Odds n’ Ends #11

1. Israel's Outgoing Leader Says Israel Must Give Up Virtually All of the Land It Won in the 1967 '6-Day War', in an attempt to trade land for peace. http://news.yahoo.com/s/usnews/20081002/ts_usnews/stunningwordsfromisraelslameduckleader;_ylt=Aigze_d1gvzZcO08xI0zQius0NUE; Outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made his "stunning" comments this past Thursday. "What I'm telling you now has never been said by an Israeli leader before me," Olmert told journalists from Yediot Aharonot, the country's largest newspaper, in a lengthy pre-Rosh Hashana interview.
   

   
    

   Technically, he's right; no previous Israeli premier ever publicly stated his willingness to sign peace treaties that gave the Palestinians "almost all...if not all" (other reports place this at over 98% of what was gained by the 6-Day War) of the West Bank, including Arab East Jerusalem, as well as the entire Golan Heights to Syria. And on the subject of Iran, Olmert didn't explicitly rule out an attack on its nuclear facilities, but implicitly, he did.
   

   
    

2. California Next? http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE49229820081003; SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has told U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson that the most populous U.S. state may need the federal government to buy $7 billion of debt the state is unable to sell due to weak credit markets- and that California may not be alone.
   

 

1. The 5 Diseases We Should Most Worry About. http://www.popsci.com/melinda-wenner/gallery/2008-09/five-diseases-you-should-worry-about;
   

   Malaria is still listed as the number 1 threat with a continued Death Toll of 1 million + per year;
   

   Small Pox is listed as the second most dangerous threat because it could possibly be used by Bio-Terrorists. In the 1960's 2 million people were killed by Small pox per year;
   

   Ebola is also included in this list because it has a Kill Rate of between 50%-90% (!!); Check out the full list at the link shown above.
   

   
    

2. In Russia, 64% of Pregnancies End in Abortion. http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/oct/08100103.html; ST. PETERSBURG, September 31, 2008 (LifeSIteNews.com) – Alarmingly high abortion rates in Russia are leaving an increasing number of women infertile, said Marina Tarasova, deputy head of the St. Petersburg Research Institute For Gynecology and Obstetrics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, at an international conference on Monday.
   

 

1. Animal Footprints Found and Dated Before the Cambrian Explosion. http://www.world-science.net/othernews/081005_prints; Faint, fossilized tracks of an ancient aquatic creature suggests animals walked using legs at least 30 million years earlier than had been thought, some scientists say. But they admit the lack of a fossil of the creature itself will probably foster a healthy skepticism, and that researchers will need to look for additional evidence.
   

   
    

   The tracks two parallel rows of small dots, each about two millimeters wide are dated to some 570 million years ago, to a period called the Ediacaran. That preceded the Cambrian period, when most major groups of animals evolved.
   
   Scientists once thought that mainly microbes and simple multi-cellular animals existed before the Cambrian, but that idea is changing, said Loren Babcock, professor of earth sciences at Ohio State University.
   

   
    

   Tom's Note – Something is wrong here. Is it the dating method used by these goofballs? Is it the whole idea of the 'Cambrian Explosion' being so offensive to the atheistic worldview of some scientists that they are trying to tear it down with weak evidence. Stay tuned to this one…