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A New Zealand man got the fright of his life when a runaway SUV crashed into his house and knocked him off the toilet, a newspaper reported Friday. The vehicle had been parked with its emergency brake only half on, and rolled backward down a 32 foot bank into the house Thursday in the southern city of Christchurch, "The Press" newspaper reported. Police said a building contractor working next door had parked the vehicle at the top of the bank minutes earlier. "He came back to his vehicle and found it next door, basically," Christchurch police Sgt. Kim Reid was...

An explosion has been reported in central Stockholm. Police confirmed on Sunday morning that a bomb squad was at the scene and that no casualties had been reported. Neighbours reported to police early on Sunday morning that a large explosion had rocked the area around Surbrunnsgatan 4 in central Stockholm. Twenty windows were blown out as result of the blast. According to Eva Nilsson at Stockholm police something exploded under a parked car. "To the naked eye the car is in principle intact." A large area was cordoned off by police after the explosion, and Surbrunnsgatan was closed off between...

BAGHDAD — The Ministry of Interior (MOI) received nine armored Toyota Land Cruiser SUVs this week as part of its investment in the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program. The total value of the shipment was valued in excess of $1.082 Million for the nine vehicles. The vehicles were refitted with armor plating and other custom features in Dubai. The vehicles will be used by the Iraqi Police and other directorates in the MOI. “We have waited for the arrival of these vehicles for a long time,” said Col Ishmel of the MOI. “These vehicles are very important to us in...

Courts: The often-loopy 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is now giving orders to the White House. A three-judge panel ruled Thursday that federal fuel-economy standards for light trucks and SUVs must be tougher.The unanimous decision was made in favor of the 11 states, the cities of New York and Washington, and various environmental groups that sued the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration over fuel-mileage standards issued last year. Using the save-the-planet argument, the plaintiffs claimed corporate average fuel economy requirements should be higher. They dislike the federally mandated 1.5-miles-per-gallon increase to 24 miles per gallon for 2008 through 2011...

San Francisco (AP) -- A federal appeals court on Thursday threw out planned federal fuel economy standards for many sport-utility vehicles, minivans and pickup trucks, ruling that the Bush administration failed to address why those so-called "light trucks" are allowed to pollute more than cars. The 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals also ruled that the standards, which were to go into effect next year, didn't properly assess the risk to the environment and failed to include heavier trucks. "The ruling does two potentially very big things," said Brian Nowicki of the Center for Biological Diversity, which led the assault...

CLIVE, Iowa - Republican Fred Thompson launched a low-key pitch to evangelical activists, a constituency his strategists said remains available despite months of intense courting by his rivals for the GOP presidential nomination in the state's leadoff precinct caucuses. "This is his natural constituency," said strategist Rich Galen, who pointed to some polls ranking Thompson as high as second in Iowa, though he was opening only his second campaign visit through the state since he joined the race earlier in the month. Thompson mingled with activists at the annual dinner of the Iowa Christian Alliance, patiently shaking hands with most...

CBS) LOS ANGELES A 70-year-old Tarzana man riding a bicycle Wednesday was struck and killed by an SUV, authorities said. Joseph Miller was riding in the 3500 block of Reseda Boulevard shortly before 9 a.m. when he was struck by an SUV driven by a woman who was uninjured, according to city fire official Brian Humphrey and Capt. Ed Winter of the county coroner's office. The circumstances of the death were under investigation.

China's Brilliance BS6 is a recent entry into the European market, positioned as a premium-style import sedan at a budget price. Well, after seeing the videos of the car undergoing crash testing using Euro NCAP guidelines at the ADAC (Germany's AAA, essentially) test center, one thing's certain: buyers get what they pay for. The BS6, as currently constructed, appears to a complete piece of crap. The horrifying 40 mph offset frontal crash test video shows damage that can be described as catastrophic at best. The A-pillar collapses and folds up like a cheap suitcase, forcing the driver's door to pop...

Leadership: The new U.N. secretary general invokes a Twinkie defense, excusing Islamofascist genocide in Darfur by blaming it on global warming. Forget the Chinese weapons. According to Ban Ki-moon, your SUV is responsible.

