the next 911 is brewing in Nigeria... but don't tell the American People... they don't want to hear that!

BBC NEWS | World | Africa | Profile: Nigeria's oil militant: "In November 1998, the IYC issued the 'Kiama Declaration', demanding control of the oil resources from the Niger Delta by the people of the Niger Delta.

There was an immediate crackdown on the body by the military junta that then ruled Nigeria.

Asari became President of the IYC in 2001 and immediately changed the slogan of the body to 'Resource Control and Self Determination By Every Means Necessary', signalling his readiness to do battle with the Nigerian state.

He condemned the 2003 elections, won by President Olusegun Obasanjo, as a fraud in full-page newspaper adverts, and promptly fell out with the governor of Rivers State.

Soft-spoken

Early this year, Asari took to the mangrove swamps of the Niger Delta and built up his now infamous Niger Delta People's Volunteer Force.

He launched a damaging military and propaganda war against the state and federal governments and those he described as their agents, prompting the government to initiate full-scale military operations against him.

Oilfields in Nigeria's Niger Delta
Asari says his people have not gained from the region's oil wealth
Even as he continued to fight against the government, Asari called for the convocation of a Sovereign National Conference to discuss the place of the Ijaw people in the country.

His recent threat to blow up oil facilities in the Niger Delta forced the government to open up negotiations with him"

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Heatwave makes plants warm planet

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Heatwave makes plants warm planet: "The really surprising finding came with the calculation that during the heatwave, European plants and their ecosystems were putting more carbon dioxide into the air than they were absorbing.

'In the past we expected that climate change would benefit European ecosystems because growth tends to be limited by the short growing season,' said Andrew Friend, 'but this analysis hadn't taken into account the possibility of extreme events.

'The conclusion of our study is that this extreme event meant a loss of carbon across Europe - a loss which undoes many years of net uptake.'

Plants can absorb and emit carbon dioxide and oxygen; the process of respiration takes oxygen in and releases CO2, whereas in photosynthesis, the reverse happens.

Other parts of the ecosystem such as soil bacteria can also contribute to the overall flow of these gases to and from the atmosphere.

During an average year, the net effect is that European plants absorb around 125 million tonnes of carbon (MtC).

But in 2003, according to this analysis, they released 500 MtC to the atmosphere."

America: DOMINATED BY RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISTS!!

Challenged by Creationists, Museums Answer Back - New York Times: "Dr. Allmon, who directs the Paleontological Research Institution, an affiliate of Cornell University, began the training session here in September with statistics from Gallup Polls: 54 percent of Americans do not believe that human beings evolved from earlier species, and although almost half believe that Darwin has been proved right, slightly more disagree.

'Just telling them they are wrong is not going to be effective,' he said.

Instead, he told the volunteers that when they encounter religious fundamentalists they should emphasize that science museums live by the rules of science. They seek answers in nature to questions about nature, they look for explanations that can be tested by experiment and observation in the material world, and they understand that all scientific knowledge is provisional - capable of being overturned when better answers are discovered."