Luciferian News Hour

December 23

Welcome to the pre-Xmas edition of the Luciferian News Hour. I am your host, Dragon Kloud who with producer James Donahue will be bringing you our perspective of this week’s world events that will be affecting your lives.

It may be the season for Ho, ho ho!, but a group of 40 people dressed up as Santa Claus has sent police in New Zealand in a tizzy.

The Santas, many of them apparently drunk, went on a rampage through Auckland, New Zealand's largest city, raiding stores, assaulting security guards and urinating from highway overpasses, police said.

The rampage, part of a world-wide movement known as Santarchy, began early on Saturday afternoon when the men, wearing cheap, ill-fitting Santa costumes, threw beer bottles and urinated on cars from an overpass.

The group carried the concept of Christmas rebellion a bit farther than it was ever supposed to go. First organized in San Francisco about ten years ago, the jolly Santas were supposed to be pranksters, causing mischief in the form of street theater.

This year the theater concept got out of hand.

Police said the men and possibly some women rushed through a central city park, overturning rubbish bins, throwing bottles at passing cars and spraying graffiti on office buildings.

One man climbed the mooring line of a cruise ship before being ordered down by the captain. Other Santas, objecting when the man was arrested, attacked security staff who were later treated by paramedics.

The remaining Santas entered a store and carried off beer and soft drinks.

The shop owner, said: "They came in, said 'Merry Christmas' and then helped themselves."

Two security guards were treated for cuts after being struck by beer bottles.

Three people, including the man who climbed on the cruise ship, were arrested and charged with drunkenness and disorderly behavior.

Alex Dyer, a spokesman for the group of Santas, said Santarchy is a worldwide movement designed to protest against the commercialization of Christmas. 

Police said identification was a key issue as they tried to sort out which of the 40 men and women in New Zealand had done what. 

Drunken Santas on a rampage in New Zealand, armed German robbers in Santa disguises, a British St. Nick wanted for flashing, and a Swedish vandal in a Santa outfit are giving the big man in red a bad name this year.

Reports of "Bad Santas" breaking the law or otherwise wreaking havoc have been circulating around the world.

Armed with a gun, a man in a Santa outfit held up a furniture store in the German town of Ludwigshafen on Saturday and forced two cashiers to open the safe. He filled his sack with cash, locked the two women in the safe and escaped.

He is still on the loose, but police in Tuebingen were able to nab a bank robber armed with a machine gun in a Santa costume with the aid of an infrared camera and helicopter. They found him hiding in a ditch in a nearby forest.

"The machine gun was fake," a police spokesman said. Dressed in a Santa cap, beard and wearing sun glasses, he was wanted for stealing 500,000 euros in four separate bank robberies.

One Santa was stopped by police for driving 90 mph on a northern German motorway.

"He said he was in a rush because he still had packages to deliver," said a spokesman for the police. They gave Santa a fine and took away his license.

Last week an inebriated half-naked Santa disrupted a Christmas market in Dabringhausen before police intervened.

In Britain, police said they were looking for a Santa acting suspiciously -- a flasher who exposed himself to women.

About two dozen gunmen on Tuesday briefly seized Bethlehem's city hall on Manger Square, demanding money and jobs in the Palestinian security forces. Worried clergy temporarily closed the nearby Church of the Nativity for safety reasons just four days before Christmas.

Some Germans would rather spend Christmas with a tree than with their families, a new poll shows. The survey in Thursday's Focus weekly news magazine found 75 percent of Germans could not contemplate Christmas without their beloved "Tannenbaum," the traditional tree many cover lavishly with candles, lights and decorations. But only 65 percent said spending time with relatives was also essential for a good Christmas. The modern tradition of the Christmas tree originated in Germany. Three percent of the 1,014 people polled about attitudes to Christmas wanted to skip the whole thing.

Few Asians are Christian but people across the vast continent are embracing the holiday as a great excuse for shopping, partying and even romance. Come December, Christmas lights brighten shopping streets in cities from Beijing to Colombo, while images of Santa Claus and Rudolph adorn office buildings, shops and restaurants. Shopping malls in Indonesia, the country with the largest number of Muslims, play carols like "Silent Night" and "Jingle Bells" through speakers during the year-end holiday season.

