On November 7, 1994, WXYC (89.3 FM Chapel Hill, NC USA) became the first traditional radio station to announce broadcasting on the Internet. WXYC used an FM radio connected to a system at SunSite, later known as Ibiblio, running Cornell's CU-SeeMe software. WXYC had begun test broadcasts and bandwidth testing as early as August, 1994. WREK (91.1 FM, Atlanta, GA USA) started streaming on the same day using their own custom software called CyberRadio1. However, unlike WXYC, this was WREK's beta launch and the stream was not advertised until a later date.

On 26 April 2007, the Internet Radio Equality Act (HR 2060) was proposed to reverse the CRB's decision. This bill was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by Congressmen Jay Inslee (D-WA) and Donald Manzullo (R-IL). Its Senate counterpart was introduced on 10 May 2007 by Senators Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Sam Brownback (R-Kansas). As of June 25 the legislation has over 100 Congressional co-sponsors.

Internet Radio Device

LOS ANGELES – Rafael Furcal hit a two-run homer and drove in four runs, Matt Kemp added a two-run shot and the Los Angeles Dodgers defeated Cincinnati 12-2 on Tuesday night for their 11th consecutive home victory over the Reds.
Manny Ramirez was hit on the side of his left hand by a pitch from Homer Bailey leading off the third inning. He went to a hospital for precautionary X-rays, which were negative. He is listed as day to day.
After stumbling out of the All-Star break with two consecutive losses to Houston, the NL West-leading Dodgers (60-34) won their fourth straight and are 26 games over .500 for the first time since 1991.
Randy Wolf (5-4) gave up four hits and two runs in 7 1-3 innings, struck out four and walked one while helping his own cause with an RBI double in the fifth. The left-hander also singled in the second.
Ramirez got the offense going in the first with a two-run triple that made it 2-0, then made a running catch to end the second before getting hit leading off the third.
The Dodgers took a 4-1 lead in the second on Kemp's two-run homer off a 3-2 pitch from Bailey (1-2). The right-hander allowed eight hits and nine runs, six earned, in 2 2-3 innings, walked two and struck out none.
Los Angeles added five runs in the third. Bailey's wild pitch scored pinch-runner Juan Pierre, who replaced Ramirez. James Loney, who went 3 for 4, added a two-run single before Furcal's two-run single with two outs made it 9-1.
The Dodgers extended their lead to 12-1 in the fifth on Wolf's RBI double and Furcal's fifth homer, a two-run shot on an 0-1 pitch from Jared Burton.
Cincinnati's runs came in the second on Jonny Gomes' seventh homer, Drew Sutton's RBI double in the eighth, his first major league hit, and Joey Votto's homer in the ninth.
NOTES: The Dodgers' home winning streak over the Reds is the second-longest in baseball behind Milwaukee, which has defeated Pittsburgh 18 consecutive times at home, according to Stats LLC. ... Los Angeles improved to 48-0 this season when leading after eight innings. ... Reds 2B Brandon Phillips didn't start Tuesday as a result of not running out a fly ball a night earlier. He tried to stretch a single into a double and was thrown out after the ball fell between two outfielders. ... USC football coach Pete Carroll smiled when he heard himself booed after being shown on the big screen.
(This version CORRECTS Wolf's line.)

NEW YORK--Pro-Obama political cartoonists have drawn variations of the same cartoon: the president, in the role of badgered parent on a family trip, is driving a car labeled "The Economy." The American public, depicted as Uncle Sam or Joe Average, whines: "Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?"

With official unemployment approaching 10 percent and underemployment at 16.5 percent, Americans are running out of money--and patience. Obama's approval ratings are down between 15 and 20 points, meaning that he has lost one in six Americans. His biggest weakness: the economy.

"I think the public knows three things: We inherited a total mess; we're working hard on it; and we're not going to get out of it overnight," says Chief White House propagandist Rahm Emanuel. That part is true.

The trouble for Obama is that people don't see any light at the end of the tunnel. "The key to what this year is about is rescuing the economy from falling off the cliff and trying to put in place the building blocks of recovery"--i.e., bailing out the banks, insurers and automakers, says Emanuel. That's what 2009 has been about for Obama. But for ordinary Americans, 2009 is about keeping or finding a job.

Creating jobs, unfortunately, doesn't seem to be an Obama Administration priority.

Were the bailouts necessary? Economists won't know for years. What we do know is that the Administration's approach won't give the American people what they want and need more than anything else: jobs.

What's the point of being patient? Even Obama admits help isn't on the way.

Obama's plan is Reaganomics redux. Give trillions of dollars to big corporations, he argues, and they'll use it to capitalize new ventures, hire workers, and unclog the credit markets. Eventually. "We must let it work the way it's supposed to, with the understanding that in any recession, unemployment tends to recover more slowly than other measures of economic activity," he says.

