Blue Crab Boulevard

It's a mooseteor! Oh sure, our insurance agent thought we were crazy when we asked if our vehicles were covered for damages resulting from cows hurtling out of the sky. Like that has never happened. (It turns out we are under a cowmprehensive rider.) But we foresee another lengthy phone conversation after this latest news: Moose playing Geronimo on passing cars.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Alaska State Troopers see plenty of hazards, but Trooper Howard Peterson was nearly felled by a new one: falling moose. Peterson was driving Feb. 2 on the Seward Highway south of Anchorage when something big and black fell out of the sky about 20 feet in front of his patrol car. "Falling rock!" he thought, ready to steer clear if it bounced onto the highway.

The thing didn't roll or shatter. It turned out to be a moose that fell from cliffs next to the highway.

Drivers often see Dall sheep on the cliffs but rarely moose. Peterson estimates the animal fell 150 feet or more.

It was windy that night, Peterson said, and a gust may have startled the moose into a fatal fall.

"They occasionally have bad days like the rest of us," said wildlife biologist Rick Sinnott. "They slip and fall. Maybe he was reaching for a branch and the snow just gave way."

We'd only point out that it is slightly more than a bad day when you hurtle 150 feet or so and leave a crater with antlers. We're just saying. While normally we would have thought this might be Bullwinkle trying to upstage his lighter and more airworthy partner, Rocky, in this case, we're pretty sure Bullwinkle is holed up in Frostbite Falls.

It's too cold for flying lessons. 

The Clinton campaign appears to have gone into free fall. Her deputy campaign manager has just decided to spend more time with his family.

Mike Henry, deputy campaign manager for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) has resigned, according to a source familiar with the decision.

Henry tendered his resignation yesterday morning but worked the last two days on a volunteer basis. His departure is not entirely unexpected, as he was brought into the campaign by Patti Solis Doyle, who stepped down on Sunday.

In an e-mail sent to staff and obtained by The Fix, Henry writes: "As someone who has managed campaigns, I share the unique understanding of the challenges that the campaign will face over the next several weeks. Our campaign needs to move quickly to build a new leadership team, support them and their decisions and make the necessary adjustments to achieve the winning outcome for which we have all worked so hard for over a year now."

Off with their heads, shouted the Red Queen.  

Barack Obama has trounced Hillary Clinton yet again, this time in Virginia, 63-36% with 80% of precincts reporting. No numbers yet from Maryland or Washington, DC. The news is not as good for John McCain who won by a slimmer margin.

Obama had a substantial lead over Hillary Clinton in Virginia, and McCain was ahead of Mike Huckabee by about 7 points, according to CNN projections.

Polls in Maryland were supposed to close at 8 p.m. ET, but a judge extended voting for an extra 90 minutes due to icy roads and heavy turnout.

Polls in the District of Columbia closed at 8 p.m., but no results were available yet.

Obama's wins give him more delegates than Clinton for the first time since the Iowa caucuses. According to CNN calculations, Obama has 1,181 delegates to Clinton's 1,173.

To clinch the Democratic nomination, a candidate much get 2,025 delegates.

The Clinton campaign is collapsing while McCain is winning close decisions.  

The FBI has issued a warning about opening Valentine's Day emails that might contain e-cards that deliver a trojan worm to the recipient.

"If you unexpectedly receive a Valentine's Day e-card, be careful," the Federal Bureau of Investigation said in a statement, warning Internet users to "be on the lookout for spam emails spreading the Storm Worm malicious software (malware)."

"The Storm Worm virus has capitalized on various holidays in the last year by sending millions of emails advertising an e-card link within the text of the spam email. Valentine's Day has been identified as the next target," the FBI said.

The bogus email directs the recipient to click on a link to retrieve an electronic Valentine's Day card.

If the user falls for the ruse, malware will infect their computer or the device they used to connect to the Internet, and make it become part of a Storm Worm botnet, according to the FBI.

Very nice. Frankly, I never open anything like that (my wife doesn't send stuff like that, nor do I send any to her). It probably isn't a real good idea to open one even if you know the sender - because their machine might be infected and the greeting might be coming from the botnet. Kind of a sad state of affairs.  

Well, they won the fight for the title of Icebox of the Nation and then they won the record. It hit -40° F in International Falls, Minnesota yesterday. But no worries, it warmed all the way up to 18 later in the day. That would be a minus 18 , by the way.

MINNEAPOLIS - It lived up to its name: The temperature in International Falls fell to 40 below zero Monday, just a few days after the northern Minnesota town won a federal trademark making it officially the "Icebox of the Nation."

It was so cold that resident Nick McDougall couldn't get his car trunk to close after he got out his charger to kick-start his dead battery. By late morning, the temperature had risen all the way to 18 — below zero.

"This is about as cold as it gets, this is bad. There's no wind — it's just cold," said McDougall, 48, a worker at The Fisherman, a convenience store and gas station in the town on the Canadian border. "People just don't go out, unless you have to go to work."

Residents of the area use electric engine block heaters to keep their cars from freezing.