Emerging from decades of civil war and years of isolation, largely Buddhist Cambodia is embracing Christmas, at least the baubles, fairy lights and red felt Santa outfits. But this quintessentially Christian celebration filtered through the Cambodian prism seems to be all about the party, while Jesus, Joseph and Mary have been left out in the cold

The commercial insanity has spread world-wide!

In other news:

The Bush effort to bring Democracy to war-torn Iraq seems to already be falling apart. While an estimated 70 percent of the people turned out to vote last week, cries of fraud and vote-rigging are now being heard.

Iraq's rebellious Sunni Arab minority cried foul on Tuesday over the results, angry at signs that Shi'ite Islamists will remain the dominant force.

Warnings of fresh violence and of a Sunni Arab boycott of the new parliament soured the honeymoon atmosphere that followed Thursday's vote, when an informal ceasefire by guerrillas keen for a role in politics helped promote a big turnout across Iraq.

Sunni Arabs alleged that last week's parliamentary elections were fraudulent, especially in Baghdad province, and they said if the irregularities are not corrected, new balloting must be held in Iraq's largest electoral district.

An electoral commission official said that he didn't expect the allegations to change the overall result, which will be announced in early January.

The United Iraqi Alliance - a Shiite party - won about 59 percent of the vote, according to returns from 89 percent of ballot boxes counted in Baghdad province. The Sunni Arab Iraqi Accordance Front received about 19 percent, and the Iraqi National List, representing Shiite, got about 14 percent.

The Iraqi Accordance Front, a coalition of three major Sunni groups, rejected those results, warning of "grave repercussions on security and political stability" if the mistakes were not corrected.

By Thursday, dozens of Sunni Arab and secular Shiite groups threatened to boycott Iraq's new legislature if complaints about tainted voting are not reviewed by an international body.

A joint statement issued by 35 political groups that competed in last week's elections said the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq, which oversaw the ballot, should be disbanded.

It also said the more than 1,250 complaints about fraud, ballot box stuffing and intimidation should be reviewed by international organizations such as the United Nations, the European Union, the Organization of the Islamic Conference or the Arab League.

President Bush has authorized new cuts in U.S. combat troops in Iraq, below the 138,000 level that prevailed for most of this year, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Friday. Addressing U.S. troops at this former insurgent stronghold, Rumsfeld did not reveal the exact size of the troop cut, but Pentagon officials have said it could be as much as 7,000 combat troops.

Two army brigades that had been scheduled for combat tours _ one from Fort Riley, Kan., the other now in Kuwait _ will no longer deploy to Iraq. That will reduce the number of combat brigades in Iraq from 17 to 15.

"The effect of these adjustments will reduce forces in Iraq by the spring of 2006 below the current high of 160,000 during the (Iraqi) election period to below the 138,000 baseline that had existed before the most recent elections," Rumsfeld said.

The Trial of Saddam Hussein opened Wednesday and was highlighted by the former leader's allegation that he was beaten by his American captors.

"I have been hit by the Americans and tortured. Yes, I've been beaten on every place of my body and the signs are all over my body," the deposed Iraqi president said on Wednesday.

On Thursday, the trial adjourned again until Jan. 24 following a day of testimony. An investigating judge said officials never saw evidence verifying Saddam's claims he was beaten while in U.S. custody.

American officials denied Saddam's allegations as "completely unfounded." Saddam, in turn, denounced those denials as "lies" and said "the marks are still there."

Five witnesses testified during the two-day session that started Wednesday. Saddam and seven co-defendants are on trial for the deaths of more than 140 Shiites after a 1982 attempt on Saddam's life in the town of Dujail, north of Baghdad.

In a theatrical exchange becoming increasingly common at the trial, an assistant prosecutor asked to resign and the defense team threatened to walk out. Saddam also mocked President Bush's claims that Iraq had chemical weapons.

Faced with an increasingly hard line from Iran, the United States and Europe have stepped up planning for tougher diplomatic action should Tehran follow through on threats to resume critical nuclear activities.

The U.S. and its European allies are seeking agreement among themselves on precisely when Iran's nuclear program will have progressed to the point that the matter should be taken to the U.N. Security Council and what kinds of sanctions might be pursued there.

Tehran insists it only aims to produce civilian nuclear energy. Allies say the program is to produce weapons.

