Saturday, June 13, 1998

Some British teenage hackers got into the Indian nuclear computers and erased a bunch of files and told them exactly what they thought of nuclear weapons.

Kenneth Starr finally admits that he regularly leaks to the press, but says it is necessary "to engender confidence in the work of this office." The interviews are of course on a not-for-attribution basis. I feel more confident already.

A racist party does very well indeed in the Queensland elections, as I'm sure you've all been following.

The US government finally apologizes and pays off those Japanese we kidnapped out of Latin American countries during World War II. Of course they only get one-fourth what Japanese-Americans got, and only when the latter are paid off, if there's any money left. But, hell, they were illegal aliens.

Jewish settlers on the West Bank are now to be allowed to form their own armed civil guard units.

Creepy medical procedure of the week: babies with two mommies for real. You take nutrient from the egg of a young woman and mix it in with the egg of an older woman, ensuring that 50-year olds can give birth, like that's a good idea. No one's quite sure how much of the DNA from the donor gets mixed in, but some of it definitely does. 2 women are pregnant by this technique now.

Republicans in the Senate are blocking a judge (big news there, huh?), one Sonia Sotomayor, a hispanic woman, for the 2nd Circuit. They can't find anything in her record to object to, but they're afraid that if she gets this slot, she'll be appointed to the Supreme Court by Clinton or Gore, and they don't want Dems to have any viable options for the Stevens seat (or whomever), especially a hispanic woman.

The Flemish regional government has voted to give state aid to Nazi collaborators on the same basis as war victims.

Ireland still has a list of banned books: H.G. Wells, Upton Sinclair, The Second Sex, Marie Stopes, etc etc. That may change this week.

Is everybody ready for another Balkans war? I thought not.

There are so many brushfire wars these days, I can't keep track of them all. Whatever happened to the Namibia-Botswana border dispute? What's going on in Kashmir? Start looking out now for the next one, Cyprus, due to commence sometime in July.
That offer everyone reported from that nice Mr. Habibie to give autonomy to East Timor? The price tag was that the UN, Portugal and everyone have to recognize that Indonesia owns it. No thanks.

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