If California wants to achieve its goal of cutting greenhouse-gas emissions 25 percent by 2020 to fight global warming, it must find a way to cut down the biggest source of those pollutants: cars, trucks and other motor vehicles. Even though transportation contributes 41 percent of greenhouse gases, our society is too geographically dispersed and mobile to realistically expect that we can dramatically reduce the number of miles we drive, ride and fly. So that means our vehicles need to become far more fuel-efficient. The less gasoline per mile that a car uses, the less heat-trapping carbon dioxide it spews...

A Vallejo woman reportedly suffered minor injuries Friday when her car was rear-ended by an SUV driven by a state senator talking on a cell phone while driving through Solano County. State Sen. Carole Migden, D-San Francisco, was driving her new state-issued 2007 Toyota Highlander Hybrid SUV at 10:40 a.m. on eastbound Highway 12 at Beck Avenue when she rear-ended Ellen Butawan, 31, of Vallejo, California Highway Patrol Officer Marvin Williford said. Butawan's 2005 Honda sedan was slowing behind a 2003 GMC Savana van that had stopped at a red light, Williford said. The impact forced Butawan's car into the...

Don't you dare call Mika Brzezinski a mere newsreader. Beyond simply enunciating words off the teleprompter, the MSNBC host doesn't hesitate to share her [left-leaning] views with viewers, too. Take a segment that aired at 3:35 pm EDT today on the topic of gasoline prices. Introducing the discussion, Mika expressed her shock and outrage that sales of SUVs have recently risen despite relatively high gas prices. Pouted Mika: "what's wrong with these people? Why do they need them?" Mika's guest was Tyson Slocum of the liberal Public Citizen group, which is headed by Joan Claybrook, a former Carter administration...

So that the sun would rise and the rain fall, the Mexica and Maya peoples of Meso-America once cut out countless living hearts on stone altars or tossed maidens down wells. Their priesthoods convinced them that the gods who controlled natural forces were propitiated through blood sacrifice. Most ancient cultures, if only symbolically, practiced something of the same. A belief in or impulse to sacrifice seems inherent in the human race. This may be Darwinian: Without parental sacrifices children would not thrive, nor without the blood of warriors could the tribe survive. Some concept of sacrifice is at the core...

Mars Global Surveyor MOC Observes Changes in the South Polar Cap: Evidence for Recent Climate Change on Mars [snip] New MGS Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) images have provided a startling observation: The residual martian south polar cap is changing. The fact that it is changing suggests that Mars may have major, global climate changes that are occurring on the same time scales as Earth's most recent climate shifts, including the last Ice Age. MOC images of the south polar cap taken in 1999 were compared with images of the same locations taken in 2001, and it was discovered that pits...

Caption: IU Bloomington geochemist Simon Brassell (right), Penn State sedimentologist Michael Arthur (middle), and Tohoku Univ. sedimentologist Harumasa Kano (left) inspect an ancient shale aboard the JOIDES Resolution research vessel. BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Ancient rocks from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean suggest dramatic climate changes during the dinosaur-dominated Mesozoic Era, a time once thought to have been monotonously hot and humid. In this month's Geology, scientists from Indiana University Bloomington and the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research present new evidence that ocean surface temperatures varied as much as 6 degrees Celsius (about 11 degrees Fahrenheit) during the...

As many as 60,000 people a year die from too much sun, mostly from malignant skin cancer, the World Health Organization reported...As many as 60,000 people a year die from too much sun, mostly from malignant skin cancer, the World Health Organization reported on Wednesday. It found that 48,000 deaths every year are caused by malignant melanomas, and 12,000 by other kinds of skin cancer. About 90 percent of such cancers are caused by ultraviolet light from the sun. Radiation from the sun also causes often serious sunburn, skin aging, eye cataracts, pterygium -- a fleshy growth on the surface...

A treasure trove of scientific data is revealing detailed information about conditions of subtropical warmth at the North Pole about 55 million years ago while also providing a window into the future, when greenhouse gases are expected to reach the same levels that caused Earth's ancient heat wave. Researchers aboard a fleet of icebreakers collected samples by drilling into the floor of the Arctic Ocean during a 2004 expedition, and scientific findings will be published for the first time in several papers to appear Thursday (June 1) in Nature magazine. "This project was a technological feat, and all of...

