Virginia Tech Massacre

By SUE LINDSEY, Associated Press Writer

April 16, 2007

A gunman opened fire in a Virginia Tech dorm and then, two hours later, shot up a classroom building across campus Monday, killing 32 people in the deadliest shooting rampage in U.S. history. The gunman committed suicide, bringing the death toll to 33.

Students bitterly complained that there were no public-address announcements on campus after the first burst of gunfire. Many said the first word they received from the university was an e-mail more than two hours into the rampage — around the time the gunman struck again.

Virginia Tech President Charles Steger said authorities believed that the shooting at the dorm was a domestic dispute and mistakenly thought the gunman had fled the campus.
"We had no reason to suspect any other incident was going to occur," he said.
He defended the university's handling of the tragedy, saying: "We can only make decisions based on the information you had on the time. You don't have hours to reflect on it."
Investigators offered no motive for the attack. The gunman's name was not immediately released, and it was not known if he was a student.

The shootings spread panic and confusion on campus. Witnesses reporting students jumping out the windows of a classroom building to escape the gunfire. SWAT team members with helmets, flak jackets and assault rifles swarmed over the campus. Students and faculty members carried out some of the wounded themselves, without waiting for ambulances to arrive. A student used his cell-phone camera to record the sound of shots echoing through the stone classroom building.

The massacre took place at opposite sides of the 2,600-acre campus, beginning at about 7:15 a.m. at West Ambler Johnston, a coed dormitory that houses 895 people, and continuing at least two hours later at Norris Hall, an engineering building about a half-mile away, authorities said.
Two people were killed in a dormitory room, and 31 others were killed in the classroom building, including the gunman, police said.

"Today the university was struck with a tragedy that we consider of monumental proportions," Steger said. "The university is shocked and indeed horrified."
Steger emphasized that the university closed off the dorm after the first attack and decided to rely on e-mail and other electronic means to notify members of the university, but with 11,000 people driving onto campus first thing in the morning, it was difficult to get the word out. He said that before the e-mail went out, the university began telephoning resident advisers in the dorms to notify them and sent people to knock on doors to spread the word.

Virginia Tech Police Chief Wendell Flinchum would not say how many weapons the gunman carried. But a law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation was incomplete, said that the gunman had two pistols and multiple clips of ammunition.
Flinchum said that some doors in the classroom building had been chained shut from the inside.
Police said they were still investigating the shooting at the dorm when they got word of gunfire at the classroom building.

Some students bitterly questioned why the gunman was able to strike a second time.
"What happened today, this was ridiculous," student Jason Piatt told CNN. "While they send out that e-mail, 20 more people got killed."

Students and Laura Wedin, a student programs manager at Virginia Tech, said the first notification they got of the shootings came in an e-mail at 9:26 a.m., more than two hours after the first shooting.
The e-mail had few details. It read: "A shooting incident occurred at West Amber Johnston earlier this morning. Police are on the scene and are investigating." The message warned students to be cautious and contact police about anything suspicious.

Student Maurice Hiller said he went to a 9 a.m. class two buildings away from the engineering building, and no warnings were coming over the outdoor public address system on campus at the time.
Everett Good, junior, said of the lack of warning: "I'm trying to figure that out. Someone's head is definitely going to roll over that."

"We were kept in the dark a lot about exactly what was going on," said Andrew Capers Thompson, a 22-year-old graduate student from Walhalla, S.C.
At an evening news conference, the university president and police chief said they were still investigating whether the shootings at the dorm and the classroom building were related. But earlier in the day, the chief said he believed there was only one gunman, and he was dead.

Edmund Henneke, associate dean of engineering, said he was in the classroom building and he and colleagues had just read the e-mail advisory regarding the first shooting and were discussing it when he heard gunfire. He said moments later SWAT team members rushed them downstairs "but the doors were chained and padlocked from the inside." They left the building through a construction area that had not been locked.
Henneke said it is unfair to criticize the school over the delay in warning.
"People are absolutely making too much of that. You do what you can," Henneke said. "We have a huge campus. You have to close down a small town and you can't close down every way in or out."
At least 26 people were being treated at three area hospitals for gunshot wounds and other injuries, authorities said. Their exact conditions were not disclosed, but at least one was sent to a trauma center and six were in surgery, authorities said.

Up until Monday, the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history was in Killeen, Texas, in 1991, when George Hennard plowed his pickup truck into a Luby's Cafeteria and shot 23 people to death, then himself.
The massacre Monday took place almost eight years to the day after the Columbine High bloodbath near Littleton, Colo. On April 20, 1999, two teenagers killed 12 fellow students and a teacher before taking their own lives.

Previously, the deadliest campus shooting in U.S. history was a rampage that took place in 1966 at the University of Texas at Austin, where Charles Whitman climbed the clock tower and opened fire with a rifle from the 28th-floor observation deck. He killed 16 people before he was shot to death by police.

Founded in 1872, Virginia Tech is nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains of southwestern Virginia, about 160 miles west of Richmond. With more than 25,000 full-time students, it has the state's largest full-time student population. The school is best known for its engineering school and its powerhouse Hokies football team.

