WASHINGTON—Government agents hired to drive nuclear weapons and components in trucks sometimes got drunk on the job, including an incident last year when two agents were detained by police at a local bar during a convoy mission, according to a report Monday by the U.S. Energy Department's watchdog.

The department's assistant inspector general, Sandra D. Bruce, said her office reviewed 16 alcohol-related incidents involving agents, candidate-agents and others from the government's Office of Secure Transportation between 2007 through 2009. There are nearly 600 federal agents who ship nuclear weapons, weapon components and special nuclear material across the U.S.

The report said two incidents in particular raised red flags because they happened during "secure transportation missions,'' with agents checked into local hotels and vehicles in "safe harbor," or secure conditions.

One of those occurred in 2007, when an agent was arrested for public intoxication; the other happened last year, when police handcuffed and temporarily detained two agents after an incident at a local bar.

Nuclear-Weapons Drivers Drank on Job, Report Says

AS the sun rose over the mountains circling Los Reyes, a town in the Mexican state of Michoacán, one morning in March 2009, a caravan of more than 300 heavily armed law enforcement agents set out on a raid.

All but the lead vehicle turned off their headlights to evade lookouts, called “falcons,” who work for La Familia Michoacana, the brutal Mexican cartel that controls the drug trade. This time, the police weren’t hunting for a secret stash of drugs, guns or money. Instead, they looked to crack down on La Familia’s growing counterfeit software ring.

The police reached the house undetected, barreled in and found rooms crammed with about 50 machines used to copy CDs and make counterfeit versions of software like Microsoft Office and Xbox video games. They arrested three men on the spot, who were later released while the authorities investigate the case. “The entire operation was very complicated and risky,” says a person close to the investigation, who demanded anonymity out of fear for his life.

Mexican drug cartel peddles Microsoft Office and Xbox games

FEBRUARY 22--The overwhelming majority of New Jersey state employees are courteous, hard-working individuals eager to aid the public for whom they work. And then there is the small number of toll collectors employed by the New Jersey Turnpike Authority who regularly go rogue on motorists. On the following pages you'll find an entertaining selection of complaint letters sent to turnpike officials by motorists who ran into assorted trouble when trying to pay their way on the Garden State Parkway or the New Jersey Turnpike. More than 550 letters--covering the past 18 months and addressing a variety of types of complaints--were released after TSG filed a freedom of information request with the state authority. Toll collectors ("T/C"), it seems, can be set off by a variety of slights, from the provision of change by a motorist to a patron's demand for a receipt. As a result, threats of violence, vulgarity, and racial slurs have allegedly been directed at drivers (but only on occasion, of course, since most toll takers are of a sunny disposition, as most motorists can attest). And then there are the booth inhabitants who woo female motorists with sexy talk about strip searches and flashing. While it has been more than five years since we last examined the reported shortcomings of some Jersey toll collectors, one thing has remained constant: No motorist should pay the toll with pennies and expect to drive away unscathed. (30 pages) nullnullnullnull

Toll Collectors Gone Wild - February 22, 2010

Rapid changes in the churning movement of Earth s liquid outer core are weakening the magnetic field in some regions of the planet s surface, a new study says.

What is so surprising is that rapid, almost sudden, changes take place in the Earth s magnetic field, said study co-author Nils Olsen, a geophysicist at the Danish National Space Center in Copenhagen.

The findings suggest similarly quick changes are simultaneously occurring in the liquid metal, 1,900 miles 3,000 kilometers below the surface, he said.

The swirling flow of molten iron and nickel around Earth s solid center triggers an electrical current, which generates the planet s magnetic field.

Learn more about Earth s interior.

The study, published recently in Nature Geoscience, modeled Earth s magnetic field using nine years of highly accurate satellite data.

Flip-Flop

Fluctuations in the magnetic field have occurred in several far-flung regions of Earth, the researchers found.

In 2003 scientists found pronounced changes in the magnetic field in the Australasian region. In 2004, however, the changes were focused on Southern Africa.

The changes may suggest the possibility of an upcoming reversal of the geomagnetic field, said study co-author Mioara Mandea, a scientist at the German Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam.

Earth s magnetic field has reversed hundreds of times over the past billion years, and the process could take thousands of years to complete.

Related story: Magnetic Field Weakening in Stages, Old Ships Logs Suggest May 11, 2006

Upper Atmosphere Radiation

The decline in the magnetic field also is opening Earth s upper atmosphere to intense charged particle radiation, scientists say.

