News Thread

[Heretic]

RIP Walt Cronkite, and RIP Henry Allingham, the world's oldest man.

[Siege]

Well, well, well...

Let me just provide the headline here:

Blizzard Entertainment® and Legendary Pictures Sign Sam Raimi to Direct Upcoming Warcraft® Movie

[Shroom Man 777]

Aw man. When will we ever get them fringe world yokels who don't know where their loyalties lie...?

[Peregrin]

To paraphrase Neil Armstrong (well, it is the 40th anniversary of the Moon Landing): One small step for Sam Raimi, one giant step for movies based on videogames!

This also marks the second time a dude who got famous doing low-budget splatter movies gets to make a big prestigious fantasy epic. What's next, Eli Roth adapting Gormenghast for the silver screen? (well, I remember that Neil Marshall was at some point in talks to make a new Conan the Barbarian movie)

[Invictus]

Putin finds another excuse to lose his shirt.

[Shroom Man 777]

In Russia, they reinforce Mr Putin's image as a man many men aspire to be, and - as a recent pop song suggested - many women aspire to be with.

I aspire to be, and be with, Putin.

[Malchus]

I want to be Putin so I can screw myself.

Fixed for ya, mang.

[Heretic]

RIP Edward Kennedy, though I barely knew you.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090826/us_nm/us_kennedy

[Shroom Man 777]

Kennedy's dedication as he worked to protect civil rights, give federal help to the poor, contain the spread of nuclear weapons, raise the minimum wage, expand health coverage and improve America's schools.

He drew praise from liberals, labor and civil rights groups and scorn from conservatives, big business and anti-abortion and pro-gun activists. His image was often used by Republicans in ads as a money-raising tool.

He sounds like a stand up guy. So, yeah, he'll be missed.

[Magister Militum]

And so ends America's greatest political dynasty. Farewell, Ted Kennedy.

[Shroom Man 777]

Someone got stabbed to death at a place where I go to sometimes. I was at the same mall hours ago, that day. Mang.

[Heretic]

Man, you're lucky.

[calanoria]

Good for him.

[Shroom Man 777]

ELSEWHERE IN THE PHILIPPINES

We've had excellent weather, but in other places they're apparently getting flooded. And while some other times we get stuff like day-offs because of "bad weather", we end up with modest weather while other people get landslides and other horrible things. It's always like that...

Man, Cebu is awesome.

[Shroom Man 777]

In Manila, there is a thick coating of mud over everything the flood submerged


A thick layer of mud covers everything in Provident Village, Marikina City, one of the areas in the Philippine capital worst hit by the flooding.

The Marikina River broke its banks here and within minutes the streets became rivers, washing away everything in their path, destroying homes and businesses.

The water has receded but it has left behind cars turned upside down or tumbled one on top of another. Other vehicles have been picked up and flung into trees and buildings.

Debris from the flood is trapped in the overhead cables, showing how deep the water was at the height of the storm.

A bridge now high above the river which backs onto the main St Mary's Street, was clearly under water - its barrier is bent out of shape and the concrete has been damaged by the force of the water.

Focus on food

Despite the rain showers, which are still heavy if intermittent, hundreds of people are coming and going, trudging through the mud in flip flops or bare feet, collecting whatever they can from their shops and homes.

Almost 500,000 people fled as the worst of the storm hit on Saturday morning, but Defence Secretary Gilbert Teodoro said they were now dealing with 60,000 displaced people.

"Relief efforts are going on at this time. We are trying to push basic needs out to the people as efficiently as we can," he said.

"The search and rescue effort in general is over, but we can't help to respond to calls - water levels rose again this afternoon, but the focus is on food, water, clothing and medicine."

Brand new rubber boats were being unwrapped and loaded onto military trucks at the bustling National Disaster Management Centre, but two helicopters remained on the ground for the time being, although they have been used to deliver aid.

