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Honolulu news conference today releases "secret truths" about Senator Obama. Honolulu News Conference: Wednesday October 22 (#1 of 3 releases). A Honolulu news conference will disclose startling new details about the "secret truths" of Senator Barack Obama. The presidential campaign is sure to be impacted. Is the release of these facts the real reason Obama has suspended his campaign and is heading home to Hawaii?

NEW YORK, NY - The cigar made famous during Ken Starr's investigation of former President Clinton's relationship with intern Monica Lewinsky was sold on eBay yesterday for $1.2 million. The cigar - rumored to have been lost since 1998 - was posted on eBay by longtime Hillary Clinton supporter Lanny Davis, stirring speculation that the Clinton campaign is quietly raising funds for a comeback at the Democratic Convention...

SOMEWHERE IN BETWEEN DURHAM AND ANOTHER CITY IN NORTH CAROLINA — Sen. Barack Obama told a voter this afternoon to consider trustworthiness when going to the polls tomorrow. "I think the majority of people do find me trustworthy, more than they do the other candidate, and we can't solve problems if people don't think that their leaders are telling them the truth. If they think their leaders are just saying whatever it is that helps them get to the next election, you can never ask them for sacrifice, because they are thinking I don't want to be played for a...

A shop has sacked its Santa Claus for saying Ho-ho-ho. John Oakes, 70, got his marching orders after the store decreed that women might be offended because 'ho' is American slang for a whore. Instead, he was supposed to say Ha-ha-ha. "They're are trying to kill the spirit of Christmas," said Mr Oakes, who has been a Santa for ten years. \ He was also found guilty of singing Jingle Bells at the Myer department store in Cairns, Northern Australia. He said: "The manager told me my services were no longer required. "When I asked her why, she replied, 'You...

Astronomers have yet to find an Earth-size planet beyond our solar system, but that hasn't stopped them from modeling what these worlds might look like. A new catalog of 14 types of such planets, some fantastical, could help planet hunters spot what has until now remained fictional.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Akz2Ou0HbYs

Converts to Islam are now under the microscope. Middle England is in a moral panic at the news that a white middle-class boy from High Wycombe, the son of a Conservative party constituency worker, has been arrested in connection with what might have been our own 9/11. The explanations reached for 7/7, about social unrest or cultural clashes between Muslim elders and youth, clearly don’t apply. In the past, the temptation might have been to explain away conversion to Islam as a manifestation of social or personal discontent: an escape from personal problems, maybe, a decision to embrace the latest...

NEW YORK -- The New York Times plans to shrink the size of its pages in 2008, making them one-and-a-half inches narrower, the newspaper said in its Tuesday edition. The company, which publishes the Boston Globe and International Herald Tribune in addition to its flagship paper, also reported that its earnings climbed 1% in the second quarter from a year earlier amid a charge related to previously announced job cuts. Overall revenue increased 1.6%, while revenue from the recently acquired About.com Web site continued to skyrocket, shooting up 63% from a year earlier. The Times expects the changes it announced...

MAHWAH -- Two white watering cans and a yellow broom dangle above the porch of a stone and shingle house perched atop North Hillside Avenue. Just below, empty flower pots and plastic chairs and tables clutter the entryway. "No trespassing" and "Beware of dog" signs line the sloping property. The more-than-100-year-old house has been home to Samantha Moor for 10 years. Its sloppy condition is the reason she nearly spent the night in jail. Moor, in her late 40s, was arrested Tuesday morning and sent to the Bergen County Jail for failing to pay $4,921 in fines issued by Mahwah...

FEDS VOW TO GET TOUGH ON ILLEGALS Tue Aug 23 2005 17:15:30 ET Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, acknowledging public frustration over illegal immigration, said Tuesday that the federal government's detention and deportation system must be fundamentally restructured. "We have decided to stand back and take a look at how we address the problem and solve it once and for all," Chertoff said during a breakfast meeting with reporters. The NEW YORK TIMES is planning a front page placement for the Chertoff comments on Wednesday, newsroom sources tell the DRUDGE REPORT. The unusually blunt assessment by the nation's top immigration...

Graham Cairns-Smith is well known for a bizarre theory that the first living organisms were clay minerals of the origin of life. But not so well known is that he is driven to such outlandish ideas by the enormous chemical difficulties of mainstream theories of chemical evolution, such as the RNA World (see also The RNA World: A Critique): The implausibility of prevital nucleic acid If it is hard to imagine polypeptides or polysaccharides in primordial waters it is harder still to imagine polynucleotides. But so powerful has been the effect of Miller's experiment on the scientific imagination that to...

SARASOTA -- A Sarasota woman who served as a "human shield" during the war in Iraq faces thousands of dollars in civil penalties. According to a letter dated March 20 from the federal Department of the Treasury, Faith Fippinger broke the law by crossing the Iraqi border -- a violation of U.S. sanctions that prohibit American citizens from engaging in "virtually all direct or indirect commercial, financial or trade transactions with Iraq." Fippinger, who returned home on May 4, learned of the letter from her brother, who kept track of her mail while she was overseas. Once she arrived in...