The rampage took place on a brisk spring day, with snow flurries swirling around the campus. The campus is centered around the Drill Field, a grassy field where military cadets — who now represent a fraction of the student body — practice. The dorm and the classroom building are on opposites sides of the Drill Field.
A gasp could be heard at a campus news conference early in the day when the police chief announced that at least 20 people had been killed. Previously, only one person was thought to have been killed.

A White House spokesman said President Bush was horrified by the rampage and offered his prayers to the victims and the people of Virginia. "The president believes that there is a right for people to bear arms, but that all laws must be followed," spokeswoman Dana Perino said

After the shootings, all entrances to the campus were closed, and classes were canceled through Tuesday. The university set up a meeting place for families to reunite with their children. It also made counselors available and planned an assembly for Tuesday at the basketball arena.

After the shooting began, students were told to stay inside away from the windows.
Aimee Kanode, a freshman from Martinsville, said the shooting happened on the fourth floor of West Ambler Johnston dormitory, one floor above her room. Kanode's resident assistant knocked on her door about 8 a.m. to notify students to stay put.
Police said there had been bomb threats on campus over the past two weeks by authorities but said they have not determined a link to the shootings.

It was second time in less than a year that the campus was closed because of a shooting.
Last August, the opening day of classes was canceled and the campus closed when an escaped jail inmate allegedly killed a hospital guard off campus and fled to the Tech area. A sheriff's deputy involved in the manhunt was killed on a trail just off campus. The accused gunman, William Morva, faces capital murder charges.

Rare sighting of endangered Indonesian rabbit

Since Easter is coming up, thought this article was appropriate. Above is a recent picture of the rabbit in Indonesia (Sumatra to be exact).

Friday, April 6, 7:54 am EST

The nocturnal animal, also known as the striped rabbit, was photographed by a camera trap in January this year in a national park on Sumatra island, said Frida Mindasari Saanin from the Wildlife Conservation Society.
"Very little is known about this species. We don't know how many of them are living in the wild," she said.
It was the second time the society had seen the grey-brown rabbit, which has black stripes running across its face and body.
The creature hides during daytime by snuggling into burrows or next to tree trunks in the lush tropical forests rolling across the Barisan Mountains, its only habitat.
"Before this we found it in 2000 in the same park when we were surveying tigers," she said of the elusive 35-centimetre (14-inch) long animal, whose environment is threatened by agriculture.
There was another sighting in 1972, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources. Saanin said the rabbit was also seen by a different conservation group in 1998.
Sumatra's montane forests are home to some of the most endangered species in the world, including the Sumatran rhinoceros and tiger.
Scientists say the sun-dappled island may also contain species yet to be identified. Last month a clouded leopard found in the rainforests of Borneo and Sumatra was declared a new species of big cat.

Whose Art? A Debate Erupts Over Antiquities

By Cathleen McGuigan, Newsweek Entertainment
March 12, 2007
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17437334/from/ET/

**I posted this article to gain opinions (pros and cons) from my classmates for my Researched Argument paper**

Taiwan offers 'freeway' for butterflies

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070324/ap_on_sc/taiwan_butterfly_migration
Sat Mar 24, 6:16 AM ET

Taiwan will cordon off part of a highway to create a safe passage for a massive seasonal butterfly migration in the coming days, an official said Saturday.

The milkweed butterflies — which are indigenous to the island off China and have distinct white dots on purple brown wings — migrate in late March from southern Taiwan to the north, where they lay eggs and die.

The young butterflies then fly south every November to a warm mountain valley near the southern city of Kaohsiung to escape the winter cold in the north.

Conservationists say Taiwan has about 2 million milkweed butterflies.

To protect the migrating butterflies, a 600-yard stretch of highway in southern Taiwan's Yunlin County will be sealed off in the coming days as the migration peaks, said Lee Tai-ming, head of the National Freeway Bureau.

Authorities will set up nets to make the butterflies fly higher and avoid passing cars, Lee said.
He said they will also install ultraviolet lights to guide the insects across a highway overpass.

Taiwan began the laborious task of tracking down the butterflies' 180-mile migration paths in recent years.

Taiwan originally had more types of milkweed butterflies, but the largest became extinct decades ago when they were routinely caught and made into specimens for sale, the newspaper said.