Obama says his plan "was not designed to work in four months. It was designed to work over two years." But if current trends continue, if everything goes the way he hopes, it will never work. We will have lost 14 million jobs by 2010. That would leave us up 4 million at most--a net loss of 10 million. That's a disaster.

Obama's approach won't work economically, and it won't work politically. Setting bailouts aside, what the United States needs right now--what it needed over a year ago--was a ginormous federal jobs program.

What happened to the infrastructure construction projects, like high-speed rail, that attracted so much enthusiasm during the campaign? Right-wing economic czar Lawrence Summers and a bunch of wimpy Democrats trashed them. "Transportation spending was gutted by Republicans who insisted on more tax cuts--none of whom voted for the measure anyway--and by Obama advisers who shifted priorities to advance policy goals," reported the AP.

Earlier this year the American Society of Civil Engineers said the nation's long-neglected highways, bridges and tunnels require $2,200 billion in repairs just to get them up to basic safety code--not including high-speed rail. Obama's stimulus plan included a mere $42 billion (less than two percent). Rail got $2 billion out of a needed $25 billion. Unless Obama does something soon, nothing is going to get built and unemployment will continue to soar.

Now that Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs are reporting record profits, it's time to "claw back" the bailouts, pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan, and direct federal dollars where we need them most: jobs. Give tax breaks to employers who add new workers, direct federal agencies to grow in size, and create zero-interest lending programs to laid-off would-be entrepreneurs. And let's build some friggin' infrastructure. Every $1 spent on infrastructure generates a $1.59 payback in the form of increased tax revenues--and creates a lasting legacy.

Speaking of cartoons, the Treasury Department's Bureau of Public Debt recently came under fire for trying to hire a cartoonist to "discuss the power of humor in the workplace [and] the close relationship between humor and stress." A Democratic Senator nixed the idea.

NEW YORK (Reuters) –
IBM on Wednesday announced it was stepping up its partnership with Juniper Networks Inc, but said it was also boosting ties with other equipment vendors including Cisco Systems Inc, playing down suggestions it was aiming to keep an increasingly competitive Cisco at bay.

International Business Machines Corp said it had agreed with Juniper on an original equipment manufacturing (OEM) partnership, under which IBM would rebrand Juniper's switches and routers as its own and sell them as part of its family of products.

IBM said the move was aimed at providing its customers, in particular corporate data centers dealing with increasingly high-volume network traffic, with a wider range of server, data storage, and networking equipment to choose from.

"Most of our customers want choice. They want best of breed," said Jim Comfort, vice-president of IBM's enterprise initiatives.

Juniper executives said the deal would help expand its distribution.

IBM said it saw partnerships as a way of helping it become a one-stop shop for a diverse set of products, making it easier for customers to buy and manage their data center equipment.

Some analysts, however, have said IBM is trying to expand relationships outside its long-standing partnership with top network equipment manufacturer Cisco, which recently announced it was entering the server market -- a move seen as a direct challenge to IBM and Hewlett-Packard Co.

IBM, which sells computer servers and software and technology services including outsourcing and automation, already helps to sell products made by Juniper, and Cisco, under resale partnerships.

An OEM deal provides a further incentive for IBM salesmen to promote Juniper products, and analysts have said that could be a way of retaliating against Cisco's encroachment into IBM's server space.

IBM, however, played down the rivalry and said it was bolstering its partnership with Cisco. IBM said it planned to resell Cisco's new storage switches using fiber channel over ethernet (FCoE), an emerging technology that improves network speeds, when the products are launched in September.

IBM said it was also expanding its partnership with Brocade Communications Systems Inc, a much smaller rival to Cisco, to resell its FCoE switches.

"It's not in response to anything that any one partner did," Comfort said. "It's our recognition of the need in the data center for a much more integrated and automated environment. This is about IBM's agenda in the data center and how we want to leverage our partner relationships."

Analysts said the expansion of various partnerships showed that while IBM was seeking to expand ties with Juniper and Brocade for diversity, it needed to remain friendly with Cisco.

Since many customers used a combination of products from both Cisco and IBM, it was too risky for IBM and Cisco not to ensure their products worked together seamlessly, they said.

"No doubt, they are going to be competing. But at the same time, they are ultimately trying to deliver value to customers," said Seamus Crehan, a vice-president at research firm Dell'Oro Group.

"Cisco is a dominant player in ethernet switching and they have a very strong position in data center networking. So for IBM to offer their customers choice, they have to include Cisco."

