Chimp, White Tiger Become Best Friends

Loving Anjana cradles the white tiger cub after acting as surrogate mother to him and his twin brother.

And the two-year-old chimpanzee clearly isn't monkeying around, she has also raised LEOPARDS and LIONS.

Read the full story here.

See more photos here.

Rain or Shine

Saturday evening in Fredricksburg, Virginia, despite rain, Obama and Biden join 26,000 people for a rally. The following reports are by an NBC affiliate and a FOX affiliate, respectively, reporting on the rally and interviewing the many veterans for Obama/Biden.





Front-page of Free-Lance Star:


Slideshow:

Science Visualized As Art: 2008 Winning Images

The New Scientist has a gallery of gorgeous images that visualize science as artwork. The images are the winners of the 2008 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge: "The awards are given to the best photographs, illustrations and interactive media that visualize science and technology."

Scroll down to see some of this year's winners (see the whole gallery here).

"Squid Suckers: The Little Monsters That Feed the Beast, awarded an Honorable Mention in Photography, is a false-colour microscope image of the suction cups on the arm of the Loligo pealei squid. The 400 micrometer suckers have chitin "fangs" and were photographed by Jessica D. Schiffman and Caroline L. Schauer, Drexel University."

"Mad Hatter's Tea, winner of the Informational Graphics award, is taken from a book called Alice's Adventures in a Microscopic Wonderland. Colleen Champ and Dennis Kunkel, at Concise Image Studios, carefully built scenes from Lewis Carroll's story using microscope images of insects and other small animals."

"The Glass Forest, winner of the photography prize, depicts a community of microscopic diatoms - unicellular algae with a peculiar glass-like cell wall - attached to a marine invertebrate (Eudendrium racemosum). Mario De Stefano, 2nd University of Naples, captured the image with a scanning electron microscope."

Bruno at it Again!

Comedian Sacha Baron Cohen caused another security alert when he stormed the catwalk at Milan Fashion Week.

Cohen interrupted the fashion show of designer Agatha Ruiz de la Prada in Milan making it onto the catwalk dressed as his Austrian model Bruno. Dressed in a black cloak, and a bizarre bundle of clothing, Cohen strutted down the catwalk past the shows' models.

But the police were called when he refused to leave to restore order.

Scantily clad models screamed and security guards dived on him and several others with him and bundled them away. TV footage screened on Italian TV showed Cohen dressed as his creation Bruno, a flamboyant Austrian fashionista.

Cohen is in Milan working on a new film called Bruno: Delicious Journeys Through America for the Purpose of Making Heterosexual Male.

Truth Test: Lincoln Diaz-Balart Ad Makes Claims About Raul Martinez

MIAMI -- A new 30-second political ad from the campaign of incumbent Republican Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart makes claims about his opponent that are factually correct, but not the whole story.

The spot opens with images of a mug shot of former Hialeah Mayor Raul Martinez taken after his 1990 indictment on bribery and extortion charges.

“Convictions from bribery and extortion,” says the announcer over images of 1991 headlines from the Miami Herald and Chicago Tribune.

The conviction headlines are authentic, but the ad does not show the headlines that followed. Martinez won an appeal. His convictions were overturned. And in 1996, a jury acquitted Martinez on one of the corruption charges and hung on the others. Martinez, under U.S. law, is innocent until proven guilty.

The spot alleges Martinez used his public office to become “a millionaire." The context, according to the Diaz-Balart campaign, is back pay and legal fees the Hialeah City Council voted to grant then-Mayor Martinez after his acquittal.

Legally, Martinez was entitled to those. Martinez recently said he also made money during his mayoral tenure from real estate to supplement his city salary.

The Diaz-Balart campaign insinuates Martinez was involved in the drug trade in the 1980s.

"Martinez is featured in the investigative documentary ‘Cocaine Cowboys’ about drug trafficking in South Florida," the announcer says.

The statement is false, according to the dictionary definition of “feature” as “main attraction." Martinez appears in exactly two seconds of the two-hour film in a clip that has nothing to do with drugs. [Local10]

Barack Obama's New Ad

This spot, which lasts two-minutes, takes no shots at McCain. Instead it defines Obama's Plan for Change. A two-minute ad will consume many expensive points to play around the country and as many political strategist know, it takes at least five views to make the ad sticky in the mind of a voter. Well worth it I believe. Lately I've been throwing around the same idea on the premise that a longer ad will catch the voters by surprise and delight that a politician isn't just throwing catchy phrases and potshots, instead taking the time and money to reveal a more thorough explanation of their views and values. 