Lint rollers may collect dangerous Moon dust

22:32 (10:32pm) 06 March 2007
NewScientist.com news service
Kelly Young

Magnetic wands and lint rollers may be among the tools NASA uses to keep dangerous lunar dust at bay when it returns to the Moon around 2020.
While hailed as a potential source of oxygen and metals, Moon dust is a concern because doctors fear the smallest grains could lodge in astronauts' lungs, possibly causing long-term health effects.
Now, NASA is working on a number of ways to reduce the amount of lunar dust astronauts are exposed to – from simple grates on the floor to streams of liquid usually used to flush contaminants out of photocopiers.
Even during the relatively short Apollo Moon landing missions nearly 40 years ago, astronauts reported difficulty breathing.
"It turns out what we did in Apollo was probably the worst way we could have handled it operationally," says Kriss Kennedy, project leader for architecture, habitability and integration at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, US. That is because the Apollo landers did not have airlocks, so the astronauts had to live among the dust for days.
Air showers
So the agency plans to set up an airlock on the first lunar trips, which are expected to last just a week. That way, astronauts can take off their spacesuits and boots in a sort of 'mudroom' or entryway without tracking dust into their living quarters.
The airlocks on subsequent missions will become more advanced, with metal gratings outside them to collect lunar soil, or regolith. Inside, they may also be fitted with "air showers", wherein blasts of air from above whisk dust to a grated floor below – just like those used outside of cleanrooms on Earth.
These measures could help remove 90 to 95% of the dust coming into the spacecraft, Kennedy told New Scientist.
The methods may be especially good at removing large particles of dust. But getting rid of smaller particles – which some scientists believe pose more health risks – may require more ingenuity.
Magnetic wand
That is because they harbour strong forces between their molecules, known as van der Waals forces, which make it tricky to free them once they stick to a surface.
So engineers have come up with a variety of solutions that exploit different properties of the powder.
Some lunar dust carries an electrostatic charge thanks to ionising radiation hitting the Moon's surface. So air filters could be built to attract charged dust particles.
Because some of the particles are magnetised, the air filters could also be equipped with magnets, and astronauts could wave a magnetic wand over their suits to attract the dust after a Moonwalk.
NASA might also try to blow the dust away with cans of compressed air – the same kind usually used to clean off computer keyboards on Earth.
Flush out
Another technique borrowed from Earth-bound offices involves carbon dioxide snow cleaning systems, which are used to clean photocopiers and telescopes. These systems flush out contaminants with a stream of liquid CO2.
But getting heavy carbon dioxide tanks to the Moon may be too much of an undertaking given all the other gear that must be transported there, say engineers. Instead, they say the system might be better suited for Mars, where carbon dioxide could be extracted from the atmosphere.
A lighter-weight option takes a page from pet owners the world over. NASA may simply use sticky surfaces – rather like lint rollers – to remove dust.
They may also use coveralls that could go over the spacewalker's pressure suit and be thrown away after a trip outside the lunar habitat. Engineers at Johnson Space Center are also investigating spacesuit materials that are impervious to dust.
Resistant materials
But much of NASA's research is likely to focus on simply designing good seals to keep it outside key modules and spacesuits and coming up with materials that are resistant to the dust's abrasiveness.
"I think that a lot of the solution is kind of boring – good old-fashioned engineering," says Sandra Wagner, head of planetary environment management and integration at Johnson.
Dust may be a niggling problem for NASA in its plans for the Moon, but it's not insurmountable, says Rajiv Kohli of Johnson.
"There are no showstoppers per se," Kohli told New Scientist. "Most of the problems that we think we have are manageable."

Bolivians: Coca-Cola should drop "coca"

By Dan Keane, Associated Press Writer
Fri Mar 16, 4:52 AM ET

Always Coca-Cola? Not if Bolivia's coca growers have their way. The farmers want the word "Coca" dropped by the U.S. soft drink company, arguing that the potent shrub belongs to the cultural heritage of this Andean nation, where the coca leaf infuses everyday life and is sacred to many.
A commission of coca industry representatives advising an assembly rewriting Bolivia's constitution passed a resolution Wednesday calling on the Atlanta, Ga.-based company to take "Coca" out of its name and asking the United Nations to decriminalize the leaf.
The resolution demands that "international companies that include in their commercial name the name of coca (example: Coca Cola) refrain from using the name of the sacred leaf in their products."
The commission, which met for three days in Sucre, 255 miles southeast of La Paz, is part of an effort led by President Evo Morales to rehabilitate the image of plant, used in the Andes for millennia but better known internationally as the base ingredient of cocaine.
Coca-Cola released a statement Thursday saying their trademark is "the most valuable and recognized brand in the world" and was protected under Bolivian law.
The statement repeated the company's past denials that Coca-Cola has ever used cocaine as an ingredient — but was silent on whether the natural coca leaf was used to flavor their flagship soda.
"They need to understand our situation," said David Herrera, a state government supervisor for the coca-rich Chapare region. "They exported coca as a raw material for Coca-Cola, and we can't even freely sell it in Bolivia."
The Bolivian government regulates the sale of coca to prevent use by the drug trade.
In its natural state, the green leaf is only a mild stimulant. In Bolivia's white-collar offices, coca tea is served instead of coffee, and the country's farmers, miners and longhaul truckers chew the leaf to get through a long work day.
The government wants the U.N. to decriminalize trade in coca-based products to promote its exports.
Morales, a former coca grower, believes an international market for coca-derived products such as tea, flour, liquor, and even toothpaste would draw some of the country's estimated 65,500 acres of coca away from the drug trade.
But the United States, which funds a Bolivian coca-eradication program, is adamantly opposed to the policy, saying it only encourages more coca production.

In Looting Trial, Art Smuggling by Ariel David (Associated Press Writer)

http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2007Jan17/0,4670,LootedAntiquities,00.html