(Reporting by Ritsuko Ando, Editing by Chris Lewis)

SAN DIEGO – The city of San Diego said Tuesday it will go to court to ask a state judge to lift an order requiring the immediate removal of a colony of federally protected harbor seals from a La Jolla cove.
The announcement by City Attorney Jan Goldsmith was the latest development in an emotional and yearslong battle over who should have exclusive use of the protected cove — children or seals — in the posh seaside neighborhood of La Jolla.
On Monday, a San Diego Superior Court judge ordered the city to begin chasing away the creatures from the cove, called the Children's Pool, by Thursday or face heavy fines in order to comply with a 2005 ruling in a lawsuit brought by a disgruntled swimmer.
The city said it would blast recordings of barking dogs to scare away the pesky pinnipeds at the cost of $688,000 a year. San Diego cannot use force because the seals are a federally protected marine species.
But just hours later, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill that added a marine mammal park to the list of permissible uses for the Children's Pool — giving the city a legal tool that could allow the seals to stay put.
Goldsmith said the city will go to court on the matter Thursday.
"It's like saying the seals in the zoo are a nuisance," he said.
Children's Pool was created by a sea wall built in 1931 through a gift by philanthropist Ellen Browning Scripps. The state, which owns the cove, subsequently placed the beach in a trust and granted the trust to the city of San Diego. The trust lists several possible public uses for it, including a children's beach and a park.
At a pro-seal rally Tuesday evening, a few dozen supporters lined the cove and shouted, "Take a stand, share the sand." Several dozen harbor seals lounged below them in the late afternoon sun.
Supporter Jennifer Rogge, 43, who lives nearby, said she was horrified by efforts to remove the seals.
"We should let them have it," she said. "They've been having their babies on this beach now for 15 years. It's a little late now to start shooing them off when there's generations of pups that don't know any other place to go."
Sukey Rice Ridgway, 65, who also lives nearby, said she remembered swimming in Children's Pool before the seals took over. She opposes their presence, even though she swam with the seals as a child.
"This was a beautiful pool and it was fabulous to swim down here and learn to snorkel and everything," she said. "It's unnatural now, it's man-made. It should not be for the seals."
Goldsmith said litigation over the cove's use has cost San Diego millions of dollars and could drag on for many more years unless the newly worded bill is allowed to take precedent.
Attorney Paul Kennerson, who represents the disgruntled swimmer, said Senate Bill 428 does not absolve the city of its responsibility to maintain the cove exclusively for the use of children.
Thursday's hearing is scheduled just 90 minutes before the city's deadline to begin chasing the seals away.
If the order is allowed to stand, Goldsmith said the city will be ready to begin removing the seals while simultaneously filing an emergency writ with California 4th District Court of Appeal.
Attorneys representing pro-seal groups have also filed emergency legal papers in both federal and state courts.

LOS ANGELES – Mischa (MEE'-shah) Barton is "making improvements" and plans a return to work nearly a week after Los Angeles police say they escorted her for an undisclosed medical problem.
Spokesman Craig Schneider says the 23-year-old actress is "still seeking treatment but making improvements."
He would not elaborate on Barton's condition, but said Tuesday that Barton planned to report to work on the new CW series "The Beautiful Life" later this month. A CW spokesman for the show, which stars Barton as a pill-popping supermodel, said production was scheduled to begin July 31.
Police say they removed Barton from her home last Wednesday for an undisclosed medical problem. The department will not say what it was.