Russia, which is building Iran's nuclear power plant in southern Iran, remains a serious impediment. The United States fears that weapons grade plutonium could be extracted from the reactor once it goes on line.

The United States and major European nations -- Britain, France and Germany -- have long threatened to bring the issue to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions.

But negotiations appear at an impasse and new Iranian President, whose name we will not try to pronounce on the air, (Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) has alarmed the world with aggressive calls for Israel to be "wiped off the map."

U.S.-allied Gulf Arab leaders called on Monday for a nuclear weapons-free Middle East, but singled out only Israel, not Iran, despite having voiced alarm at Tehran's nuclear ambitions during their two-day meeting. In a final statement, the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) focused on Israel's failure to join the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which Iran has signed.

President George W. Bush said the monitoring of phone calls and e-mails without a warrant was a "vital tool" to protect the United States against an attack and criticized leaks about it to the news media. "In the weeks following the terrorist attacks on our nation, I authorized the National Security Agency, consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution, to intercept the international communications of people with known links to al Qaeda and related terrorist organizations," he said. "This is a highly classified program that is crucial to our national security," Bush said.

In an effort to take the heat off Mr. Bush, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said the decision to eavesdrop on people within the United States was backed by the U.S. Congress' authorization of military force after the September 11, 2001, attacks. "There were many people, many lawyers, within the administration who advised the president that he had inherent authority as commander in chief under the Constitution to engage in this kind of signals intelligence of our enemy," Gonzales said. "We also believe that the authorization to use force which was passed by the Congress in the days following the attacks of September 11th constituted additional authorization for the president to engage in this kind of" electronic surveillance, he said.

Democratic opponents have charged that they never voted to authorize Mr. Bush to secretly wiretap on anybody without first getting a court order. And so the wrangling continues.

It appears that our leadership has freely taken away our liberty in the name of protecting us.

A draft plan approved by World Trade Organization (WTO) states on last week’s Hong Kong conference set 2013 as the date for ending agricultural export subsidies after European Union and major farm goods' exporters struck a compromise.

The understanding between Brussels and exporter states such as Brazil and the United States removed a major obstacle to keeping WTO talks on a global trade pact alive.

The text, proposed after six days and almost as many nights of wrangling between rich and poor nations, must be approved by the full 149-state WTO membership at the ministerial conference.

The plan also proposed eliminating export subsidies on cotton -- a sensitive issue for the United States -- in 2006, and proposed April 30, 2006, as a deadline for reaching a draft pact for the wider Doha trade round.

It left open the possibility of dismantling rich nation cotton subsidies, a key African demand, at a faster pace than other farm goods under any final trade deal.

From what we understand about the complex world of government farm subsidies, governments pay farmers to produce certain products to assure them a profit. In some cases, farmers are paid not to grow certain crops or produce too much of a produce, like for instance, milk. Eliminating these subsidies will destabilize agricultural operations in the United States and probably in many other major food producing parts of the world so farmers in poorer countries can compete.

The question then must be asked . . . if we put the world’s best and most efficient farmers out of business are we creating an artificial world food shortage? Just something to think about.

Evo Morales, a leftist candidate won the Bolivian election and become that nation’s first indigenous president, after his main rival conceded defeat amid reports that he was trailing far behind.

Morales, a former coca farmer and union leader, has raised hackles in Washington with promises to fully legalize coca leaf production and nationalize the country's oil and gas industry.

He also has close ties with Venezuela’s controversial socialist leader Hugo Chavez, and Cuba’s socialist president Fidel Castro.

Unofficial results tabulated by four local television stations gave between 47 per cent and 50 per cent of the votes in Sunday's election to Morales, who heads the Movement Toward Socialism party.

Morales' pledge to protect coca crops to help Indians, who celebrate the leaves as a centerpiece of their ancient culture, could antagonize Bolivia's neighbors and the United States who fear only cocaine traffickers will benefit.

For years Morales led coca farmers against joint U.S.-Bolivia eradication campaigns in the 1990s, saying the programs hurt many indigenous farmers who grow the leaf -- the raw ingredient used to make cocaine -- for religious and cultural uses.

The United States disagreed, pointing to the fact that much coca is transformed into cocaine in thousands of clandestine labs, making Bolivia the world's third biggest cocaine producer after Colombia and Peru.

