Java Tsunami Update

The death toll from Monday's tsunami in Java has risen to more than 500, a sharp increase over yesterday's tally.

The death toll from the tsunami that hit Java earlier this week rose by almost 200 today to 531, with more than 270 people still missing.

There were also reports today of a new earthquake, with a preliminary magnitude of 6.1, which caused buildings to sway in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta.

There were no immediate reports of casualties following today's quake, which officials said was centred 118 miles south-west of Jakarta.

Officials said the death toll from Monday's tsunami, which was caused by a 7.7-magnitude quake, was rising as police and army teams encountered more and more bodies as they worked in the disaster area on Java. Teams were working in the wreckage with sniffer dogs and mechanical equipment.

The rising death toll was fuelling questions about the failures of officials in Jakarta to issue a tsunami warning. Officials received data about Monday's around 20 minutes before the first wave struck Java but failed to issue a tsunami warning.

I linked to my friend and fellow blogger Agam, who lives in Thailand yesterday. He reported on the shameful performance of the Indonesian government that still does not have a local Tsunami warning system in place.

Follow The Money - Then Blow It Up

Israel must have an absolutely stunning intelligence gathering capacity and are using it against Hezbollah to the max. The IDF has located and targeted the buildings that Hezbollah uses to store money.

A senior Northern Command officer told Ynet Wednesday that IDF ground forces are operating deep inside Lebanese territory and against the 15-20 Hizbullah positions along the border with Israel.

AL-Jazeera reported that the Israeli Air Force struck two trucks in Beirut’s al-Ashrafiyeh quarter, marking the first time the IDF has operating against targets located in the capital’s center.

Military sources said warplanes attacked structures in which Hizbullah stores its money; among the targets hit were the four el-Mal (Money house) buildings in Bint Jbeil, Nabatiyeh, Baalbek and the Tyre area.

In addition, the “Shahid Fund” financial office in Beirut was also attacked by IAF jets, as were buildings used for Hizbullah financial operations in the capital.

The attacks are aimed at hindering Hizbullah’s ability to recuperate following the conclusion of the IDF operation in Lebanon.

In probably the biggest understatement of the war so far, an IDF spokesman said, "Hizbullah is amazed by the amount of information Israel has, which has led to great destruction of his capabilities." I wonder how well Hassan Nasrallah is sleeping these days….

May I See Your Identification, Please?

Says the chef to the cucumber. China will be giving every single vegetable destined for the kitchens of the 2008 Olympics it's own unique identification number and will track those vegetables. It is an attempt to curb "safety incidents" over Olympic food.

In an attempt to ensure food safety during the 2008 Olympics, Beijing is to give every cabbage, carrot and pea pod its own identity number and file, the Beijing News reported on Wednesday.

If there is a "safety incident" the vegetable's file can be immediately checked and its origins traced, the newspaper said, in a report accompanied by graphics showing personnel at computers tracking each vegetable's path from farm to plate.

"Safety incidents" was a likely reference to pesticide or pollutants in the soil. The environment group Greenpeace has found banned pesticides and excessive levels of other chemicals in vegetables supplied from China.

"After going through inspections at the distribution centre, standard and qualified vegetables can enter Olympic kitchens," the Beijing News report said.

The city will need more than 5,000 tonnes of vegetables during the Olympics, mostly from Beijing and the northern Chinese provinces of Hebei and Shandong.

The report made no mention of fruit.

The mind boggles. This brings the term "food police" to a whole new level.

Golden Bacteria

Scientists have announced the discovery of a bacteria that appears to be able to extract dissolved gold from a solution and deposit it as a solid gold nugget.

The bacteria, called Ralstonia metallidurans, was identified by Frank Reith of Australian National University and his colleagues as the common denominator among bacteria comprising a dried organic biofilm found on the surface of gold grains collected from a park and gold mines in southern New South Wales and northern Queensland, Australia.

The gold was found in association with pyrite (or fool's gold) in quartz and arsenopyrite.

Reith then isolated and grew more of the bacteria in the lab and used a scanning electron microscope to observe gold precipitation in the presence of the microbe. It took just eight hours for a small grain to form.

Testing a theory for how gold grains form when it starts out dissolved in a liquid solution, he confirmed that the bacteria play an important role in the formation of this type of gold nugget. Others thought the grains might come out of solution by some other chemical or leftover process.