KASOTA, Minn. – A plainclothes sheriff's deputy shot and killed an unarmed 24-year-old man wearing only swim trunks after an argument ensued when he confronted the man for erratic driving, authorities and witnesses said Tuesday.
Le Sueur County Sheriff's investigator Todd Waldron, 37, shot Tyler Heilman after the two scuffled Monday in Kasota, a town about 60 miles southwest of Minneapolis, when Heilman returned from a day of swimming with friends. Those who saw the argument said it wasn't clear the man he was fighting with was a law enforcement officer.
"This ain't right," said Heilman's father, Mark Heilman. "I think the cop just freaked ... Why didn't he just say 'Freeze' or something? Or shoot him in the leg? He shot to kill ... I think he just flipped."
Authorities said Waldron was working another case and driving an unmarked sport utility vehicle on Monday when he saw Heilman driving a car erratically, and at times speeding, so he followed him. At one point, Heilman drove his car off the road and up an embankment.
Waldron called for backup from a marked squad car, but before the car arrived, Heilman pulled into the parking lot of an apartment complex and got out of the vehicle. The two began arguing, and when Waldron tried to arrest Heilman, he resisted and the two got into a physical confrontation, said Andy Skoogman, a spokesman with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, which is investigating the case.
BCA investigators believe Waldron fired four shots. Skoogman said Waldron was not in uniform, but he had a sheriff's badge on his belt. Waldron was not working undercover, and Skoogman said authorities are investigating whether the deputy identified himself.
Witnesses give a similar account. Kris Hoehn, who was in the car with Heilman and other friends, said the group was on its way back from a day of swimming at the Minnesota River when they noticed an SUV following them. Hoehn acknowledged the vehicle may have swerved some, and he said Heilman drove up a sledding hill at one point.
Hoehn said the group didn't know Waldron was a deputy. When they arrived at the apartment complex, Waldron asked Heilman for a driver's license, and then the two started arguing, Hoehn said. He said Heilman and the deputy ended up wrestling on the ground.
Heilman ended up on top of Waldron, but got up and "that's when he seen the badge — as he's getting up," Hoehn said. "Then came the gunshots, just as my buddy's hands were going up.
"It was too late. ... We had no idea who he was. If we would have known he was a cop, none of this would've happened," said Hoehn, 24.
Hoehn said Heilman was gasping for breath and said, "I'm done, man. I'm done." He staggered a few feet and fell, face down, on the grass.
It wasn't clear if alcohol played a role in the argument. Tyler Heilman was treated for alcohol abuse while back in high school, but his father said he had kicked the problem, though he still drank a little bit. Hoehn said the group of friends had been drinking "a little" at the lake on Monday, but not enough to affect Heilman's driving. Authorities are conducting an autopsy, which will include toxicology tests.
Summoned by a friend who heard about the shooting, Heilman's father arrived at the scene moments later to find the area sectioned off by police tape, and his son lying on the ground as firefighters attempted to revive him. Heilman said his son was shot twice in the chest while another bullet grazed his right side, and he made the sign of the cross on his forehead a few times.
"I just knelt down by his head, brushed his head, brushed his scar," Heilman said in a telephone interview, noting that his son had brain surgery in May to remove a blood clot.
Skoogman said Waldron suffered non-life threatening injuries, but did not elaborate. The incident — from the time Waldron started following Heilman to the shooting — lasted less than 20 minutes, Skoogman said. There was no weapon found on Heilman or in his car, Skoogman said.
Waldron, who has been a deputy with the department for 10 years, has been placed on standard paid administrative leave, and the investigation could take six to eight weeks, Skoogman said. The BCA said Waldron has never been disciplined. Waldron's resume indicates he also worked as a jailer with the department. He was promoted to investigator in 2004, and focuses on narcotics, sexual assaults and robberies, Skoogman said.
Waldron also served as a patrol officer with three small-town police departments and has a degree in law enforcement from Minnesota State University, Mankato. He's taken several continuing education training courses, including training in use of deadly force, according to his personnel records.
A working phone number for Waldron could not be found and his parents, whose house he visited on Tuesday, declined comment.

Heilman acknowledged his son had gotten into past trouble for stealing and getting into fights, but said he had no serious problems in the last five years. Court records show Tyler Heilman has over a dozen convictions in recent years, mostly from 2004-2006, and mostly for traffic and alcohol violations. He pleaded guilty to burglary in 2004 and also has a petty misdemeanor drug conviction and a misdemeanor assault conviction. His most recent conviction was in 2008 for driving with a suspended license.

___

Amy Forliti contributed to this report from Minneapolis.

July 17 (Bloomberg) -- The Senate can still pass a health-
care overhaul with some Republican support by August even with
the “wacky” cost estimates by the Congressional Budget Office,
Senator Charles Schumer said.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus thinks his
panel can draft a bill by July 21 or 22, Schumer, the No. 3
Democrat in the Senate, said in an interview with Bloomberg
Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt,” airing today.

“Our preference far and away is for a bipartisan bill,”
he said. “If we can’t come to a bipartisan agreement, the
Finance Committee will report out a Democratic bill.”

Schumer, of New York, said the CBO’s assessment that
health-care costs would rise doesn’t take into account savings
from preventive care and efficiencies in the system.

“CBO’s scoring is a little bit wacky,” Schumer said of
the nonpartisan agency’s estimates. “They are not quite fair
because they don’t measure the cost savings down the road, just
the immediate spending.”

Still, he said, lawmakers would have “to live by” the
CBO’s calculations, “and so we’re going to have to be tougher
on costs and I think in the Senate we will be.”

Schumer rejected calls by the CBO and Baucus to cap the
amount of employer-provided health insurance that’s excluded
from taxes.

Middle Class

“To really get revenues out of that, you have to go deeply
down into the middle class,” Schumer, 58, said.

Most Democrats and Republicans oppose it and President
Barack Obama “is strongly against it,” Schumer said.

Schumer said Obama’s use of an August deadline for drafting
health-care overhaul legislation is “very, very important” for
maintaining momentum for the president’s top domestic priority.

“Working under a deadline on something difficult helps get
something done, and we spent a lot of time on this,” Schumer
said. “It’s not that we started two weeks ago, we started
three, four months ago.”

He said lawmakers can meet the deadline and still address
concerns from senators such as Olympia Snowe, a senior
Republican on the finance panel and a participant in compromise
talks, who has urged patience.