Hawkish GOP Delegate with His Pants Down

Reported by Pioneer Press

He met her in the bar of the swank hotel and invited her to his room. Once there, the woman fixed the drinks and told him to get undressed.

And that, the delegate to the Republican National Convention told police, was the last thing he remembered.

When he awoke, the woman was gone, as was more than $120,000 in money, jewelry and other belongings.

The thief’s take stunned cops.

“It’s very, very, very rare,” Minneapolis Police Sgt. William Palmer said. “I can think of a couple of burglaries where we had that much stolen, but it’s the first time I’ve heard of this kind of deal.”

The Pioneer Press posted the following video which includes intelligent statements what makes you consider, “How could this happen to him?” Including how the US should “bomb the hell out of [Iran].” When asked how the US would pay for such a strike, he continues, “We should plant a flag, take the oil, take the money. We deserve reimbursement.”

What’s Spanish for ‘Lies’?

Senator John McCain’s truth-deficient campaign hit another low last Friday with a fraudulent new ad, this time about immigration.

The ad, in Spanish, accuses Senator Barack Obama and his Congressional allies of killing immigration reform.

It’s a gross distortion.

Here is an English translation:

Announcer: Obama and his Congressional allies say they are on the side of immigrants. But are they?

The press reports that their efforts were “poison pills” that made immigration reform fail.

The result:

No guest worker program.

No path to citizenship.

No secure borders.

No reform.

Is that being on our side?

Obama and his Congressional allies ready to block immigration reform, but not ready to lead.

John McCain: I’m John McCain and I approve this message.

Block immigration reform? The Democrats?

Mr. Obama opposing a path to citizenship?

Welcome to the night-is-day, down-is-up, world of the McCain campaign.

Some history:

Last year’s Senate immigration bill was a big, fat compromise that had a lot in it to please both sides in the debate. Among other things, it added tough layers of enforcement at the border and in the workplace, and included a (long and torturous) path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.

The bill was a right-of-center compromise. Back in the day, Mr. McCain — who once drafted a comprehensive immigration bill with Senator Edward Kennedy — would have led the charge for a bill like this. Back when he was still an independent thinker on immigration.

But by the time this bill came along, Mr. McCain was eager to win over the right-wing base of his party, which has never trusted him on immigration (or a number of other issues). Rather than continue to play the maverick, Mr. McCain largely absented himself from negotiations — and slipped meekly back into the herd.

The bill that emerged from that process was a mess. Advocates of comprehensive reform held their noses and supported it, hoping it could be improved in conference. Republicans attacked it, egged on by talk-radio hosts waging an all-out assault on what they called an “amnesty bill.”

Hundreds of amendments were proposed to kill it or improve it, depending on your point of view, and some were called “poison pills” by the “grand bargainers” who had assembled the unwieldy compromise.

So, here is what that misleading Spanish ad is referring to.

Mr. Obama supported an amendment from Senator Byron Dorgan, backed by unions, that would have phased out a guest-worker program after five years. The amendment passed, 49 to 48, but it was no poison pill.

“Not one member of Congress stood up and said, ‘I’m voting against the bill because of that Dorgan amendment,’” said Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, an organization supporting comprehensive immigration reform. “It’s preposterous. Not even close.”

In the end, it wasn’t that amendment or any others supported by Mr. Obama that caused the fragile coalition to fall apart. The bill was killed by Mr. McCain’s party. Its supporters were hoping to attract 25 to 30 Republican votes, but they could only round up 12, in the wake of all of those right-wing attacks.

Mr. McCain once was a moderate on immigration — and steadfast. Now he’s slippery. Marching in step with the Lou Dobbs crowd, he talks of border security first and foremost. He says he would have voted againsthis own McCain-Kennedy bill. He leads a party whose convention platform pushes a hard restrictionist line.

But at the same time Mr. McCain panders to Latino immigrants, in Spanish, accusing Mr. Obama of not being on “our side” — the pro-amnesty side.

