and is due to retire in 2008. He says he was unfairly demoted and reprimanded because he was a black man having an affair with a white woman. He notes that he was replaced as chief by a white woman. Last June Foxworth was demoted for "serious lapses in judgement" (the quote is from our police commissioner) for having sent dozens of sexually explicit emails to his girlfriend. In them he also urged her to remain silent about their relationship, and divulged sensitive police matters. For the last 20 years homelessness in America has been increasing, but recently there's a been a decrease. 10-year plans with a different approach are what's done it. The new strategy is to promptly supply a chronically homeless person with stable housing and support services. This approach was first tried in England four and half years ago, and in that time they've reduced homelessness 75%. So the Bush Administration is copying it here. Friday, 10-13-06: Scientists have discovered a new species of mouse. It has a large head and lives in a mountainous area of Cyprus. It colonized Cyprus thousands of years before humans arrived, and it survived competition from the European house mouse that arrived with them.