Obama met with Democratic leaders at the White House July
13 to press both chambers to pass health-care overhaul, his top
domestic priority, before lawmakers leave Washington for their
August recess. The House is on track to meet the deadline, but
eight hours of talks yesterday by Baucus’s committee came up
short of an accord.

Insurer Fees

Schumer said he is working on a mechanism to prevent
insurers from passing on to consumers as much as $100 billion in
fees that he’s proposing to help offset the costs of health-care
legislation.

“We think it’s doable,” he said, adding that the nation’s
top insurers have experienced soaring profits in recent years.

Turning to the U.S. economy, Schumer praised Federal
Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and said he wouldn’t be
displeased to see him reappointed to another term. He said
Bernanke has the confidence of the economic community.

“He’s steady, he’s calm, he’s knowledgeable,” Schumer
said.

On another financial matter, he said the administration
needs to establish a “lifeline” to small businesses that may
be affected as CIT Group Inc., the 101-year-old commercial
lender, faces bankruptcy. Government regulators declined this
week to rescue the company.

CIT Fallout

“‘It’s not whether CIT goes under or not,” Schumer said.
Thousands of small businesses “are blameless and
depend on CIT.”

He said he isn’t sure whether he agrees with the
Obama administration’s decision not to give CIT financial aid.
CIT, which finances about 1 million businesses from Dunkin’
Brands Inc. to Eddie Bauer Holdings Inc., is in talks with
potential lenders after it didn’t get government help.

“I don’t know the details inside so I could say yes
or no,” he said. “CIT is hardly blameless. They had a great
business, you know. They funded lots of small businesses, made a
profit, and then sometime I guess 2004, 2005, started going into
subprimes like everyone else.”

Schumer also reiterated that Judge Sonia Sotomayor will
easily win Senate approval to a seat on the U.S. Supreme
Court, with roughly half of the Senate’s 40 Republicans
joining Democrats in her favor.

Chief Justice John Roberts received 78 votes when he was
confirmed in 2005, and Schumer said Sotomayor will probably see
a similar level of support after her confirmation hearings
before the Senate Judiciary Committee this week.

Americans watching the televised hearings “liked her very
much,” Schumer said. “There are lots of Republicans who don’t
agree with her specifically,” he said, who “are going to say
maybe we should vote for her.”

To contact the reporter on this story:
Laura Litvan in Washington at
llitvan@bloomberg.net .

MIAMI – Ryan Howard's unfamiliar with the Hall of Famer he surpassed by reaching a home run milestone Thursday night.
The Philadelphia Phillies slugger hit his 200th home run, achieving the total in fewer games than any player in major league history. Ralph Kiner, who played in the 1940s and '50s, previously held the record.
What does Howard know about Kiner?
"Uh, he's the guy whose record I broke," Howard said with a smile. "Not to be disrespectful or anything, but he was before my time."
Howard achieved the feat in his 658th game, hitting his 23rd homer of the season in the sixth inning of a 4-0 win over Florida. Kiner hit No. 200 in his 706th game.
"It's a nice feat," Howard said. "It's a nice record to have. I'll take it and run with it."
Howard is the eighth Phillies player to hit 200 homers.

BRUSSELS – A European pilots association criticized the EU on Friday, saying the bloc is endangering air safety by failing to act on the recommendations of experts who say cuts in flying hours are needed to curb pilot fatigue.
The European Cockpit Association, which groups pilots unions with 38,000 members, praised the action taken by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration in the wake of the Colgan Air crash in February which killed 50 people.
The FAA said Monday it will propose setting new limits on how many hours airline pilots can fly in an effort to prevent pilot fatigue from endangering flight safety.
"Does Europe also need a fatal accident before actions are taken over here?" said Philip von Schoppenthau, secretary-general of the European Cockpit Association.
Von Schoppenthau said the EU's European Aviation Safety Agency has stalled on implementing similar limits proposed last fall by a panel of aviation experts and scientists.
An agency spokesman did not immediately return calls seeking comment Friday.
Last year, the panel came to the conclusion that EU rules are insufficient to adequately protect against the flight safety risks posed by pilot fatigue. It found that the allowed maximum daily flight duty period of 13-14 hours "exceeds reasonable limits."
Among other recommendations, the panel called for the current maximum of 11:45 hours of night duty be cut to 10 hours because of the high risk of fatigue at night.
But action on the proposals has been blocked since January, after an industry association challenged the panel's findings.
The Association of European Airlines, a grouping of the continent's flag carriers, charter operators and low-cost carriers, has lobbied against the new rules, arguing the study was scientifically flawed and that experience has shown that current limits are adequate.
Analysts say the new limitations would significantly boost operational costs at a time when revenues are falling because of the economic downturn.
"The American example shows you can move things forward if there's political will," von Schoppenthau said in an interview. "But we see that on the European side political will is still absent."

