DAVID GINSBURG
The Associated Press

BALTIMORE - The Texas Rangers became the first team in 110 years to score 30 runs in a game, setting an American League record Wednesday in a 30-3 rout of the Baltimore Orioles.

Trailing 3-0 in the opener of a doubleheader, the Rangers scored five runs in the fourth inning, nine in the sixth, 10 in the eighth and six in the ninth.

It was the ninth time a major league team scored 30 runs, the first since Chicago set the major league record in a 36-7 rout of Louisville in a National League game on June 28, 1897, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.

Marlon Byrd and Travis Metcalf hit grand slams for the last-place Rangers. Jarrod Saltalamacchia and Ramon Vazquez, the bottom two batters in Texas’ lineup, each homered twice and had seven RBIs.

David Murphy had five of the Rangers’ 29 hits, the most by a major league team since Milwaukee had 31 in a 22-2 victory over Toronto on Aug. 28, 1992, according to Elias.

Texas also set a team record for runs scored in a doubleheader - before the second game even started.

Hours after announcing manager Dave Trembley would return for the 2008 season, the Orioles absorbed the most lopsided loss in franchise history and set a team record for hits allowed in a game.

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Florida’s top police agency said Wednesday its investigation into former U.S. Rep. Mark Foley’s lurid Internet communications with teenage boys has been hindered because neither Foley nor the House will let investigators examine his congressional computers.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement says it hopes to conclude its investigation next week. Foley, a Florida Republican, resigned from Congress on Sept. 29 after being confronted with the computer messages he sent to male teenage pages who had worked on Capitol Hill.

“We have requested to review federally owned computers that Mr. Foley used during his time as a representative, but the U.S. House of Representatives … cited case law restrictions that prohibited them from releasing those computers,” said Heather Smith, an FDLE spokeswoman.

Smith said that the House claims the computers are considered congressional work papers, and that only Foley can release them for review.

More at the Boston Globe

From Politico:

According to the Evans-Novak Political Report, former House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) will be resigning from Congress in November, instead of retiring at the end of his term. If true, this could have significant ramifications in determining his successor.

A shortened special election campaign would likely benefit the candidates with the highest name recognition and the deepest pockets. Among Republicans, that status belongs to dairy owner Jim Oberweis, who has run unsuccessfully in three previous statewide bids for governor and for the Senate.

Conservative state Sen. Chris Lauzen is Oberweis- main challenger, but he has feuded with Hastert in the past. Several Illinois Republicans speculate that Hastert’s decision to resign stems from wanting to help Oberweis win the nomination.

The flipside is that Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D-Ill.) could opt to hold the special general election on the same day as the presidential primary in Illinois, where home’state Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is on the ballot.

A higher Democratic turnout for Obama could boost the party’s prospects in a special election. Physicist Bill Foster, who has the ability to self-finance a campaign, is currently the Democrats- leading candidate.

Hasn’t the moron already caused a refugee and genocidal crisis? We’re already there you idiot. And why doesn’t the VFW have an actual VETERAN speak at their convention?

Not surprisingly, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) didn’t like President Bush’s speech today in which the commander-in-chief, speaking at the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Kansas City, warned that quitting Iraq too soon would repeat the mistakes of leaving Vietnam, creating a refugee and genocidal crisis.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: August 22, 2007

Kerry Statement on Bush Speech to the VFW

BOSTON - Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) today made the following statement in response to the speech today by President Bush to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Kansas City, Missouri in which the President invoked comparisons to the Vietnam War to defend his war policy:

“Invoking the tragedy of Vietnam to defend the failed policy in Iraq is as irresponsible as it is ignorant of the realities of both of those wars,” Senator Kerry said. “Half of the soldiers whose names are on the Vietnam Memorial Wall died after the politicians knew our strategy would not work. The lesson is to change the strategy not just to change the rhetoric.

We want democracy in Iraq, but Iraqis must want it as much as we do. Our brave soldiers can-t bring democracy to Iraq if Iraq’s leaders are unable or unwilling themselves to make the compromises that democracy requires. No American soldier should be sacrificed because Iraqi politicians refuse to resolve their sectarian and political differences.

“It is unfortunate that President Bush would want to invoke a false comparison of Vietnam to Iraq, but not surprising that he would oversimplify the differences and overlook the tragic similarities. As in Vietnam, we engaged militarily in Iraq based on official deception. As in Vietnam, more American soldiers are being sent to fight and die in a civil war we can-t stop and an insurgency we can-t bomb into submission. If the President wants to heed the lessons of Vietnam, he should change course and change course now.”

The global credit crunch will see a sharp rise in the number of Britons put on a debt blacklist and denied mortgages, loans and credit cards, experts claim.

The seven million turned down by mainstream lenders in 2006 is predicted to soar to at least 8.6million by 2011 - around one in six of the adult population.

It could be even higher as a result of the shock to the finances of the world’s banks caused by the U.S. mortgage meltdown.