"A unique attribute of R. metallidurans is that it is able to survive in concentrations of gold that would kill most other micro-organisms," Reith said.

It is still unknown exactly how the bacteria help to precipitate the gold grains, but is possible that the microbe screens out the gold as part of an effort to detoxify its immediate environment. Metals like gold are toxic to most bacteria.

The finding, published in the latest issue of the journal Science, could suggest opportunities for bio-processing of gold ores, Reith said.

Just imagine. Extracting gold from seawater. Or river water. Why you could make a …..

Hold my calls, I'll be in the lab.

Kangaroo Menaces Ireland

As always, Blue Crab Boulevard continues to break all the important, nay, vital, information of the ongoing animal uprising! A kangaroo invasion of Ireland has begun! One of the sneaky devils broke free from a circus and made a break for the green hills of the Emerald Isle. Hide the children! These suckers can box! I know it's true, I saw it on a cartoon once.

"This kangaroo broke loose just before the show while they were bringing him from the cages to the arena. He decided to take a walk," said local farmer John Walsh on whose land the 2-year-old male, named Sydney, made his break for freedom.

Circus staff launched a fruitless four-hour search following the escape on Sunday.

There had since been one unconfirmed sighting of the animal, renamed "Hoppy" by locals and described as two and a half to three foot (76 to 91 centimetres) tall and dark in colour.

"He would be happy out there and he'll have plenty of grass, plenty of water and plenty of sunshine," Walsh told Reuters on Wednesday as Ireland basked in near record temperatures more typical of Sydney's native Australia than Ireland's temperate maritime climate.

Just wait until his Friends arrive. Soon they'll have to change the island's nickname. The Emerald Outback has a nice ring to it.

American Evacuation Begins

A chartered cruise ship carrying more than 1,000 American nationals has left Beirut heading for Cyprus. The article linked mentions that almost as an aside, but there is a telling bit in the article that bears close reading. There have been several reports from various news outlets that Israel had struck the Christian quarter of Beirut for the first time. All very breathless and very judgmental. But read this:

Israeli bombers, which had been focusing on Hezbollah strongholds in southern Beirut, also hit a Christian suburb on the eastern side of the capital for the first time. The target was a truck-mounted machine that was used to drill for water but could have been mistaken for a missile launcher. The vehicle was destroyed, but nobody was hurt in that attack. (Emphasis added)

Can you see how precise the targeting is? They took out one specific truck. If you are familiar with well drilling equipment, it could easily look like a missile launching rig since the rockets are launched from a pipe or rail.

Contrast that attack with the indiscriminant rocketing of civilian targets.

UPDATE: A lot more information on the evacuation in this story.

MK Ham Sends One To The Bleachers

Offhand, I'd say Mary Katherine Ham has hit a bases loaded home run with this post. Writing about the differences in the way the left and the right approach the blogosphere and bloggers one doesn't always agree with.

I disagree with Glenn Reynolds. Not on everything, but on some things.

Support for the war in Iraq as an important battleground in the War on Terror? Ditto, Glenn. Unequivocal backing of the notion that Americans should have the right to pack heat? I’m with you. A general respect for the free market and the innovations, efficiency, and gifts it visits upon us? Yep, there again.

On the stem-cell debate and other social issues, I can’t say the same. And, the “I had an abortion” T-shirt is not a fashion choice I would have made.

But here’s the thing. If you were to ask me if he’s with me or against me– if you were to say, politically speaking, “is he on your team?”– I’d say yes. Yes, the politically hybrid, libertarianish law professor who threatens to vote Democrat if they’d only give him something to work with on national security is on my team.

I feel the same way about a long list of other libertarianish political hybrids who vocally disagree with me on social issues—folks like Ann Althouse and Jeff Goldstein, both of whose blogs I consider favorites. And, I think most of the Right blogosphere feels the same way, even though many right bloggers are more conservative than these three writers. Their traffic numbers certainly reflect acceptance and popularity among righty blog-readers.

I think she's absolutely got this one right. I link to plenty of people that I do not always agree with on every single point. Now comparing that to the treatment the left gives, the differences are glaring.