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – A collection of slavery records newly available over the Internet may help thousands of people trace their families back to Africa through St. Croix, a former slave-trading hub in the Caribbean.
The records, which went online Thursday at ancestry.com, already have helped Susan Samuel of Houston discover the story of an ancestor who was freed after persuading officials that she had been illegally sold into slavery.
"Even though she came from a very horrible situation, she decided not to be defined by it," Samuel said of her great- great-great-great-grandmother Venus Johannes, who was captured as a 12-year-old girl in what is now Senegal in West Africa.
More than 50,000 enslaved Africans were taken to St. Croix during the island's Danish colonial rule, said George Tyson, who led a seven-year effort to gather documents from archives in the Virgin Islands, Washington and Copenhagen.
Many of the slaves spent their lives toiling on the island's sugar plantations. Others continued on to slavery in such places as Cuba or the United States, which bought the Virgin Islands from Denmark in 1917.
Columbia University historian Eric Foner called the collection "a big step forward," with great potential for research.
"St. Croix was an important slave center for a long time, but maybe because people don't know Denmark, it hasn't gotten the attention it ought to," he said.
Family researchers have aggressively pursued information for years about the slave trade in St. Croix, an island where most residents are descended from slaves. A local group, the Virgin Islands Social History Associates, sought out the documents to build on that work and learn more about how slaves lived, said Tyson, the group's president.
The records will be searchable for free until the end of July on ancestry.com, a subscription-based Web site that provided some financing for the researchers. Tyson said his nonprofit group plans to eventually make the records available for free on a Web site it is working on.
Johannes' story comes partly from an account she gave to authorities that helped persuade them to free her.
After marrying an American sea captain on Goree Island, a holding area for slaves off the African coast, she agreed to join him on a voyage to the New World with the understanding she could later return. But he sold her off as a domestic servant to an American woman as soon as they reached St. Croix.
"Whatever passion was in the relationship did not overcome the issue that the captain wanted to get some money," Tyson said.
Johannes won her freedom in 1815 after three decades in slavery, Tyson said. She had remarried by then and borne four children. A slave uprising on St. Croix led the colonial governor to finally ban slavery across the Danish West Indies in 1848.
Samuel, a 62-year-old aide to mental health patients in Houston, said she felt in awe of her ancestor this week while touring the overgrown ruins of colonial buildings on St. Croix, the largest of the three islands in the now U.S. territory.
"I have decided to look more at the positive and recognize how much she overcame, because you can choose to be angry or you can choose to more forward," she said.
The documents, spanning from 1734 to 1917, include shipping records with names and prices of enslaved Africans and property inventories. Among the most useful pieces are interviews conducted by the Moravian church, which, upon converting Africans, recorded their place of origin, Tyson said.
The collection has more than 700,000 records. Some of the physical documents are available in St. Croix. Others were scanned in foreign capitals by researchers who brought copies back to feed the database of the historical group's St. Croix African Roots Project.
Tyson said some islanders who helped enter data found an emotional resonance while recording information on the long-ago slaves who were forced to come to St. Croix.

"Even if they are not related they are spiritually connected because of what they had to endure," he said.