'Scary storm'

A huge amount of water was dropped on Manila in just a few hours and it was the speed of the flood which took most people by surprise.
Many residents are angered by the slow pace of rescue and relief efforts


The local name for the typhoon was Ondoy (the international name was Ketsana). This is the season for tropical storms, and people here are used to them, but the intensity of the rainfall caught them unaware.

We spoke to Peggy Lotho, a 40-year-old mother of two who ran a women's clothes shop on St Mary's Street.

She was hosing down the mud and trying to salvage what she could. She said she had lost everything in the shop.

"When the storm hit it was scary - we could hear people shouting for help but couldn't get to them.

"All you can do is to pray and ask God for help. All these shops are retail, and we were not able to save anything. The things that we do have left are a mess," she said.

Video.

I have never seen anything like this happen in the Philippines before. Normally you see these kinds of things happen in horrible places like America, with those hurricanes and flooded cities and stuff, but for all the storms and stuff we've had, it's never been like this. Man, I don't think something like that has ever happened to Manila before - at least, not that HUEG.

On the news, there was this video of a bunch of people who were literally RIDING their houses because their houses were just huts and the remains of their rickety wooden houses were flowing downstream. The video just showed that, but my dad told me that those people riding the floating remains of their wooden houses being carried downstream fast ended up getting carried to a bridge and when they hit it... they went under the bridge and died.

Here it is.

Here is a video of stills, check 1:44.

Holy shit.

[Siege]

Man, that sucks. The Philippines just can't seem to catch a break...

[Shroom Man 777]

Well, that's the third world for you. Them's the breaks.

[Shroom Man 777]

Shit. Aiurz, Graf and Levi! I hope you guys are alright!

[Invictus]

BARACK OBAMA WINS 2009 NOBEL PEACE PRIZE

Woah, already?

[Shroom Man 777]

It doesn't matter if its too early for him to win the prize, or if he's too black or if he's too muslim or anything. I think Europe and the Rest of the World should continue to troll Spartafreedomerica and the retardo Republicunts - because Europe and the Rest of the World are America's greatest enemies!

[Shroom Man 777]

Goddamn it! For the love of fuck!

MANILA (Reuters) – Armed mountain tribesmen raided an elementary school in the southern Philippines on Thursday and took at least 55 children and teachers hostage, authorities said.

The kidnappings come just after a massacre in a nearby province in which 57 people were killed, raising tensions ahead of presidential elections next year.

The hostages were being held in a mountainous area near Prosperidad town in Agusan del Sur province, officials said.

Police said the gunmen had abducted 75 people but later freed 18 of the victims, including 17 children, while two others escaped.

Authorities described the gunmen as bandits and said there were no demands as yet. Some officials said they could have taken hostages because they were being boxed in by police.

"There are ongoing negotiations headed by the head of the provincial social welfare office," Lino Calingasan, regional police chief, told reporters.

"We're not aware of any motive for the abduction but the armed men had demanded to keep soldiers and police officers out from the area."

Last month, 57 people, including 30 journalists, were killed after they were stopped at a checkpoint in Maguindanao province, also in the southern Philippines, while on their way to file a candidate's nomination for elections next year.

The mass killings led to a crackdown in the generally lawless southern Philippines and the imposition of martial law in Maguindanao last week.

On Thursday, teachers and students were preparing for the start of classes in Prosperidad when armed Manobo tribesmen took them away to a forested area, Lieutenant-General Raymundo Ferrer said.

"We've sent troops to help rescue the hostages," Ferrer told Reuters. He said the men had been blamed for several robberies and killings in the area.

"We are not aware of any political demands but negotiations are now ongoing to free the hostages that include two forest rangers and some of the parents who were in the school at that time. We're only playing a support role there."

Jesus Christ. WHY? WHY? WHY?! Fucking hell!

[Shroom Man 777]

PROSPERIDAD, Philippines (AFP) - – Tribal gunmen in the southern Philippines on Sunday released 47 hostages they had been holding for three days, after authorities agreed not to arrest them and animals were sacrificed.