Does this mean that Mr. McCain truly regrets the demise of the “path to citizenship”? That he really supports it, and will push for it harder than Mr. Obama will? Is he willing to stand up to his own party on that?

If he is, let’s hear him say so — in English, too. [NYTimes]

New Joe Garcia Ad: "93%"

Obama Ad Targets McCain's "Vile," "Truth Be Damned" Distortions

Greenspan: No McCain tax cuts without reduction

WASHINGTON (AP) — Alan Greenspan says the country can’t afford tax cuts of the magnitude proposed by Republican presidential contender John McCain — at least not without a corresponding reduction in government spending.

“Unless we cut spending, no,” the former Federal Reserve chairman said Friday when asked about McCain’s proposed tax cuts, pegged in some estimates at $3.3 trillion.

“I’m not in favor of financing tax cuts with borrowed money,” Greenspan said during an interview with Bloomberg Television. “I always have tied tax cuts to spending.”

Speed-campaigning... all your negative ads in 5 seconds

US Poll Says Miami Residents 'Most Attractive'

As if the nice weather and sandy beaches weren't enough to put Miami residents in a good mood, they were called the nation's "most attractive" by a new poll released on Friday.

According to an online survey of "America's Favorite Cities" by Travel + Leisure magazine, Florida's metropolis has the most beautiful people, while Philadelphia came in last at No. 25.

"I'm not surprised at all, but I'm not in that group" joked Bill Talbert, president of the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau, about the city's attractive people rating.

San Diego ranked No. 2 on the survey followed by Austin, Charleston and Honolulu.

The online survey of 125,000 people ranked 25 U.S. cities in 45 categories ranging from most affordable to friendliest people.

In 2008, Miami was ranked as "America's Cleanest City" by Forbes Magazine for its year-round good air quality, vast green spaces, clean drinking water, clean streets and citywide recycling programs.

Travel + Leisure Magazine's Rankings:

1. Miami
2. San Diego
3. Austin
4. Charleston
5. Honolulu
6. Los Angeles
7. San Francisco
8. Minneapolis/St. Paul
9. New York
10. Denver
11. Phoenix/Scottsdale
12. Las Vegas
13. Portland, Ore.
14. Seattle
15. Nashville
16. Chicago
17. Boston
18. Dallas/Fort Worth
19. Sante Fe
20. San Antonio
21. Washington, D.C.
22. Orlando
23. Atlanta
24. New Orleans
25. Philadelphia

[Local10]

The Thrasher Residence in Los Angeles, California

This home sits on its perch among the bird themed streets of the Hollywood Hills overlooking Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles.  From its unassuming entrance at 9191 Thrasher Avenue, it welcomes visitors into a 5 bedroom/5 bathroom home of contemporary luxury with features that include polished concrete floors, 13 foot ceilings, and a large terrace with stunning city views.

Back in June, the home was listed for sale at $12.85 million, but according to MLS, it has recently been reduced to $10.5 million. Bennett Carr is the agent, visit his website - here.

More Pictures...

Cuba: Thanks but no thanks.

The Cuban government rejected the U.S. State Department's offer to send a disaster relief team to western Cuba to assess damages from last week's Hurricane Gustav, the Cuban government announced in a statement by the Foreign Ministry Saturday.

   Four days after Hurricane Gustav trounced western Cuba, the U.S. State Department offered $100,000 in aid through nongovernmental groups and offered to send a disaster assessment team. The offer came verbally from Thomas Shannon, assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs to the head of the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, the Cuban government said.

   On Saturday morning, the Cuban government responded: no thanks, lift the U.S. embargo instead.

"Cuba does not need a humanitarian evaluation group to evaluate the damages and needs, since it already has sufficient specialists who have practically concluded said work,'' the Cuban government said in a statement posted Saturday on the Cubadebate web site. "We request that the government allow the sale to Cuba of indispensable materials and suspend restrictions which impede American companies from offering our country private commercial credits to buy food in the United States.''

The statement pointed out that even Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama publicly said that the restrictions on family travel and remittances to the island should be lifted for at least 90 days in wake of the widespread damages in western Cuba.

The only ethical and moral thing to do, Cuba said, would be to lift the U.S. trade embargo, the statement said.

- Frances Robles

[Cuban Colada]