WASHINGTON - Scientists have found what might have been the ideal ancient vacation hotspot with a 74-degree Fahrenheit average temperature, alligator ancestors and palm trees. It's smack in the middle of the Arctic. First-of-its-kind core samples dug up from deep beneath the Arctic Ocean floor show that 55 million years ago an area near the North Pole was practically a subtropical paradise, three new studies show. The scientists say their findings are a glimpse backward into a much warmer-than-thought polar region heated by run-amok greenhouse gases that came about naturally. Skeptics of man-made causes of global warming have nothing to...

Some organization, the Consumer Federation of America, has has come up with an amazingly stupid idea on how to combat high energy usage. They want to ban advertising of gas-guzzling SUVs on television [pdf]. They have other brilliant ideas, such as an SUV buyback program. Just who would buy them back? Well, I would suppose this gaggle of idiots would propose that either the government (which means the taxpayers) or the automakers buy them back. Either way the cost is passed down to individuals; either taxpayers or shareholders. They also want a federal gas tax that would stabilize, as they...

****It's not just Julia Roberts----John Kerry's entourage consisted of a bunch of SUVs................and not only have the Kennedys refused to build wind-powered systems on Nantucket Sound; they own two major oil-producing companies here in America. If the liberals want to whine about "the oil-rich making money off of the backs of the poor" .....one of President Bush's friends in the big-oil business is the Kennedy family....often claiming to champion the very poor that they are robbing. onroe Township, N.J. ***** The problem I have with the environmental movement is its opposition to industrial progress. Sen. Ted Kennedy is a waste...

Seeing Demonic Grins, Glaring Eyes? Auto Makers Add Edge to Car 'Faces'; Say Goodbye to the Wide-Eyed Neon Kirk Perry wanted a vehicle that would haul his family and tow a bass boat. He discovered an SUV with all that plus another feature he likes -- a really mean expression. "I like the wide, snarling look," the 50-year-old small-business owner in Lake Owassa, N.J., says of the Audi Q7, which he plans to buy when it comes out this spring. "It reminds me of the movie 'The Mummy' -- when the monster comes out of the ground and starts swallowing...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. Construction work will begin on the Palm Monorail at The Palm Jumeirah following a joint ground-breaking ceremony held by Nakheel and Japanese contractors the Marubeni Corporation. The ceremony, held at the site of Atlantis, The Palm, was attended by His Highness Sheikh Hasher Bin Maktoum Al Maktoum; Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem, Executive Chairman, Nakheel; His Excellency Hajime Tsujimoto, Ambassador of Japan; and Shigeki Kuwahara, Executive Deputy President, Marubeni Corporation. The Palm Monorail, which will take three years to complete, will serve as an efficient transit system between the Gateway Station at...

A JIHADIST IN NORTH CAROLINA By Michelle Malkin   ·   March 03, 2006 08:29 PM Mohammed Reza Taheriazar, lone jihadist New details from ABC 11 in Raleigh, N.C., about the Muslim man who plowed into students on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus today: The driver of an SUV that plowed into a group of pedestrians at UNC-Chapel Hill on Friday told police it was retribution for the treatment of Muslims around the world, according to ABC News. It happened around noon Friday in front of Lenoir Hall on the campus, in a common area known as the Pit. Paramedics took six people...

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. -- Authorities say 23-year-old Mohammed Reza Taheriazar drove a silver Jeep Grand Cherokee drove into The Pit at the UNC-Chapel Hill campus around noon Friday, injuring five students and a visiting scholar.

Early Americans faced rapid late Pleistocene climate change and chaotic environments The environment encountered when the first people emigrated into the New World was variable and ever-changing, according to a Penn State geologist. "The New World was not a nice quiet place when humans came," says Dr. Russell Graham, associate professor of geology and director of the Earth & Mineral Sciences Museum. Archaeologists agree that by 11,000 years ago, people were spread across North and South America, but evidence is building for an earlier entry into the New World, a date that would put human population of North and South...