But guess what? Deep under the earth in Bolivia lies enough natural gas to supply South American consumers and industry for years, a windfall that could ease the astonishing poverty in one of the continent's poorest countries. Morales has plans to tap this energy source.

In a development that health experts are calling alarming, two bird flu patients in Vietnam died after developing resistance to Tamiflu, the key drug that governments are stockpiling in case of a large-scale outbreak.

The experts said the deaths were disturbing because the two girls had received early and aggressive treatment with Tamiflu and had gotten the recommended doses.

The new report suggests that the doses doctors now consider ideal may be too little. Previous reports of resistance involved people who had taken the drug in low doses; inadequate doses of medicine are known to promote resistance by allowing viruses or bacteria to mutate and make a resurgence.

Dr. Anne Moscona, a flu expert at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City, called the deaths frightening and said they demonstrate the dangers of hoarding drugs.

"People who stockpile will naturally share or take drugs at the wrong dose, and that's really a bad idea," said Moscona, who wrote an accompanying commentary in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine.

We aired an earlier report, also from Vietnam, that a study of the effect of Tamiflu on the H5N1 virus was totally ineffective. Which story should we believe?

"Intelligent design" cannot be mentioned in biology classes in a Pennsylvania public school district, a federal judge said Tuesday, ruling in one of the biggest courtroom clashes on evolution since the 1925 Scopes trial.

Dover Area School Board members violated the Constitution when they ordered that its biology curriculum must include the notion that life on Earth was produced by an unidentified intelligent cause, U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III said. Several members repeatedly lied to cover their motives even while professing religious beliefs, he said.

The school board policy, adopted in October 2004, was believed to have been the first of its kind in the nation.

Ironically, the school board that took this action was put in office by voters who threw incumbent board members out. That original board voted against teaching intelligent design. You remember when Televangelist Pat Robertson said the good folks of Dover just threw God out of town. Well the new board apparently invited God back in, and a federal judge threw God out again.

South Korean researcher Hwang Woo-suk faked results of at least nine of 11 stem-cell lines he claimed to have created, a deliberate deception that has undermined the credibility of science, his university said Friday.

The announcement by Seoul National University of results so far in its investigation into Hwang's work were the first confirmation of allegations that have cast a shadow over his entire list of breakthroughs in cloning and stem-cell technology.

"This kind of error is a grave act that damages the foundation of science," the panel said.

In a May paper in the journal Science, Hwang claimed to have created 11 stem-cell lines matched to patients in an achievement that raised hopes of creating tailored therapies for hard-to-treat diseases. But one of his former collaborators last week said nine of the 11 cell lines were faked, prompting reviews by the journal and an expert panel at Seoul National University, where Hwang works.

Turning to Environment issues:

It has been a battle and so far the environmentalists have won in their efforts to block the Bush Administration’s attempts to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil drilling.

Early in the week Congress opened the way for oil drilling by attaching it to a major defense bill that forced many house opponents of the oil drilling proposal to vote for it. Thus it squeaked through the House by a vote of 212 to 206.

But the Senate on Wednesday stopped the measure in its tracks 56-44. Democrats accused Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, who promoted the bill, of holding the defense bill hostage to drilling in ANWR. We are sure that this issue isn’t settled yet.  

Three environmental groups are suing the U.S. government to force consideration of whether polar bears are a threatened species, saying rising global temperatures threaten to kill off the Arctic predators.

The suit asks the Interior Department to make an initial ruling on a petition to bestow the broad federal protection of the Endangered Species Act upon polar bears by designating them as "threatened."

An "endangered" species is one that is in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of its range, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Web site. A "threatened" species is likely to become endangered in the foreseeable future, according to the agency.

The lawsuit was filed by the Center for Biological Diversity, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Greenpeace, which say the department should have ruled on its petition within 90 days of its filing in February.

The groups argue that rising global temperatures endangers polar bears by melting the ice floes on which the giant predators prowl and hunt.

Emissions of gases blamed for warming the atmosphere grew by 2 percent in the United States last year, the Energy Department reported Monday. The report came just nine days after a United Nations conference where the United States and China refused to join any talks for imposing binding limits on emissions of those gases.

The so-called greenhouse gases, led by carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, rose to 7.12 million metric tons, up from 6.98 million metric tons in 2003, the Energy Department's Energy Information Administration said.