The ending to the ordeal was a rare piece of good news for the lawless south, following a political massacre last month that left 57 people dead and the beheading of a man last week in an unrelated abduction.

The vice governor of Agusan del Sur, where the mass kidnapping took place, told reporters that government negotiators had signed a deal not to arrest the kidnappers, a key factor in ending the stand-off.

"Yes at last! Yahoo!," vice governor Santiago Cane said in a mobile phone text message to the media after he picked up the hostages from the gunmen's hideout in a cleared patch of jungle on a mountaintop.

The hostages, aged 17 to 62, were driven down the mountain in an army truck to a hospital in Prosperidad, the provincial capital, looking weary.

"Thank you very much, thank you very much," one of the hostages said in front of reporters before military escorts took him and others away for medical check-ups and a debriefing.

Cane and other government officials had earlier Sunday met kidnap leader Ondo Perez in a restaurant to broker a deal after the hostages had spent three nights sleeping outside at the gunmen's lair.

In a more bizarre effort to placate the kidnappers, negotiators also Sunday brought in tribal leaders to sacrifice animals as part of a ritual demanded by Perez in overnight talks.

One black pig and three chickens were slaughtered, while 10 boiled eggs and 10 bottles of local wine were offered to the gods.

After the ceremony, Cane took Perez to a local restaurant where he met in private with Governor Valentina Plaza and the deal was struck to give the kidnappers immunity from police action.

"All members of (the government) crisis committee signed a document in front of Perez where they stated that all members of the group won't be arrested or detained," Cane said.

Instead, the issue will be referred to elders of Perez's Manobo tribe for settlement -- which is allowed under local laws governing indigenous groups in the Philippines.

Perez and his band of 13 gunmen, former communist guerrillas and members of the mountain-dwelling Manobo tribe, raided a school in a small farming village in Mindanao's Agusan valley region on Thursday, taking 75 hostages.

Twenty-eight hostages, including 18 children, were later freed and Perez had said the rest would follow on Sunday. But this was delayed by negotiations over his various demands.

The kidnapping appeared to have been driven by a feud between rival families within the Manobo tribe.

Perez had demanded that Calpito Icuag, a senior member of the rival family, have his bodyguards disarmed. He also demanded the arrest of another clan member, Joel Tubay.

The governor had assured him that Icuag's bodyguards had already turned over their guns to the military, and that a special task force was hunting Tubay, a government spokesman said.

Tubay, who has an outstanding arrest warrant for murder, remained in hiding and had refused to turn himself in.

In addition, Perez wanted murder charges against him dropped.

It was not immediately clear if those charges had been dropped as part of the deal that set the hostages free.

The southern Philippines' Mindanao region -- where Muslim and communist insurgents mix with warring clans, pirates and corrupt officials -- is infamous for its lawless nature.

But the recent explosion of violence in Mindanao has shocked the country.

President Gloria Arroyo lifted martial law over Maguindanao, another province in the region, on Saturday after eight days of emergency rule triggered by the massacre last month of 57 people.

The massacre was allegedly carried out by the heads of a Muslim clan that had ruled the area since 2001.

Meanwhile, Al Qaeda-linked militants on the island of Basilan are still holding three hostages after beheading another captive on Wednesday.

[Shroom Man 777]

Russia versus Outer Space

MOSCOW – Russia's space agency chief said Wednesday a spacecraft may be dispatched to knock a large asteroid off course and reduce the chances of earth impact, even though U.S. scientists say such a scenario is unlikely.

Anatoly Perminov told Golos Rossii radio the space agency would hold a meeting soon to assess a mission to Apophis. He said his agency might eventually invite NASA, the European Space Agency, the Chinese space agency and others to join the project.

When the 270-meter (885-foot) asteroid was first discovered in 2004, astronomers estimated its chances of smashing into Earth in its first flyby, in 2029, at 1-in-37.