LONDON – An ugly scramble is brewing over the swine flu vaccine — and when it becomes available, Britain, the United States and other nations could find that the contracts they signed with pharmaceutical companies are easily broken.
Experts warn that during a global epidemic, which the world is in now, governments may be under tremendous pressure to protect their own citizens first before allowing companies to ship doses of vaccine out of the country.
That does not bode well for many nations, including the United States, which makes only 20 percent of the regular flu vaccines it uses, or Britain, where all of its flu vaccines are produced abroad.
"This isn't rocket science," said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Diseases Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. "If there is severe disease, countries will want to hang onto the vaccine for their own citizens."
Experts say politicians would not be able to withstand the pressure.
"The consequences of shipping vaccine to another country when your own people don't have it would be devastating," added David Fedson, a retired vaccine industry executive.
About 70 percent of the world's existing flu vaccines are made in Europe, and only a handful of countries are self-sufficient in vaccines. The U.S. has limited flu vaccine facilities, and because factories can't be built overnight, there is no quick fix to boost vaccine supplies.
Earlier this week, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced it was spending $884 million to buy extra supplies of two key ingredients for a swine flu vaccine. The U.S. has contracts to get swine flu vaccines from Sanofi Pasteur, MedImmune, GlaxoSmithKline and Novartis. Sanofi Pasteur and MedImmune both have vaccine plants in the U.S., while GlaxoSmithKline and Novartis have plants in Europe.
Even if the U.S. held onto all the swine flu vaccine produced domestically, it would still not be enough for all Americans.
About 80 million Americans are vaccinated against the seasonal flu every year. In 2004, when problems with the U.S.' flu vaccine supply at a British factory hit, there were less than 54 million shots available. Flu vaccines were saved for those in high-risk groups like the elderly and pregnant women, and officials asked other people to simply forgo their usual flu shot.
If there are limited swine flu shots during a pandemic that turns more serious, experts are not sure people will be as willing to skip getting a vaccine.
Last week, the World Health Organization reported nearly 95,000 cases of swine flu, including 429 deaths worldwide. If swine flu turns deadlier in the winter, the main flu season in the Northern Hemisphere, countries will likely be clamoring for any available vaccines.
"Pandemic vaccine will be a valuable and scarce resource, like oil or food during a famine," said David Fidler, a professor of law at Indiana University who has consulted for WHO. "We've seen how countries behave in those situations, and it's not encouraging."
Britain claims it will start vaccinating people in August, Italy says it will begin by the end of the year, and many other countries have similar strategies. Those mass vaccination plans could be derailed by problems making the vaccine and by other countries' refusal to ship it abroad.
If the virus remains mild, this could all be moot. Experts estimate swine flu to be about as dangerous as seasonal flu, and there usually isn't a high demand for those vaccines. Still, regular flu kills up to 500,000 people a year.
In past pandemics, or global epidemics, vaccines were never exported before the country that produced them got enough for its own population first.
Unlike the last two pandemics in 1957 and 1968, however, many more countries this time around have struck deals with companies which they say guarantee them first access to vaccine. Yet in a global health emergency, those contracts may ultimately be meaningless.
Countries with flu vaccine plants might decide to seize all vaccines and ban their export, thus breaking the pharmaceutical contracts promising other countries vaccine supplies. These private contracts are not binding international law between two countries, according to Fidler.

He said most vaccine contracts include a clause allowing them to be broken under extraordinary circumstances, such as a health emergency. That would leave the countries who had brokered such deals not only without vaccine, but without legal recourse.

"There's nothing in international law that helps you resolve this, it's just a political nightmare happening in the midst of an epidemiological nightmare," Fidler said.

Britain has ordered 60 million doses, enough to cover its entire population. But those doses are being manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline PLC and Baxter International Inc., whose production plants are in Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic. Neither Britain's department of health or the vaccine manufacturers would comment on delivery plans.

On Thursday, Britain's chief medical officer estimated that as many as 75,000 Britons could eventually be killed by the swine flu pandemic, if 1 in 3 people are infected.

Osterholm said about 80 percent of the United States' pandemic vaccine supply will be coming from abroad and he is very concerned about when it might arrive. Timing could be everything to avoid a vaccine spat.

"It's easy to move vaccine around if the disease is relatively mild. But if it is more severe, countries may not be willing to let it go," he said.

So far, swine flu remains a relatively mild disease, and most people don't need medical treatment to get better. But experts fear the virus could mutate into a more dangerous form. And during the flu season, when the virus spreads more easily, more people will probably fall sick and die.

Public health officials are aware that so-called "vaccine wars" might break out if the swine flu outbreak worsens, but are loathe to even discuss the topic.

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, an agency of the European Union, said it had no mandate to advise countries in such circumstances. WHO said it was not aware of any nations planning to block the shipment of vaccines and said it would work to ensure all countries get enough doses to protect their health workers.

Questions also remain about when a swine flu vaccine will even be available, as WHO reported this week that a fully licensed vaccine might not be ready until the end of the year.

With little or no safety data about a swine flu vaccine, governments that are planning to roll out mass campaigns are taking a gamble, since any rare side effects won't show up until millions of people start getting the shots.

Experts say government promises about when vaccines will arrive should be taken with a huge grain of salt.

"Many pieces of the puzzle are missing," Osterholm said. "Anyone who pretends to have a well-defined schedule of vaccine delivery is obviously very poorly informed."

Wigs have seemingly been worn throughout history, even on the genitals (see merkin); the ancient Egyptians, for instance, wore them to shield their hairless heads from the sun. Other ancient peoples, including the Assyrians, Phoenicians, Greeks and Romans, also used wigs. Curiously, they are principally a Western form of dress — in the Far East they have rarely been used except in the traditional theatre of China and Japan. Some East Asian entertainers (Japanese Geisha, Korean Kisaeng) wore wigs (Katsura and gache respectively) as part of their traditional costumes.

Powdering wigs was messy and inconvenient and the development of the naturally white or off-white powderless wig (made of horsehair) is no doubt what has made the retention of wigs in everyday court dress a practical possibility. By the 1780s, young men were setting a fashion trend by lightly powdering their natural hair. After 1790, both wigs and powder were reserved for older more conservative men, and were in use by ladies being presented at court. In 1795, the English government levied a tax of hair powder of one guinea per year. This tax effectively caused the demise of both the fashion for wigs and powder by 1800.