<p>You can tell a lot about a person by what he or she carries around in the back of the pickup truck during the eight months it's not summer in Alaska.</p> <p>The battered bed of my 1995 Ford 150 contains essential survival gear, in addition to the usual assortment of Alaskan accouterments...</p>

Human activities are releasing greenhouse gases more than 30 times faster than the rate of emissions that triggered a period of extreme global warming in the Earth's past, according to an expert on ancient climates. "The emissions that caused this past episode of global warming probably lasted 10,000 years. By burning fossil fuels, we are likely to emit the same amount over the next three centuries," said James Zachos, professor of Earth sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Zachos will present his findings this week at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science...

VIENNA, Austria – Vienna's subway tracks cracked, German authorities shut a key canal to ships after it iced up, and a zoo moved its penguins indoors Tuesday as a deadly deep freeze tightened its arctic grip on much of Europe. The killer cold wave, which has been blamed for more than 50 deaths in Russia, claimed at least 13 lives in the past five days in the former Soviet republic of Moldova, where authorities said another 30 people – many of them homeless – were hospitalized with hypothermia. Romanian authorities reported 15 deaths in the past few days, five of...

High expectations for U.S. automakers' new models... GM, its stock price at its lowest level in a generation, the sales pitch that it makes in the coming days will be fraught with risk and high expectations. After the shock of last year's record-high gas prices, the world's biggest automaker was forced to retool its product lineup of trucks and SUVs, belatedly recognizing that many consumers are leaning toward smaller vehicles. With its stock in the tank and its sales showing no sign of turning around, GM will try to breathe life into the ailing SUV segment with its hotly-anticipated GMT900...

An extraordinary burst of global warming that occurred around 55 million years ago dramatically reversed Earth's pattern of ocean currents, a finding that strengthens modern-day concern about climate change, a study says. The big event, the Palaeocene/Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), saw the planet's surface temperature rise by between five and eight degrees C (nine and 16.2 F) in a very short time, unleashing climate shifts that endured tens of thousands of years. ...

<p>Sunspots have been more common in the past seven decades than at any time in the last 8,000 years, according to a new historic reconstruction of solar activity.</p> <p>Many researchers have tried to link sunspot activity to climate change, but the new results cannot be used to explain global warming, according to the scientists who did the study.</p>

Think the debate over Tookie Williams ended with his execution? Guess again. Issuing a public challenge, The Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable’s Earl Ofari Hutchinson and Jasmyne Cannick have accused KFI's John and Ken of racism. They insist proof is found in the pair's supposed reluctance to insist a white man on death row be quickly put to death: The Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable’s Earl Ofari Hutchinson and Jasmyne Cannick have issued a public challenge to controversial radio hosts John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou of the John and Ken Show of AM 640 KFI (Los Angeles) to prove that...

CONCORD, N.H. --Arnie Arnesen's radio show is going off the air at the end of the year, and the outspoken, left-of-center host cites her rants against auto advertisers as one reason. "I have started calling SUVs FU-vs, because it's not acceptable anymore that 90 percent of people who own them don't need them," she said. She added, "Here's the problem: If the bread-and-butter of small radio stations is car businesses, who's going to buy me?" Jeff Shapiro, WTPL station owner, said Arnesen's program had become a hard-sell to businesses. "Advertisers perceived that it was maybe a little too strong politically...

- Astrophysicists are scratching their heads about what's happening on the sun and in our solar system. Why has this so-called "Solar Minimum" been so active? It should be quiet now with very few sunspots because this is supposed to be the low point of the Sun's 11-year-sunspot cycle. But this week, there was a sunspot called 822 that's 87,000 miles across - the size of the planet Jupiter! Could it erupt with more powerful X-flares as has happened the past few months. Big flares threaten all the broadcast, global positioning and military satellites that now orbit our planet. As...

