Brian

National – Last week, six nuclear warheads were mistakenly flown over several States from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisianna for decommissioning. The crew onboard the plane did not realize they were carrying the warheads. Not only does this seem to have violated a dated cold-war era treaty agreement not to fly nuclear weapons, but it created an outrage among military officials and US citizens alike. Despite this, the experts say that a nuclear detonation could not have resulted from the incident. Not even from a possible crash. The incident has resulted in a squad commander being relieved of duty, and prompted close inspections of the military’s nuclear inventory.

Opinion – I don’t think this was too big of a deal. I suppose it could have been, but it sounds like it’s been handled pretty well. However, It does make me kind of curious how many nuclear warheads we currently have in the US. Also, if it was so easy for the military to lose track of those missles, how easy might it have been for them to be stolen? Highly unlikely I would guess, but they did lose track of six of them.


National – A woman who registered her dog to vote last year has recently avoided jail and was let off with a fine and community service. Jane Balogh, a sixty-six year old woman from Seattle, registered her dog, Duncan M. McDonald, using a telephone bill she had put in the dogs name as identification. She did all this in order to protest a change in the law which she thought made it easy for noncitizens to vote. When sent the first ballot she wrote VOID across it and put a paw print for the signature. When the election offical called she confessed to what she had done, but she was still sent more absentee ballots.

Opinion – This is pretty funny. It sounds like a dumb thing to do in order to protest, but it worked. All she had to do was pay a fine and she got her story in the associated press. Pretty clever. I wonder what the law was that made it easy for noncitizens to vote. That seems like it would be a problem, but the article didn’t have much to say along those lines.

International – Another Starbucks opened this morning. In Moscow. It’s not much of a surprise, but it is the first Starbucks to be opened in Russia. The opening was a low-profile one, and the coffee-shop is meant as a test of the reaction to this different way of drinking coffee. In Moscow, cafes are primarily sit-down places where people are served and don’t have to wait in line. People don’t usually get coffee-to-go. Another issue is that all Starbucks stores are non-smoking. Many Russian coffee drinkers aren’t. However, the new Starbucks is making the concessions of adding a mug to their three-sizes of cups and an outside veranda where people can smoke. Starbucks is simply following the lead of other big-name American restaurant franchises such as KFC and McDonald’s, and will most likely do well in new territory.

Opinion – It’s kind of scary how big some of these franchises are getting. It seems every time a Starbucks opens in another country the world gets smaller. But I suppose there’s lots of money to be made. I wonder why we don’t get more foreign restaurant franchises in America, or if we do, what are they?

International – It’s been a while since much has been heard about Osama bin Laden, three years to be exact, but an Islamic militant website has been advertising that a new bin Laden video is due to be released for the sixth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The government expects it to show up sometime around 72 hours before the 11th. What he says may determine whether there is any immediate threat of attacks. An interesting thing to note is that with the announcement for the video came a still from the footage in which bin Laden seems to have dyed his beard black (a popular practice among Islamic leaders). It used to be mostly gray, but the black beard makes him appear younger and healthier. However, the 9/ll date is a popular time for terrorist groups to send out messages, and no attacks are currently suspected.

Opinion – I don’t think bin Laden has too much he can do since he’s been hiding for such a long time, but it will be interesting to find out what his video message has to say. I wonder what goes on in his head. Does a person like that ever regret what they’ve done or question if it really was “right”? Anyhow, the video just seems like more propaganda to me.