That's 16 percent higher than in 1990, and an average annual increase of 1.1 percent.

About 80 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas last year was carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels - coal, petroleum and natural gas - for electricity, transportation, manufacturing and other industrial processes.

The U.N. conference's Kyoto Protocol, which took effect among developing countries last year despite President Bush's rejection of it in 2001, had called for nations to cut their 1990 levels of "greenhouse" gas emissions by 5 percent by 2012.

Instead, U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2012 would be nearly 25 percent higher than they were in 1990 if they continue at the current pace of growth. The United States is responsible for a quarter of these heat-trapping gases globally.

The Environmental Protection Agency  has emerged unexpectedly after several years of silence. The EPA has proposed stricter daily limits for how many microscopic particles of air pollution, or soot, are safe for all Americans to breathe from the nation's smokestacks and tailpipes.

The proposed new health-based air standards represent one of government's most far-reaching decisions. They affect millions of lives, and could force states to make industries spend billions of dollars to clean up coal-burning power plants, diesel-powered equipment, trucks and industrial boilers.

Health and environmental groups had sued the government to force it to tighten its limits. Meeting a court-ordered deadline of midnight Tuesday, EPA ignored the recommendations of an expert clean air scientific advisory committee, which in June called for even tougher limits.

Once the EPA finishes its rule-making next September, states must order cleanups in at least 50 counties, mainly in southern California, the Midwest, the South and the Northwest, EPA studies show.

Drinking water may have a lot more in it than just H20 and fluoride, according to an environmental group's analysis of records in 42 states.

A survey by the Environmental Working Group released on Tuesday found 141 unregulated chemicals and an additional 119 for which the Environmental Protection Agency has set health-based limits. Most common among the chemicals found were disinfection byproducts, nitrates, chloroform, barium, arsenic and copper.

The research-and-advocacy organization compiled findings from the states that agreed to provide data they collected from 1998 to 2003. That data comes from nearly 40,000 water utilities, serving 231 million people. The utilities were required by federal law to report that data to consumers.

For the unregulated chemicals, EPA is still identifying and considering the potential risks for possible future regulations. Nineteen of those chemicals exceeded EPA's un-enforced safety guidelines for tap water systems serving at least 10,000 people, according to the advocacy group.

A restless volcano near Alaska's most populated region is being watched by scientist and officials, who warned on Thursday of the risk of clouds of ash and a tsunami from a possible eruption. The intensifying rumblings in the past few weeks at Augustine Volcano, an island peak 175 miles southwest of Anchorage in Cook Inlet, have produced a series of steam explosions, releases of sulfur gas and signs that there may be an eruption similar to events in 1986 and 1976 which sent ash clouds as high as 40,000 feet, scientists said.

A Japanese whaling fleet and Greenpeace environmental activists are involved in a stand-off in the remote Southern Ocean near the coast of Antarctica with the two sides accusing each other of ramming their vessels. Greenpeace said that after a month-long search it had tracked down six Japanese ships -- which set out on November 8 to conduct what Tokyo says is a scientific whaling program -- several thousand kilometers (miles) south of Perth. Two Greenpeace ships Esperanza and Arctic Sunrise launched inflatable boats on Wednesday to harass Japanese "catcher boats", positioning them between the whale and harpoon gun.

Severe flooding in Malaysia's north has forced the evacuation of more than 5,000 people, and more bad weather is on its way. The Meteorological Services department issued a tropical storm warning after detecting a depression over the South China Sea.

The death toll from floods across southern Thailand since November has climbed to 21 after two landslides killed seven people and thousands of people were evacuated. The evacuations occurred across Songkhla province, and more were expected as the waters continued to rise, officials at the province's Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Centre said Sunday.

At least 40,000 people had fallen ill across nine provinces, most of them with influenza, the Public Health Ministry said on Sunday, adding it had sent 1,000 mobile medical units and 100,000 medicine kits to the affected provinces.

At least five more people froze to death as unseasonably cold weather gripped northern India, taking the death toll there to 30 as meteorologists warned of heavy fog in the coming days. "The toll has now gone up to 29 in the state as four more people died of cold overnight," a police spokesman said. Most of the victims in Uttar Pradesh -- India's most populous state and one of its poorest -- were homeless,

Back In The States:

The U.S. Senate on Wednesday approved a budget bill that would cut spending on social welfare and other programs by $39.7 billion, but only altering it slightly to force the House of Representatives to reconsider it, possibly in late January or February.

