“Lord Melchett, the former head of Greenpeace, who led its campaign against genetically modified crops, has accepted a salaried job with a public relations firm whose clients include Monsanto, the GM giant,” The Independent is reporting. “The leading environmentalist, who stood down as executive director of the campaigning charity last year, starts work next week as a consultant with Burson-Marsteller, which has represented some of the world’s most notorious polluters,

From the Sydney Morning Herald: “An asteroid big enough to wipe out a major country gave the Earth a close shave yesterday, passing less than twice the distance of the Moon from our planet, astronomers reported.” The space rock, designated 2001 YB5, measures between 220 and 490 metres and at its closest point, at 6:37pm, Sydney time, was about 600,000km from the Earth, according to varying estimates on US and

The Christian Science Monitor’s Danna Harman reports on the feeling of impending doom in Somalia. The US is looking at several areas in Somalia where it suspects there are terrorist training camps with links to Al Qaeda, according to intelligence sources. Some are around the capital, Mogadishu, one is near Laascaanood in the north, one is on the island of Ras Kamboni, and one is [in El Wak]. British, French,

The CEO of American Airlines “has publicly backed the captain who removed an Arab-American Secret service agent from a flight from Baltimore-Washington International Airport to Waco, Texas on Christmas day,” The National Review reports today. “The airline is currently being sued by the agent for racial profiling. American Airlines has released the incident report from the captain and another airport official present.” The National Review column reprints the full text

“A 72-year-old woman is one of three members of a Green Cove Springs family now in jail, accused of selling marijuana,” according to this story from WJXT News4 Jacksonville. The Clay County Sheriff’s Office arrested Elnora “Granny” Layfield, along with Michael and Linda Layfield, last Friday in their Stauffer Street home. Officer seized approximately 30 bags of marijuana valued at $1,200 from the house. Police said that undercover officers bought

TV Guide’s J. Max Robins reports that “MTV and Showtime are in ‘serious discussions’ about launching a gay channel, according to several sources familiar with the project.” “The would-be developers,” Robins notes, “are part of the Viacom media empire that includes CBS, UPN, Nickelodeon and VH1. However, they’re not the only big-time players considering a gay network:” According to industry sources, there have been such discussions at HBO, USA Networks,

“An al-Qaida fighter killed himself with a grenade Tuesday rather than be captured during a failed escape from the hospital where he and several comrades had been holed up for more than a month,” the AP reports (link: Tampa Bay Online). Mohammad Rasool, jumped from the second-story window at Mir Wais Hospital shortly before dawn but was quickly surrounded by soldiers, said Mohammed Shafiq, a local commander. ‘He stopped, looked

Something funny’s going on with Blogger this morning, but we’ll be back up and running later on. Those of you still lookin’ for Doc Anne’s beatdown of Cartoon Boy (you know who you are), click here and read “Let’s Rall!” — eds.

Writing in Reason, Sam MacDonald points to a clear sign of the coming apocalypse: the pundits at a recent Hudson Institute forum refused to prognosticate! Instead of predicting the future with a nod toward their own particular agendas — a traditional pundit pastime — all three [Mark Mellman, Bill Kristol, and Michael Barone] admitted that the political sands were shifting too rapidly for an accurate take.

Brent Bozell takes on the leftist media, in particular columnist Norman Solomon, who recently announced his “P.U.-litzer Prizes” for 2001 —