Left blogger Crooked Timber attributes such treatment of Althouse to the fact that she’s perceived, not as a political moderate, but as a moderate conservative. That may be, but I tried to imagine myself perceiving folks like Armed Liberal of Winds of Change, or Jeralyn Merritt of TalkLeft, both of whom can probably be rightly considered moderate liberals, as out-and-out political enemies to be only attacked, never embraced. Instead, I serve with those two on a Blogger Board of Contributors for the Examiner, and all of us were recruited for the board by a conservative blogger.

I can’t help but think that, as blogs continue to become a bigger part of electoral politics and the parties inevitably become more practiced at working with them, this difference in approach doesn’t bode well for Democrats. As much as the Left blogosphere likes to accuse the whole center-right of existing only to parrot the command-and-control messages of Chimpy McBushitler, it is the Left blogosphere that has seemed so intent on alienating itself and the Democratic Party from political hybrids and moderate Democrats of late, and doing so in dramatic, nasty fashion.

Jeff Goldstein gets vile sexual comments about his toddler and Joe Lieberman gets a new nickname—“Rape Gurney Joe.”

The other thing I have noticed is that if I post something critical of Bush or the Republicans (and I do every now and again) my comments don't see a major increase. I may get a few minor disagreements, but nothing really out of the ordinary. If I post something critical of something the left holds dear, my comment queue will start smoking under the increased load. And there are a LOT of vitriolic comments. Many cross over into obscene (and get deleted). This has happened several times when Peter Daou linked one of my posts. Mary Katherine concludes this way:

If politically hybrid bloggers can be seen as the swing voters of the blogosphere—if a Jeff Goldstein is a guy who could conceivably be convinced to vote the other way if the Dems would assuage his doubts on certain issues—who do you think is more convincing showing up on his virtual doorstep?

Deborah Frisch, the liberal who threatens his child, or Right-Wing Sparkle, the conservative who has read his site for years and comes to his defense upon Frisch’s attack?

When you’re knocking on doors at election time, burning dog poo has never been known to get out the vote.

I think she's exactly right. The vitriolic approach seldom persuades. It just corrodes.

Read the whole thing, it's a great post.

Life Under The Blitz

The Washington Post has a story today about the impact the Hezbollah rocket attacks are having on Israeli civilians. Many are finding that they have no choice but to evacuate and to try to get beyond the range of the rocket attacks.

MARGALIYOT, Israel, July 18 — Living in the shadow of an Israeli artillery battery, whose volleys have rattled their windows day and night for nearly a week, almost all 300 residents have fled this farming village that clings to a rocky ridge on the Lebanese border.

Pinchas Aplaton and his son Gal, a soldier home on leave, were among a handful remaining behind Monday, forced by economic necessity, they said, to tend their tidy rows of tomato and eggplant crops during the summer harvest.

Aplaton's wife, Irit, his daughter and two other sons left a day earlier on a bus bound for Netanya, a city 80 miles to the south and, until now, beyond the reach of rockets that have rained on northern Israel for nearly a week.

"Once we saw this was heating up, there was no choice but for the women and children to go," Pinchas Aplaton said, puffing his cheeks and shaking his head as yet another outgoing round resounded from a nearby hill. "So, for now, we live apart."

Later that afternoon, at the sprawling boarding school in Netanya where she and her children are waiting out the crisis, Irit Aplaton said she was "worried half to death" about her husband. In a period of less than 24 hours, they had spoken at least a dozen times, with most conversations lasting about as long as it takes him to say, "I'm still okay."

The snapshot of the Aplatons' life Monday is a window on the experience of thousands of Israelis living under bombardment across the country's north. According to military sources, about 50 percent of residents in this region, which includes Haifa, the country's third-largest city, have evacuated since cross-border clashes between Israel and Hezbollah militants in Lebanon began last week, after the group captured two Israeli soldiers in an ambush.

Hundreds of business are shuttered, leaving downtowns eerily empty.

It's important to remember that Hezbollah is intentionally targeting civilians and that the Israeli government is not trying to keep civilians in the line of fire like the terrorists are reportedly doing. Read the whole article for a glimpse of what life is like living under a blitz.

Murderer Killed

The Jordanian terrorist who the Iraqi government had identified as the killer of two American soldiers was fatally wounded security forces.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A Jordanian who killed two U.S. soldiers last month was fatally wounded in a clash with security forces, a senior Iraqi official said Tuesday. Diyar Ismail Mahmoud, known as Abu al-Afghani, was identified as the killer of the two soldiers, National Security Adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie told reporters.

