Tornado season has roared to life with a massive wave of twisters hitting three states and killing at least four people. A huge storm front swept across most of the nation's midsection today spawning 65 tornadoes so far today alone.
Sixty-five tornadoes were reported late Wednesday in Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, Colorado and Nebraska, the National Weather Service said. By early Thursday, the storm system stretched from South Dakota to Texas.
Rosemary Rosales, 28, was found critically injured in the tree after the huge tornado destroyed several homes and damaged dozens of others in Holly, a town of 1,000 people about 235 miles southeast of Denver near the Kansas line.
In Oklahoma, a twister killed a couple as it blew their home to pieces. In Texas, a man was found dead in the tangled debris of his trailer.
At least seven other people were hurt when the tornado skipped for a mile-and-a-half through Holly and surrounding areas.
"All they heard was this big ugly noise, and they didn't have no time to run," said Victoria Rosales, the victim's sister. She said the woman and her husband, Gustavo Puga, were in the kitchen and their 3-year-old daughter, Noelia, was sleeping in a front room when the tornado hit.
Puga was holding onto the little girl when rescuers found them, said his brother, Oscar Puga. The two were in fair condition Thursday at a Colorado Springs hospital.
I can tell you that there was one heck of a series of thunderstorms where I live, too. It was hard to see across the street at one point, the rain was so heavy. Life in the Midwest is not for the faint of heart at times. When I lived in Illinois, the locals were all still talking about the series of twisters that had ripped through the area in the late '40s. They said that papers from a destroyed gas station in the Western part of the state had been found in Chicago after the storms. I have no idea if that's true or not, but the storms were a regular topic of conversation whenever tornado season rolled around.
And this time they are trying to shoot down airplanes. The pilot of a Chilean airliner reported that glowing, incandescent objects hurtled past his aircraft as it was entering New Zealand air space.
SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) – Pilots of a Chilean commercial jetliner spotted flaming objects falling past their plane as it headed for a landing in New Zealand, airline officials said Wednesday.
U.S. experts suggested the objects were likely meteors burning up in the Earth's atmosphere and questioned Australian media reports they were probably pieces of a falling Russian spacecraft.
LAN Chile airline said in a brief statement that the pilot, who was not identified, “made visual contact with incandescent fragments'' several miles away on Monday. The Airbus 340 had just entered New Zealand airspace when the space debris was spotted.
The airline said it reported the incident to authorities in Chile and New Zealand.
Web sites of several Australian news media quoted officials as saying that pieces of a Russian satellite had narrowly missed the jet.
But Nicholas Johnson, orbital debris chief scientist for NASA's Johnson Space Center, said that was likely not the case. Russian space junk was expected to come back to Earth – but not until about 12 hours after the incident with the jet, Johnson said.
He said he checked with the Russians and the debris – an empty Progress resupply ship that had been at the International Space Station – re-entered Earth's atmosphere on schedule.
“Unless someone has their times wrong, there appears to be no correlation,'' Johnson told The Associated Press.
We have photographic evidence (Real Professional Newswire Quality™, too!) of the earlier assaults on Christchurch, New Zealand. It's getting kind of dangerous down there.
I have posted about Dr. Zuhdi Jasser of Phoenix, Arizona once before. He is the physician who denounced the six flying imams after their stunt in the Minneapolis airport. Now he's going even further: he is volunteering to raise money to pay for the defense of any person the six imams try to sue for daring to report their antics. The imams may have finally had their little rock turned over, exposing them for what they are. Dr. Jasser is a Muslim who detests islamists and he's not afraid to speak out against it.
Though he is well-known in Arizona, he has not been visible outside the state. But that changed a few weeks ago, when he publicly challenged the six imams who filed suit after being detained at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. Five of them are from Arizona, and Jasser knows several of them, he says. He has volunteered to raise money to help any passengers they sue for reporting their behavior, as they have threatened to do.
Suddenly Jasser is a sought-after radio and TV commentator. His new role is taking lots of time, a scarce commodity for Jasser, who practices internal medicine and is president of the Arizona Medical Association.