"You plug in your car, for sure, and you put the car in the garage if you can," McDougall said. His garage is full of other things, so he had to park outside — a "big mistake."

The previous record low for Feb. 11 in International Falls was 37 below, set in 1967, said meteorologist Mike Stewart at the weather service in Duluth.

The temperature also fell to 40 below in Embarrass, 80 miles southeast of International Falls. That's just one degree above the all-time record in Minneapolis, 250 miles to the south, that was set in January 1888, the weather service said.

The cold also caused many schools in Upstate New York to close or delay opening, so this arctic blast is spread out all along the norther tier of the country. There is another three feet of snow on the ground in my old stomping grounds in Oswego County, New York. (Dunno if they are experiencing any salt shortages there or not.) More brutal weather is hitting in Michigan (cold) and Missouri (ice storm). Accuweather is predicting ice and sleet reaching Virgini, Maryland and Washington, DC. Gee, that'll make today's primaries a lot of fun. Worst of all, another winter storm front is about to sweep down all the way to Texas, then march eastwards. 

General Motors is offering lucrative buyout plans to the entire unionized production workforce after posting a record loss. The $38.7 billion loss in 2007 is a record, 

 NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — General Motors posted better-than-expected financial results for the latest quarter, but indicated that its efforts to shave costs are not behind it as the automaker offered lucrative buyouts to 74,000 employees - its entire U.S. hourly workforce.

The nation's largest automaker reported improved fourth-quarter results from its overseas auto operations, which helped to balance out continued losses at its North American plants. But problems at finance unit GMAC, of which it still owns 49%, coupled with large charges taken in the third quarter related to tax credits, left GM with a company record $38.7 billion net loss for 2007.

Lucrative buyout packages are not new at GM (GM, Fortune 500) and other U.S. automakers such as Ford Motor (F, Fortune 500) and Chrysler LLC. GM offered similar deals to all its U.S. workers in 2006, as it sought to close plants and trim capacity to bring it in line with reduced demand for its products. That package helped it pare U.S. hourly employment by nearly 40,000 in the last two years.

But the latest range of offers to the remaining 74,000 GM workers represented by the United Auto Workers union is designed to allow the company to save money by paying new workers significantly less in pay and benefits than its current workforce, rather than lead to the large reduction in staffing sought in previous buyout packages.

The buyouts range up to $140,000 for a worker with ten years, half that for those with less seniority. GM expects to replace many of the workers with lower paid positions as negotiated with the UAW.

Vladimir Putin continues his determinined effort to bring back the Cold War. This time he sent Tupolev-95 Bear bombers to buzz the USS Nimitz at low levels.

Russia's Defense Ministry said Tuesday that there was no violation of flight regulations during the incident. A ministry official said the flights are standard operating procedure for air force training.

One of them twice flew about 2,000 feet over the deck of the USS Nimitz Saturday while another flew about 50 miles away, officials said. Two others were at least 100 miles away, the military reported.

U.S. defense officials said four F/A-18A fighter jets from the Nimitz were in the air.The Russians and the U.S. carrier did not exchange verbal communications.

Not good.  

The Telegraph is reporting the latest dire health warning. The canned meat product Spam causes fat Pacific Islanders.

It was lampooned by Monty Python and spurned by British shoppers, but Spam is fuelling a "raging epidemic" of diabetes, strokes and heart disease among the previously lithe inhabitants of the South Pacific.

Another of Britain's colonial culinary legacies - corned beef - is also being blamed for a rise in obesity-related illnesses in countries once known for muscled warriors and slim-hipped maidens.

Countries across the region - many of them former British territories, from Tonga to Tuvalu - are struggling to deal with a health crisis caused by poor diet and not enough exercise.

Where once islanders ate fish, vegetables and coconuts, burning off excess calories by casting nets from canoes and farming small plots of land, now they eat tinned, processed food and drive to the nearest shop.

Once confined to the South Pacific's somnolent capitals, the problem of obesity has now spread to outlying islands.

"Even if you go into a store in a remote village you'll find shelves of Spam and corned beef," said Dr Jan Pryor, the director of research at the Fiji School of Medicine.

"In the past it was unusual for anyone to have a stroke under 50, now people are having strokes in their twenties and thirties. You see it every day."

Buried in the alarmism is what is probably the root cause of the problem:

"When I was a child, there was less imported food, we would eat local food, which was high carbohydrate, low sugar and high fibre," said Dr Malokai Ake, the chief medical officer for public health in Tonga.

"We would walk or ride on a horse to work in the plantations and spend a lot of time fishing, swimming or diving.

"The amount of calories people have every day now, we used to only have on feast days."

Researchers have suggested Pacific Islanders have a genetic disposition to obesity. They say their metabolism has learned to cope over thousands of years with times of plenty and periods of famine by quickly storing surplus calories as body fat.

In other words, a genetic predisposition and a rapid change in lifestyle from an active one to a sedentary one. A couple of island nations have responded by banning some types of imported foods like sheep belly cuts called "mutton flaps" because they are so high in fat.  Spam isn't banned. Yet.

They're going to have to update the classics. No more vikings.