Wigs

Many mugs are made of ceramic materials such as earthenware, bone china, porcelain or stoneware. Some are made from strengthened glass, such as Pyrex. Other materials, including plastic, steel and enameled metal are used where break resistance is at a premium, such as for campers. Techniques such as silk screen printing or decals can be used to apply decorations; these are fired onto the mug to ensure permanence.

A travel mug is a variation on the traditional mug that is better for transporting hot liquids. It may or may not be a vacuum flask, but is usually well insulated and completely enclosed, with an easily closed opening on the top.

Photo Mugs

TEHRAN, Iran – Investigators have recovered two of the three black boxes belonging to a Russian-made jetliner that crashed shortly after taking off from Tehran, Iran's state radio reported Thursday.
All 168 people aboard the Caspian Airlines aircraft bound for Yerevan, Armenia, on Wednesday were killed.
The radio's report quoted chief investigator Ahmad Majidi as saying one of the two recovered boxes was damaged. It said the boxes — the plane's cockpit voice and flight data recorders — would likely be sent to the aircraft's Russian manufacturers for analysis.
The search for the third black box was continuing, Majidi said.
Bodies of the victims would be taken to Tehran later Thursday for identification, he added.
Most of the passengers were Iranians, many of them from Iran's large ethnic Armenian community, as well as 11 members of Iran's national youth judo team. Five Armenian citizens were among the dead, Armenia's Foreign Ministry said in a statement, along with two Georgians, including a staffer from the Caucasus nation's embassy in Yerevan.
Armenia on Thursday announced a one-day national state of mourning to mark the death of its citizens in the crash, according to the Russian news agency ITAR-Tass.
Reporting from Yerevan, the agency said flags would fly at half-mast on government buildings and Armenian embassies abroad. Local radio and TV have canceled entertainment programs in a show of respect, it said.
The crash was the latest in a string of air disasters in recent years that have highlighted Iran's difficulties in maintaining its aging fleet of planes.
Iranian airlines, including state-run ones, are chronically strapped for cash, and maintenance has suffered, experts say. U.S. sanctions prevent Iran from updating their 30-year-old American aircraft and make it difficult to get European spare parts or planes. The country has come to rely on Russian aircraft, many of them Soviet-era planes that are harder to get parts for since the Soviet Union's fall.
Witnesses said the plane's tail was on fire before it went down, plowing a deep, long trench into agricultural fields outside the village of Jannat Abad, and the aircraft was blasted to bits.
Flaming wreckage, body parts and personal items were strewn over a 200-yard (meter) area. Firefighters put out blazes from the crash, but smoke smoldered from the pit for hours after as emergency workers searched for data recorders and other clues to the cause.
Ali Akbar Hashemi, a 23-year-old, was laying gas pipes in a house by the field when he saw the stricken jet overhead. He said the plane was circling in the air, flames shooting from its tail section.
"Then, I saw the plane crashing nose-down. It hit the ground causing a big explosion. The impact shook the ground like an earthquake," Hashemi told The Associated Press by phone.
The Tu-154M jet had taken off from Tehran's Imam Khomeini International Airport. It crashed at 11:30 am, about 16 minutes after takeoff, outside Jannat Abad, near the city of Qazvin, around 75 miles northwest of Tehran, civil aviation spokesman Reza Jafarzadeh told state media.
At Yerevan's airport, Tina Karapetian, 45, sobbed and said she had been waiting for her sister and the sister's 6- and 11-year-old sons, who were due on the flight.
"What will I do without them?" she cried before collapsing to the floor.
The cause of the crash was not immediately known.

Serob Karapetian, the chief of Yerevan airport's aviation security service, said the plane may have attempted an emergency landing, but reports that it caught fire in the air were "only one version." He did not elaborate. A police officer told Iran's semi-official ISNA news agency that several witnesses reported seeing the plane's tail on fire.

The Tupolev's three engines are in its tail section. The flames there could indicate "an uncontained engine failure," said Patrick Smith, a pilot and the air travel and safety writer for Salon.com.

But he said it's too early to tell. The crash's root cause could be elsewhere, and the flames a sign of a compressor stall caused when the plane went out of control, interrupting airflow through the engine, Smith said.

The crash is Iran's worst since February 2003, when a Russian-made Ilyushin 76 carrying members of the elite Revolutionary Guards crashed in the mountains of southeastern Iran, killing 302 people aboard. That crash was a sign of how maintenance problems have also affected Iran's military.

Caspian Airlines is an Iranian-Russian private joint venture founded in 1993, with a fleet of Tu-154s built between 1989 and 1993. Russia produced 900 Tu-154s until production was halted in 1996.