Further studies have ruled out the possibility of an impact in 2029, when the asteroid is expected to come no closer than 18,300 miles (29,450 kilometers) from Earth's surface, but they indicated a small possibility of a hit on subsequent encounters.

NASA had put the chances that Apophis could hit Earth in 2036 as 1-in-45,000. In October, after researchers recalculated the asteroid's path, the agency changed its estimate to 1-in-250,000.

NASA said another close encounter in 2068 will involve a 1-in-330,000 chance of impact.

Don Yeomans, who heads NASA's Near-Earth Object Program, said better calculations of Apophis' path in several years "will almost certainly remove any possibility of an Earth collision" in 2036.

"While Apophis is almost certainly not a problem, I am encouraged that the Russian science community is willing to study the various deflection options that would be available in the event of a future Earth threatening encounter by an asteroid," Yeomans said in an e-mail Wednesday.

Without mentioning NASA's conclusions, Perminov said that he heard from a scientist that Apophis is getting closer and may hit the planet. "I don't remember exactly, but it seems to me it could hit the Earth by 2032," Perminov said.

"People's lives are at stake. We should pay several hundred million dollars and build a system that would allow us to prevent a collision, rather than sit and wait for it to happen and kill hundreds of thousands of people," Perminov said.

Scientists have long theorized about asteroid deflection strategies. Some have proposed sending a probe to circle around a dangerous asteroid to gradually change its trajectory. Others suggested sending a spacecraft to collide with the asteroid and alter its momentum, or hitting it with nuclear weapons.

Perminov wouldn't disclose any details of the project, saying they still need to be worked out. But he said the mission wouldn't require any nuclear explosions.

Hollywood action films "Deep Impact" and "Armageddon," have featured space missions scrambling to avoid catastrophic collisions. In both movies, space crews use nuclear bombs in an attempt to prevent collisions.

"Calculations show that it's possible to create a special purpose spacecraft within the time we have, which would help avoid the collision," Perminov said. "The threat of collision can be averted."

Boris Shustov, the director of the Institute of Astronomy under the Russian Academy of Sciences, hailed Perminov's statement as a signal that officials had come to recognize the danger posed by asteroids.

"Apophis is just a symbolic example, there are many other dangerous objects we know little about," he said, according to RIA Novosti news agency.

[Magister Militum]

Leave it to the Russians to pick a fight with something that has a 1 in 250,000 of hitting us in 26 years.

[Shroom Man 777]

Well, now that Obama's not being a rabid Russophobe, the Russians have to act angry and threatening and saber-rattling towards something - and threatening to blow up an asteroid is awesome.

I mean, shit. Come on. The Russians are totally like angry at everyone.

They hate the Germans because of WW2 and because post-war, the US and the West made nice with fucking SS war criminals.

They hate the Japanese because they also fucked around in WW2 and in the Russian-Japanese war before hand.

They also hate the Chinese because of past conflicts in Manchuria, and because of the Sino Soviet Split.

They hate the Ukranians because they seceded, so they poisoned whatshisname with Polonium.

They hate America because of the Cold War.

They hate the French because of Napoleon.

They hate the Mongolians because of Genghis Khan.

They hate the Georgians because the leader of Georgia is a tie-chewing dick.

They even hate the Philippines because it was a Filipino delegate in the UN who pissed Khrushchev off, which led him to slam his shoe on the table!

So, the Russians hate asteroids because in 1908, an asteroid exploded in Siberia! Tunguska!

Jesus Christ, there's nobody the Russians don't hate!

God, I love Russians. They're so spiteful. The only reason they rebuilt their economy after the post-Soviet shitening is because they want to fuck with people!

EDIT:

I mean, shit, they even hate the (general) winter which is why the KGB/FSB hacked into those climate scientists' email files! The Russians want to discredit the climate scientists and get people to ignore climate change and promote Global Warming because they hate planet Earth!