But he believes that a Muslim voice is critical in response to the imams' charges, which include one that they were discriminated against for praying in the airport gate area. "Americans are so worried about offending religious sensibilities," he says. "We as Muslims must step forward and say, 'This is not about prayer, it's about airline security.' "
The context in which faith is displayed is important, according to Jasser. "I pray five times a day; for example, I pray publicly in the park with my family when we are on a picnic," he says. "But the issue is one of prudence. After 9/11, the airport gate is the most anxiety-laden area for Americans. It is supreme naivete for these individuals to feel the way to exercise their religious freedom is embodied by their ability to pray as a group at an airport gate."
He is stepping up against the attempt by the six to use legal blackmail to silence people. He's the imam's worst nightmare, a Muslim who is exposing them for what they really are.
Speculation continues to grow that actor turned politician turned actor Fred Thompson might throw his hat into the ring and chase the 2008 Republican nomination. This is a huge wild card in all the early prognostication on the nomination. Despite coming from far behind in the money-raising sweepstakes, he has got to have the other candidates nervous. That voice alone is worth a lot of points at the polls.
If he decides to run, Thompson would face many steep challenges, not the least of which is financial. McCain, Giuliani and Romney could each report having raised at least $10 million during the first three months of the year, and it would take months for Thompson, a trial lawyer, to develop the kind of campaign organizations that several others have already built. And Thompson has already drawn fire from some social conservatives.
As a senator, he produced a conservative voting record but broke with the Republican leadership to support McCain's campaign finance legislation. Recently, he joined other Washington politicians who came to the defense of convicted White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Thompson has urged Bush to pardon Libby for lying to investigators.
At the same time, Thompson is a certified television and movie star. His face is seen daily in millions of homes, and his character on "Law & Order" exudes the kind of blunt-spoken, get-it-done leadership that voters tell pollsters they crave.
"I've often said if I had his voice I'd be president of the United States today," McCain, a longtime friend, told Wolf Blitzer on CNN this week. Thompson was among a handful of Senate colleagues who endorsed McCain for president in 2000. Another, Sen. Chuck Hagel (Neb.), is also considering a White House bid.
Thompson traded on his movie and TV celebrity in his 1994 Senate candidacy, when he captured the seat vacated by then-Vice President Al Gore, employing his Southern drawl as he traveled across Tennessee in a bright-red pickup truck.
As far as name and face recognition, he far and away tops pretty much anyone in the race from either party. More importantly, he actually has a lot of serious credentials that make him an attractive candidate. He could make this into a very interesting race indeed.
Powerline has part of the video that appeared on Iranian television that shows one of the captured British sailors, Faye Turney, "apologizing" for trespassing into Iranian waters. (Never mind that GPS data shows the sailors were more than a mile inside Iraqi waters.) Read the whole post, including the update. As John points out the video is creepy in the extreme, but there are a lot of comments on the post and one of the points raised in the update links to this post by Tammy Bruce. In it she asks one important question:
People are already claiming she did not write the letter. That is belied by the fact that she has given this interview, saying essentially the things she says in the letter. Is she under pressure. Yes, of course. But the question becomes, exactly how much pressure is required to get a British sailor to cooperate with the enemy these days?
My son (who comes home today) called last night and wanted me to specifically mention that he - and and awful lot of other soldiers think that Turney did something inexcusable here. Of course rules and regulations are somewhat different between the US and the British armed forces. But to give in to whatever pressure the Iranians applied this quickly has to be against British regulations and expectations (as it is against American). My son was livid about it. Somehow, the days of the indomitable will of British soldiers and sailors to never give in to an enemy appear over with.
For those who do not know the story, or have only seen the romanticized (and Americanized) Hollywood movie, the "Great Escape" in World War Two was pulled off by British officers (the Americans had been separated from the Brits by the time the tunnels were completed). And many of those who escaped were murdered by the Nazis as a result. But a number of the survivors went to another prison camp, Colditz, and kept right on trying to escape.
News | Gaius Thursday, 29 March , 2007 | 
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