The Senate needed the help of Vice President Dick Cheney to pass the budget bill. As president of the Senate, he voted for the bill, breaking a 50-50 tie.

Even with Cheney's tie-breaker, Republicans could not quite declare victory in their year-long attempt to slow the growth in spending on Medicare and Medicaid, the health-care programs for the poor and elderly. The measure may not win final congressional approval until next year.

With all the money the Bush Administration is spending on the mass slaughter in Iraq, I suppose it is fitting to cut assistance for the poor and elderly in America. Hell, let them all die.

The U.S. Congress on Thursday agreed to extend until February 3 key provisions of the anti-terrorism USA Patriot Act to allow more time for lawmakers to consider civil liberties protections for the law that was set to expire at the end of the month.

In Business News:

OPEC has revised its forecast and now envisions an increase in oil demand. The increase in demand was expected to be led by China. Chinese consumption has exceeded 20 percent of the world's total oil production. An OPEC market report issued on Dec. 16 asserted that crude oil demand for 2006 would reach 28.7 million barrels per day. This would mark an increase of 134,000 barrels per day from 2005, Middle East Newsline reported.

China has continued to roar ahead as a global economic powerhouse with new figures released on Tuesday indicating it now has the sixth largest economy in the world

Shares of General Motors fell to an 18-year low after Toyota unveiled production plans for 2006, increasing fears that GM will be toppled by its Japanese rival as the world's largest automaker. Toyota said it plans to make a record 9.06 million cars in 2006, just shy of the 9.15 million cars and trucks that some analysts expect GM to build next year.

New Yorkers begged rides on the Internet, dusted off their bikes and put on their skates on Wednesday in the battle to beat a mass transit strike that hit business and raised tempers at the height of the holidays. The strike that stopped a biggest mass transit system in the U.S., could have far reaching implications. At issue is a union refusal to accept cuts in retirement and health benefits, an issue that is sweeping American industrial and public service jobs. The strike also hits New York City in the critical shopping days preceding Christmas. The two sides were in court on Thursday as the power brokers pressed to get shoppers back in the stores again. The buses and subways were rolling once more on Friday after union leaders caved in to a plan to return to work and return to the bargaining table. Some see this as a last stand for American labor against big boss bailouts from covering the cost of runaway health insurance and retirement benefits for workers. The decision in New York could have a ripple effect for workers all across the nation.

The United States Senate approved a budget reconciliation bill that includes legislation to transform up to 80 million television sets from conduits of entertainment and information into useless, dust-collecting boxes on February 17, 2009.

The bill, which also includes legislation that covers federal healthcare policy and student loans, sets the timetable for the switchover of TV transmission from a digital-analog mix to all-digital signals.

The legislation, which passed the Senate on Wednesday, also makes available up to $1.4 billion to help the estimated 21 million U.S. households that depend on over-the-air, analog TV signals. The money will go toward vouchers for the affected families to buy converter boxes that would allow them to continue enjoying the use of their TV sets after the switchover occurs.

The budget reconciliation bill, which focuses on cuts in government spending, required the vote of Vice President Dick Cheney to break a 50-50 tie in the Senate.

The bill passed the Senate Committee and then the House of Representatives by a fairly easy margin on Monday, but it must go back to the House because of changes made to the bill in the Senate.

A number of consumer groups have opposed the overall bill on the grounds that it unfairly burdens consumers, particularly low-income families, minorities, and the elderly.

But while measures that change federal healthcare policy or student loan programs seem for most like business as usual in Washington D.C., the thought of the household TV going dark gets the attention of the U.S. public on a visceral level

It's an unprecedented move by the government. After all, Uncle Sam didn't make us switch from records to CDs or VHS machines to DVD players. Members of Congress say the move is designed to make valuable broadcast signals available to police and firefighters in emergencies. Actually, it is more Bush business for big business. Have you priced those big digital television sets lately?

What's not often said is that much of the signal spectrum will be auctioned off to wireless and broadband companies that want to provide ever fancier phone and Internet services. That auction is expected to bring $10 billion or more to the U.S. Treasury.

