Free Republic

Just got alerted to this from a buddy in Germany. Time Warner subsidiary AOL is running a "dating" website through AOL Germany which offers AOL users the opportunity to cheat on their spouses. It's like a dating site but the gist of it is that AOL users can register discreetly to find other, interested cheaters. It offers "Affairs" and "Seitensprünge" which is the German term for a quick, one night stand outside of marriage. Now if it wasn't sick enough for Time Warner to stoop this low, they're advertising that a portion of the proceeds go to needy children in...

Investment banks getting slaughtered on writedowns. Rumours that Goldmans and Citi might have double-digit writedowns. No end in sight for illiquidity in CDOs, ABSs, and anything else subprime related. Housing market still teetering on the verge of things getting REALLY ugly. My solution: Offer US citizenship to every Mexican illegal on the condition they buy a house with a 20% downpayment. Housing market saved. Flow of Dollars South of the border staunched. Fire away.

BUCHAREST, Romania -- A Romanian oil rig off the coast of Iran came under fire Tuesday from an Iranian military warship and was later occupied by Iranian troops, a company spokesman said. The Iranians first fired into the air and then fired at the Orizont rig, said GSP spokesman Radu Petrescu. Half an hour later, troops from the ship boarded and occupied the rig and the company lost contact with the 26 crew members shortly afterward. Petrescu said he had no information about any injuries or deaths. The Orizont rig has been moored near Kish island in the Persian Gulf...

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - Independent Dutch investigators cleared Lance Armstrong of doping in the 1999 Tour de France on Wednesday, and blamed anti-doping authorities for misconduct in dealing with the Austin, Texas, cyclist. More.....

Rough translation from Der Spiegel Hardcopy: PA400 military transport will not be able to fly as far as previously planned. The transporter, due to first fly in 2008 will be heavier than expected. The maximum take-off weight will be increased by 6.5 tons to 136.5 tons. The empty weight will also be higher than the previously planned 63.5 tons. This means the maximum range while empty is only 8300 km vs previously planned 9520 km.

Bberg reports car bomb explodes in Paris. One known dead.

WASHINGTON -- The question of whether Valerie Plame's employment by the Central Intelligence Agency was a secret is the key issue in the two-year investigation to determine if someone broke the law by leaking her CIA affiliation to the news media. Federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald contends that Plame's friends "had no idea she had another life." But Plame's secret life could be easily penetrated with the right computer sleuthing and an understanding of how the CIA's covert employees work.

14:06 24Feb2006 RTRS-EXPLOSION AT SAUDI BAQIQ OIL REFINERY - AL ARABIYA TV 14:09 24Feb2006 RTRS-SHOOTING HEARD NEAR ABQAIQ OIL FACILITY IN SAUDI ARABIA - ARABIYA TV 14:13 24Feb2006 RTRS-Explosion heard in oil facility in Saudi Arabia DUBAI, Feb 24 (Reuters) - An explosion was heard at Saudi Arabia's Abqaiq oil facility on Friday, Al Arabiya television reported. It also quoted witnesses as saying shooting was heard in the area in the kingdom's main eastern oil province. No further details were immediately available. For Related News, Double Click on one of these codes: [C] [D] [E] [M] [O] [T] [U] [MTL]...

Survivors of the Red Sea ferry disaster said its captain fled the burning ship by lifeboat and abandoned them to their fate, as hopes faded on Saturday of finding some 800 missing. Some passengers plucked alive from the sea or from boats after the ferry caught fire and sank early on Friday said crew had told them not to worry about a fire below deck and even ordered them to take off lifejackets.

Former Defense Minister Rupert Scholz (CDU 1988 - 1989) said Germany should consider building its own nuclear deterrence force if it could not get binding guarantees from NATO that it would protect Germany in case nuclear threats were directed at the country.

My translated synopsis: Bild Zeitung quotes BND (German Intelligence) sources saying Iran has purchased 18 kits (BM-25 Mobile missiles) from North Korea. The kits could help extend the range of its Russian SS-N-6 missiles to 3500 km, the distance between Teheran and Berlin. Previously it was only known that Iran had Shehab-3 missiles with a range of 1300 km. The BND warns that Germany and other partzs of Euriope could be threatened mid to long term by Iran's new first strike capabilities. The BND has intelligence indicating Iranian scientists are working intensively to attach nuclear warheads to its missiles. Near...

Military aircraft carrying 90 pax crashes into buildings in tehran. More as it develops.

Breaking on Bloomberg and Reuters. GM will cut 30,000 jobs in massive restructuring. More....

"Five cars in Berlin torched" is bullet headline of well-known financial news provider with a mayor's name. German N-TV showing video of burned-out autos and calls it a copy-cat action. More when I get it.

Chinese news photoshops Michael Brown and replaces FEMA patch on his shirt with Mickey Mouse. I guess they think it's a joke of some kind. See attached link for Xinhua story and shopped photo.

George - A woman from Herold's Bay who tried to help a female seal will have to get a new nose after the seal ripped the woman's nose from her face. Winnie Swanepoel, head of the SPCA in George, picked Elsie van Tonder's nose up on the beach and rushed it to hospital, but it could not be surgically reattached to the 49-year-old's face. Van Tonder was bitten in the face and on the leg at about 17:00 on Saturday when she and a few other people tried to roll the young seal onto a blanket to get it back...

European governments are hiring private sector banks to show them how to disguise the scale of their budget deficits, Joaqún Almunia, EU monetary affairs commissioner, claims on Thursday. Mr Almunia says some banks recommend the same budgetary dodges to different governments, making it hard to police the EU's budgetary rules that underpin the single currency.

This is not showing up in the English-language press, so here’s my vanity: After the election Gerhard Schroeder made what the press is calling a „bizarre“ appearance on a TV talkshow. Most everyone in my office said he must have been drunk as a lord, although some surmise he may have been on “something else”. Schröder seemed to think he had won a majority and had the right to form a government. He also sharply attacked both moderators claiming that they had tried to prevent him becoming Chancellor again but had failed. He made other vague accusations of media manipulation...

<p>Berlin (dpa) - Battling for reelection in a tight race, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's party is putting up campaign posters showing flag-draped coffins of dead American soldiers to underline their opposition to the Iraq war, reports said Friday.</p> <p>Rolf Schwanitz, a state secretary in the Berlin chancellery, is using a poster with five coffins covered by the American stars and stripes being loaded into a transport aircraft flanked by a U.S. military honour guard. The caption of the poster is aimed at conservative challenger Angela Merkel, who backed the Iraq war while always vowing not to send German troops.</p>

I just got back from a FEMA Detainment Camp I'm extremely depressed to report that things seem to only be getting sadder concerning the people so devastatingly affected by Katrina last week. Two car loads of us headed over to Falls Creek, a youth camp for Southern Baptist churches in Oklahoma that agreed to have its facilities used to house Louisiana refugees. I'm afraid the camp is not going to be used as the kind people of the churches who own the cabins believe it was going to be used.