The two soldiers' mutilated bodies were found after they were captured in a firefight near Youssifiyah, southwest of Baghdad.

A third American was killed in the clash.

Al-Rubaie did not say when Mahmoud was wounded or died.

The bodies of two soldiers from the 2nd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division were found on June 19 not far from a checkpoint on the Euphrates river south of Baghdad where they were abducted.

The discovery of Pfc. Kristian Menchaca of Houston and Pfc. Thomas Tucker of Madras, Ore. — both of whom were badly mutilated and at least one beheaded — came after exhaustive searches with thousands of soldiers fanning out in an area south of Baghdad known as the "Triangle of Death" because of frequent attacks.

A third soldier, David J. Babineau, 25, of Springfield, Mass., was found dead at the checkpoint where the soldiers were killed two days before.

The rest of the AP article repeats terrorist propaganda, so I won't reproduce it here.

Pinpoint Attacks

The CNN news item I linked last night would appear to be incorrect or incomplete, according to Ha'aretz. IDF forces are indeed making ground attacks into Lebanon, but they are short duration strikes and are aimed at exact targets. The troops withdraw after they accomplish their mission.

Israel Defense Forces troops exchanged heavy fire with Hezbollah guerillas Wednesday inside Lebanese territory across the Israel-Lebanon border.

The gunbattle broke out close to Moshav Avivim, which is located along the border, north of Safed. At least one Hezbollah fighter was killed in the fighting.

Earlier in the day, a number of IDF ground troops crossed into southern Lebanon to carry out "pinpoint" attacks on Hezbollah outposts.

"These are restricted, pinpoint attacks," an IDF spokesman said. "This is nothing out of the ordinary. This has been happening close to the border."

Troops have crossed into southern Lebanon several times in recent days to destroy Hezbollah posts, returning soon afterwards. The army has not ruled out the possibility of a major land offensive at some stage.

Military sources estimate that 10-14 more days are necessary in order to meet the military aims of the operation in Lebanon.

I notice the estimate of how long operations will take to complete has also increased from the one week reported yesterday to as long as two weeks now. Of course, with Syria attempting resupply of rocket stocks, this may change yet again depending on whether the IDF can stop the Syrians or not.

Syria Supplying Missiles To Hezbollah

The IDF have identified and destroyed a number of trucks coming from Syria into Lebanon carrying additional rockets. Some of these are the large 220mm rockets like the one that hit a train station in Haifa Killing eight civilians.

Although Hizbullah has suffered a harsh blow from Israeli air force strikes which took out a good percentage of their available weapons, Syria was continuing to smuggle arms into Lebanon to rearm the group, IDF Operations Branch Head Major General Gadi Eisenkot said during a press briefing Tuesday.

Thus far, the IAF managed to intercept a number of trucks transporting rockets from Syria to Hizbullah, including trucks laden with the 220mm-diameter rockets with warheads like the one that hit the Haifa train depot  Monday, claiming eight lives. Maj.-Gen. Eisenkot said he would be very surprised if official elements in Syria were unaware of these transports.

“These are rockets that belong to the Syrian army. You can’t find them in the Damascus market, and the Syrian government is responsible for this smuggling,” Eisenkot said, but stressed, “We are not operating against Syria or the Lebanese army.”

During the briefing, Maj.-Gen. Eisenkot said the IDF has hit over 1,000 targets, 180 of them Katyusha and rocket storage sites and 350 launch sites. Over 250 missile strikes were carried out with the aim of blocking traffic arteries, and 200 buildings used by Hizbullah were hit. According to Eisenkot, Israel’s offensive would continue without time limitations.

“With that, we always operate under the principle of a short fighting period. In the short term, this is a complicated reality for civilians too, but in the long term this operation holds great importance for all of us,” he noted. He added that senior Hizbullah leaders were hiding out in underground bunkers. “We struck a number of mid-level operatives in the organization, and not in the numbers we wished, but our energies have been aimed at taking out weapons stores and rocket launchers,” he said.

Unlike Hezbollah, Israel is not intentionally aiming at civilians, of course. The attempt by Syria to ship in missiles could be interpreted as a provocation worthy of going to war over, if Israel so chose. Assad is playing a dangerous game at his Iranian master's bidding.