Week of Nov. 5, 2005; Vol. 168, No. 19 , p. 294 Volcanic Suppression: Major eruptions can reduce sea level Sid Perkins Large volcanic eruptions can temporarily cool Earth's climate and, a team of scientists now suggests, lower sea level worldwide. BLOWING ITS TOP. Ocean cooling following the June 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines caused sea level worldwide to temporarily drop about 5 millimeters. D. Harlow/U.S. Geological Survey The tiny particles of broken rock and droplets of condensed gases that a volcano ejects high into the atmosphere reflect sunlight into space. So, after an eruption, there's less...

Venus Express set for liftoff Venus Express, the European Space Agency's first mission to explore Earth's closest neighbour, will be launched next Wednesday from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The ESA gave the prospective launch time as 0443 GMT. The 1.27-tonne unmanned spacecraft, which will be taken aloft by a Russian-made Soyuz-Fregat rocket, is expected to arrive at Venus on April 6. Venus Express, equipped with seven instruments, is intended to map the Venusian surface and weather system, looking at temperature variation, cloud formations, wind speeds and gas composition. Its main goal is to help understand why Venus fell prey...

LOS ANGELES -- The climate on Mars is showing a warming trend and recent images have shown the first evidence of seismic activity on Earth's neighbor planet, scientists said today. New gullies that did not exist three years ago have been pictured on a Mars sand dune -- just another of what scientists say are surprising discoveries found by cameras aboard the 8-year-old Mars Global Surveyor that are changing notions about the climate and formation of Mars. "To see new gullies and other changes in Mars surface features on a time span of a few years presents us with a...

The prosecutors in Michael Jackson's child molestation and conspiracy trial apparently feel they've already won their case. On Wednesday night, the whole lot of them — DA Tom Sneddon, Ron Zonen, Gordon Auchincloss, their wives and families — all celebrated at the Hitching Post restaurant in Casmalia. The Hitching Post, cousin of the Buellton restaurant featured in the movie "Sideways," is considered the best restaurant in the greater Santa Maria area. Sneddon was so happy that he actually embraced celebrity crime reporter Aphrodite Jones. She told me he was in a jubilant mood, and the most outgoing of all the...

CLIMATE change researchers have detected the first signs of a slowdown in the Gulf Stream — the mighty ocean current that keeps Britain and Europe from freezing. They have found that one of the “engines” driving the Gulf Stream — the sinking of supercooled water in the Greenland Sea — has weakened to less than a quarter of its former strength. The weakening, apparently caused by global warming, could herald big changes in the current over the next few years or decades. Paradoxically, it could lead to Britain and northwestern and Europe undergoing a sharp drop in temperatures. Such a...

Listen up. This is very important. The global warming fanatics have fingered rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), a so-called greenhouse gas alleged to be in the process of shoving the planet into a global microwave and raising sea levels to the point where the world's coastal regions will be submerged. They blame the rise of CO2, now about 370 parts per million and rapidly climbing, on us evil humans for using fossil fuels, driving SUVs and barbecuing frankfurters on our backyard grills. They ignore the proven fact that over millions of years, every time CO2 levels have risen...

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) - Driving a super-sized sport utility vehicle on Maryland roads would cost $750 more a year under a measure being considered by state lawmakers. Delegate Bill Bronrott is promoting the registration renewal surcharge for owners of SUVs that weigh more than 6,000 pounds. "This bill is ... about the largest, heaviest passenger vehicles that are the least fuel efficient and the most toxic to our air, land and water," the Democrat told a House committee hearing Tuesday. SUVs covered by the legislation include the Hummer H2, Cadillac Escalade ESV, Lincoln Navigator and the GMC Yukon XL. "They...

America's state attorneys general were getting in touch with their wacky side this week. That is, assuming the comedy of their new campaign for SUV safety is, er, intentional. It's certainly one of the most bizarre public-safety efforts ever. The AGs of Connecticut, Florida, Iowa and Vermont helped launch the $30 million ad campaign at the Central Park Zoo on Monday — and its key feature debuted on the Today Show next to a befuddled Katie Couric. "Esuvee," a truck-faced furry monster, is somehow supposed to scare teenage drivers about the dangers of SUVs. "The yearlong national consumer education campaign...