Thousands of Britons are living a hand-to-mouth existence following five increases in the Bank of England base rate in the past year.

Home repossessions are up nearly a third on last year, coupled with a big rise in county court judgments against debt defaulters.

At the same time, banks, building societies and other lenders are radically reviewing their rules to screen out risky borrowers.

More at the Daily Mail

By JENNIFER TALHELM
The Associated Press

More scrutiny? Leveled at a Bush recess appointee? You’re doin’ a heck-of-a job, Sticky!

WASHINGTON - As hopes for a rescue dim at Utah’s collapsed Crandall Canyon Mine, critics looking for someone to blame are focusing on the stern-faced director of the government agency that oversees coal mine safety.

Members of Congress, union officials and worker advocates were skeptical before the Aug. 6 accident that Richard Stickler was dedicated enough to worker safety.

The former mine executive faced so much opposition when he was appointed to head the Mine Safety and Health Administration, President Bush had to bypass critics and install him during a congressional recess last October.

Now all three groups are pointing out mistakes they say Stickler has made in handling attempts to rescue six trapped miners. The situation grew more grim last week when three rescue workers were killed in a subsequent cave-in.

Stickler’s career at MSHA will be defined by the Crandall Canyon accident and his next big decision: whether to call off the rescue effort and entomb the six missing miners forever.

“I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes,” said Davitt McAteer, who headed MSHA during the Clinton administration and now is vice president of Wheeling Jesuit University in West Virginia.

Critics think any investigation of the accident will ultimately ask why MSHA signed off in June on a mining plan for the area where the collapse occurred.

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By SUSAN SAULNY and CARA BUCKLEY
The New York Times

HUNTINGTON, Utah, Aug. 21 - As relatives on Tuesday laid to rest one of three men killed here trying to rescue six trapped miners, this grieving mining town was torn over the future of the mine and the prospect of the lost miners- being entombed permanently.

An official at the mine, the Crandall Canyon, said it could be back in business under a new name, after blocking off the area that collapsed on Aug. 6.

Robert E. Murray, president of the Murray Energy Corporation, a co-owner of the mine, suggested that other parts of the mine remained safe for work and that mining should resume.

“We would abandon any effort to mine there,” Mr. Murray said, referring to the site of the initial collapse where the six miners were trapped.

“But the reserves are in an entirely different place,” he said Monday night outside the mine.

Before mining could restart, the Mine Safety and Health Administration would have to approve a plan by Murray Energy showing that operations would be safe.

“We were shocked that the subject was even brought up,” a spokesman for the agency said late Tuesday. “M.S.H.A. remains 100 percent focused on the rescue effort.”

The suggestion that the mine might reopen inflamed the emotions of the families of the trapped miners. They questioned how the mine could be safe enough for work but not for rescuing their relatives.

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By MARTIGA LOHN
The Associated Press

Now we have to be concerned about doctors and pharmacists being corrupt. HOLY JEEZ! - JS

ST. PAUL, Minn. - A groundbreaking Minnesota law is shining a rare light into the big money that drug companies spend on members of state advisory panels who help select which drugs are used in Medicaid programs for the poor and disabled.

Those panels, most comprised of physicians, hold great sway over the $28 billion spent on drugs each year for Medicaid patients nationwide. But aside from Minnesota, only Vermont and Maine require drug companies to report payments to doctors for lectures, consulting, research and other services.

An Associated Press review of records in Minnesota found that a doctor and a pharmacist on the eight-member state panel simultaneously got big checks - more than $350,000 to one - from pharmaceutical companies for speaking about their products.

The two members said the money did not influence their work on the panel, and the lack of recorded votes in meeting minutes makes it difficult to track any link between the payments and policy.

But ethical experts said the Minnesota data raise questions about the possibility of similar financial ties between the pharmaceutical industry and advisers in other states.

“In the absence of disclosure laws, there’s certainly no way to know,” said Jack Hoadley, a research professor specializing in Medicaid at Georgetown University in Washington. “There are a lot of physicians in general who have at least some contract or grant funding out of pharmaceutical companies, and additional (who) do speaking engagements.”

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Reuters

BEIJING (Reuters) - A Beijing factory sold up to 100,000 pairs of disposable chopsticks a day without any form of disinfection, a newspaper said on Wednesday, the latest in a string of food and product safety scares.

Counterfeit, shoddy and dangerous products are widespread in China, whose exports have been rocked in recent months by a spate of safety scandals, ranging from pet food to medicine, tires, toothpaste and toys.

Officials raided the factory and seized about half a million pairs of disposable bamboo chopsticks and a packaging machine, the Beijing News said in a story headlined “Dirty Chopsticks.”

The owner, identified only by his surname Wu, said he had sold the chopsticks for 0.04 yuan a pair and made an average of about 1,000 yuan ($130) a day.

Wu, who had no license to sell the goods, said he had sold 100,000 pairs a day when business was good.

China lacks the manpower to enforce food and drug safety regulations at home or for export. Imports are generally carefully scrutinized.

read more HERE