The richest man in the world, Bill Gates, and his wife, Melinda, were named Time magazine's "Persons of the Year" along with Irish rocker Bono for being "Good Samaritans" who made a difference in different ways. And that just goes to prove you can’t trust the mind of contemporary editorial boards these days. They are blinded by wealth and bleeding hearts in the midst of a dying world. 

Time Managing Editor James Kelly said the three had been chosen as the people most effective at finding ways to eradicate such calamities as malaria in Africa, HIV and AIDS and the grinding poverty that kills 8 million people a year.

Time also named former Presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton as "Partners of the Year" for their humanitarian efforts after the Asian tsunami and Hurricane Katrina, and the unlikely friendship that developed from that work.

Two new studies are challenging the notion that the desolate Martian plains once brimmed with salty pools of water that could have supported some form of life.

Instead, the studies argue, the layered rock outcrops probed by NASA's robot rover Opportunity and interpreted as signs of ancient water could have been left by explosive volcanic ash or a meteorite impact eons ago.

That would suggest a far more violent and dry history than proposed by the scientists operating Opportunity and its twin rover, Spirit, on the other side of the planet.

The new scenarios, published in Thursday's journal Nature, paint a rather pessimistic view of whether the ancient Martian environment could have supported life.

On The Light Side of the News:

A giant bronze statue worth 5.3 million dollars by the late British sculptor Henry Moore has been stolen from a museum outside London, police said. Thieves broke into the Henry Moore Foundation in Perry Green north of London and stole the 1969-70 work "A Reclining Figure", possibly for scrap value.

Two vehicles entered the courtyard of the museum and three men then loaded the sculpture, measuring more than 11 feet long and weighing 2.1 tons, on to the back of a truck using a crane.

The second vehicle used by the men is thought to have been a four-wheel drive truck with spotlights. The melted-down metal might only reach 5,000 pounds on the open market.

Barbie, beware. The iconic plastic doll is often mutilated at the hands of young girls, according to research published Monday by British academics. "The girls we spoke to see Barbie torture as a legitimate play activity, and see the torture as a 'cool' activity," said Agnes Nairn, one of the University of Bath researchers. "The types of mutilation are varied and creative, and range from removing the hair to decapitation, burning, breaking and even microwaving."

Researchers from the university's marketing and psychology departments questioned 100 children about their attitudes to a range of products as part of a study on branding. They found Barbie provoked the strongest reaction, with youngsters reporting "rejection, hatred and violence," Nairn said.

"The meaning of 'Barbie' went beyond an expressed antipathy; actual physical violence and torture towards the doll was repeatedly reported, quite gleefully, across age, school and gender," she said.

Group sex among consenting adults is neither prostitution nor a threat to society, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled on Wednesday as it lifted a ban on so-called "swingers" clubs. In a ruling that radically changes the way courts determine what poses a threat to the population, the top court threw out the conviction of a Montreal man who ran a club where members could have group sex in a private room behind locked doors.

Researchers at the University of Michigan have found a "pleasure spot" in the brains of rats that may shed light on how food translates into pleasure for humans.

The spot in rats' brains makes sweet tastes more "liked" than other tastes, biopsychology researchers Susana Pecina and Kent Berridge found.

Sweetness by itself is merely a sensation, they note. Its pleasure arises within the brain, where neural systems actively paint pleasure onto the sensation to generate a "liking" reaction.

The pair detailed their findings in the Dec. 14 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience.

An advertisement for a statue of the Virgin Mary veiled in a condom has embarrassed the publishers of the U.S. Catholic magazine America, and prompted some heated comment on Catholic Web sites.

America, a weekly run by the Jesuit order of priests, said in a statement it was embarrassed and offended by the ad, which it said was published unknowingly in its December 5 edition.

The apparent prank by a London-based artist offered what he called the "Extra Virgin" statue for sale, "a stunning ... statue of the Virgin Mary standing atop a serpent wearing a delicate veil of latex."

A color photograph showed a statue of magenta-robed Mary, who according to Christian teaching was a virgin when she gave birth to Jesus, covered with a translucent but clearly visible condom.

And that concludes our Luciferian News Hour for another week. Be sure to listen to Psychic and Prophet Aaron C. Donahue and his Psychic sister, Jennifer Sharpe, during Voice of Lucifer each Sunday night.

Thank you for listening.