Satellite data show the geomagnetic field decreasing in the South Atlantic region, Mandea said, adding that an oval-shaped area east of Brazil is significantly weaker than similar latitudes in other parts of the world.

It is in this region that the shielding effect of the magnetic field is severely reduced, thus allowing high energy particles of the hard radiation belt to penetrate deep into the upper atmosphere to altitudes below a hundred kilometers 62 miles , Mandea said.

This radiation does not influence temperatures on Earth. The particles, however, do affect technical and radio equipment and can damage electronic equipment on satellites and airplanes, Olsen of the Danish space center said.

Earth's Core, Magnetic Field Changing Fast, Study Says

TRENTON, N.J. - While one recent study found more than 231,000 people have left New Jersey since 2002, a poll released Wednesday found many more would like to follow.

The Monmouth University/Gannett New Jersey Poll found 49 percent of New Jersey adults would like to move out of the state, compared to 44 percent who would prefer to stay and 7 percent who are unsure.

The poll found 51 percent of those who want to leave say they're very likely to make good on that wish, with most of the those who want to leave adults less than 50 years of age and earning between $50,000 and $100,000 per year.

"The poll points to a real possibility that active working adults and higher-earning retirees will leave the state in greater numbers, leaving behind a generally low-income senior population," said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute. "This could put added demand on public services, but with a diminished tax base to carry the costs."

NEW JERSEY.... The place for degenerate old people.

Poll finds many hoping to leave New Jersey behind -- Newsday.com

HACKENSACK, N.J. - A Fair Lawn school custodian is alleging in a lawsuit that his co-workers laced his pizza with the hallucinogen LSD in an attempt to poison him at an office party in 2005.

Dominick A. Rao, a janitor with the district since 2000, was served pizza out of a different box than the other custodians, his attorney, Richard Mazawey, told the Record of Bergen County for Monday editions.

"He said he felt like his body and system were melting from the inside out, like he was living in a kaleidoscope," Mazawey told the newspaper.

I'm going to have to try the pizza in Hackensack...

Janitor says co-workers topped his pizza with LSD to poison him -- Newsday.com

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is a convenient way of measuring and comparing the size of national economies. Annual GDP represents the market value of all goods and services produced within a country in a year. Put differently:

GDP = consumption investment government spending (exports – imports)

Although the economies of countries like China and India are growing at an incredible rate, the US remains the nation with the highest GDP in the world – and by far: US GDP is projected to be $13,22 trillion (or $13.220 billion) in 2007, according to this source. That’s almost as much as the economies of the next four (Japan, Germany, China, UK) combined.

The creator of this map has had the interesting idea to break down that gigantic US GDP into the GDPs of individual states, and compare those to other countries’ GDP. What follows, is this slightly misleading map – misleading, because the economies both of the US states and of the countries they are compared with are not weighted for their respective populations.

Pakistan, for example, has a GDP that’s slightly higher than Israel’s – but Pakistan has a population of about 170 million, while Israel is only 7 million people strong. The US states those economies are compared with (Arkansas and Oregon, respectively) are much closer to each other in population: 2,7 million and 3,4 million.

And yet, wile a per capita GDP might give a good indication of the average wealth of citizens, a ranking of the economies on this map does serve two interesting purposes: it shows the size of US states’ economies relative to each other (California is the biggest, Wyoming the smallest), and it links those sizes with foreign economies (which are therefore also ranked: Mexico’s and Russia’s economies are about equal size, Ireland’s is twice as big as New Zealand’s). Here’s a run-down of the 50 states, plus DC:

131 - US States Renamed For Countries With Similar GDPs « strange maps

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SOUTH PLAINFIELD — A severed hand inside a mason jar filled with formaldehyde and six human skulls found by police Friday at a Diana Drive home has led to the arrest of an exotic dancer, police said.

Hand, skulls found | Home News Tribune Online

Standing in steadfast support of "Our Place for Space"
3/28/06 Make Your Opinion Heard!!!
This is the time to air your grievances! Write in to the Asbury Park Press letting them know how crucial the Planetarium is to the community. Tell Jon Larson, the President of Ocean County College, as well. They need to hear it straight from the people!!
Email Planetarium Preservation and let us know who you are. Further information regarding events and volunteering will be
emailed to you soon.

The planetarium at the local college is being shut down. The idiots who now live in ocean county are about to have one less hope for themselves.

PRESERVE THE PLANETARIUM!