TOLEDO -- Consumers at the 2005 Toledo Auto Show are shopping for more than the latest vehicle trends. Locally, gasoline prices flirted with the $2.00 per gallon mark this week. How much higher would prices have to go before vehicle buyers shied away from hot selling SUV's and full-size pickup trucks? According to Perrysburg resident Heidi Decker, $2.50 to $2.75 per gallon. Decker checked out a large Toyota SUV reported to get 15 miles per gallon in the city and 19 miles per gallon on the highway. Fred and Sherry Clark didn't let high fuel prices stop them from buying...

Aaron Carter Drives Over Mattress, Escapes SUV Moments Before Flames Erupt 01.07.2005 9:51 AM EST Singer and his passenger treated for minor bumps and bruises. Aaron Carter emerged unscathed from an accident late Wednesday night when he hit a mattress with his SUV, causing the vehicle to burst into flames. The singer, 17, was driving his 2004 Cadillac Escalade on Florida's Turnpike, north toward Orlando, at around 12:30 a.m. when a mattress fell from the cargo bed of a delivery truck ahead of him, according to his spokesperson. Carter drove over the mattress, which became lodged under the SUV and...

Dave Breggin eats no red meat, barely waters a drought-resistant fescue lawn and has a highly energy-efficient Arapahoe County home. All that good karma suddenly evaporates when he gets behind the wheel of his cherished Hummer. Like most other Hummer drivers, Breggin is the target of clenched fists, single-fingered salvos and screamed epithets from the greener-than-thou crowd. With fuel prices near record levels -- up roughly 35 cents a gallon over last year's prices -- both owning and selling the gas-thirsty military clone may require more finesse. General Motors is projecting a 20 percent drop in national sales of its...

Ashes are ejected from the crater of the Shiveluch volcano in Kamchatka to a height of up to 2,000 m. The height of the ejection above sea level exceeded 5,000 m. The seismic stations near the volcano register underground tremors from a depth of up to 5,000 m and interrupted spasmodic volcanic vibration. For the greater part of the past 24 hours it was impossible to conduct video observation of Shiveluch because of bad weather but scientists hold the view that some ejections are accompanied by fragmentation avalanches. Shiveluch (its height is 3,283 m) is now at the stage of...

One person is dead after an SUV fleeing from state troopers headed the wrong way across the Howard Frankland Bridge and crashed into oncoming traffic early this morning. Investigators say that a Honda CRV was involved in a minor fender-bender in the Kennedy-Westshore area around 1:40 a.m., but when troopers arrived on the scene, the vehicle took off, striking a trooper in the process. "The gentleman in the vehicle refused all FHP trooper commands to stop and step out of the vehicle, backed his car into two FHP patrol cars, and struck Trooper Maddox with the Florida Highway Patrol's Tampa...

  Major Climate Change Occurred 5,200 Years Ago: Evidence Suggests That History Could Repeat Itself December 16, 2004 Glaciologist Lonnie Thompson worries that he may have found clues that show history repeating itself, and if he is right, the result could have important implications to modern society. Thompson has spent his career trekking to the far corners of the world to find remote ice fields and then bring back cores drilled from their centers. Within those cores are the records of ancient climate from across the globe. From the mountains of data drawn by analyzing countless ice cores, and...

FIANO ROMANO, Italy, Nov. 5 - It is not a toy, they swear, but a serious piece of police gear, no matter how many Japanese tourists stood at a highway rest stop here snapping away in awe. "It's a responsibility to drive it," said Chief Inspector Laura Ciano of the Italian highway police. Paolo Mazzini, a highway police commander, said: "Italian people are not always friendly toward authorities. They are curious, so they accept the ticket more readily." "It's not for fun," he added. Still, Superintendent Vincenzo Bizzarro wore a satisfied look on his face when he gave a reporter,...

Recently, a friend of mine returned from a tour of duty in Iraq; and I was later informed that he had made 16 registered kills. A 20 year-old man with 16 Registered kills? From my friend? The very same person that I got into a fight with after baseball practice in eight grade? Am I supposed to be happy about that? Should I go and pat him on the back and congratulate him for what he has done? In all reality I will tell him that I am proud of him and support him, but I should not have to...