UH coach Sumlin declines interview at Cincinnati

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/sports/college/houston/6766918.html

Kevin Sumlin has eliminated himself from consideration for the vacant University of Cincinnati head football coach job.

In a statement released Saturday afternoon through the University of Houston, Sumlin said he decided against interviewing for the Cincinnati job that opened Thursday when Brian Kelly left for Notre Dame.

Sumlin is 18-8 in two seasons at UH, which faces Air Force in the Armed Forces Bowl on Dec. 31 in Fort Worth.

“After speaking with representatives with the University of Cincinnati yesterday and today, I declined an interview,” Sumlin said. “I am looking forward to our first bowl practice later this afternoon and later honoring our seniors at the football banquet tonight.”

In the release, the school said players will not be available for comment until an undetermined time.

Sumlin says no to Cincy interview

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=4737118

Houston coach Kevin Sumlin has declined an interview request for the vacant Cincinnati job.

“After speaking with representatives with the University of Cincinnati yesterday and today, I declined an interview,” he said in a statement. “I am looking forward to our first bowl practice later this afternoon and later honoring our seniors at the football banquet tonight.”

The Bearcats are in the midst of leadership change after former coach Brian Kelly left the program for Notre Dame on Thursday.

Kelly posted a 34-6 record in three years at the school and has guided Cincinnati to consecutive BCS bowl appearances in the past two seasons.

Sumlin, who took the Houston job in 2008, came to the Cougars after a five-year stint as an Oklahoma offensive assistant under Bob Stoops.

The Cougars are 18-8 under Sumlin and will play Air Force in the Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl on Dec. 31.

Houston’s Kevin Sumlin declines interview for University of Cincinnati job

http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20091212/SPT0101/91212007/Houston+coach+not+interested+in+UC

Houston football coach Kevin Sumlin issued a statement through the school Saturday that he has declined an interview for the coaching job at the University of Cincinnati, according to the Houston Chronicle.

“After speaking with representatives with the University of Cincinnati yesterday and today, I declined an interview,” Sumlin said. “I am looking forward to our first bowl practice later this afternoon and later honoring our seniors at the football banquet tonight.”

UC’s Athletic Diretcor Mike Thomas said Thursday he will not comment on his search for Kelly’s replacement until it is complete.

The UC job became open when Brian Kelly left for Notre Dame.

On Wednesday, Houston athletic director Mack Rhoades told the Chronicle he and Sumlin were “probably 99 percent” set on a new deal. Sumlin said the negotiations were “getting close to where we need to be.”

• Possible candidates for UC job

The Enquirer will update this story.

Sumlin Not Interested in Cincinnati Job

http://www.myfoxhouston.com/dpp/sports/091212_someone_not_leaving_uh

Updated: Saturday, 12 Dec 2009, 4:51 PM CST
Published : Saturday, 12 Dec 2009, 1:43 PM CST

MARK BERMAN

By JEFF BAENEN (AP) – 8 hours ago

MINNEAPOLIS — Jesse Ventura is back for another stab at TV stardom, this time hosting a program that digs into conspiracy theories, including alternate views of what was behind the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the purpose of a sprawling research center in remote Alaska.

The former Minnesota governor, professional wrestler and Navy SEAL stars in “Conspiracy Theory With Jesse Ventura,” which premieres Wednesday night on truTV. The cable network, part of Turner Broadcasting System Inc., has ordered seven episodes of the hourlong weekly series. Read the full story

The United States Marine Corps will turn 234 on Tuesday and birthday celebrations will be taking place at bases stretching from the halls of Montezuma all the way to the shores of Tripoli.

Marine Air Corps Station Yuma, however, got the party started a few days earlier by holding a formal ceremony at the base’s parade field on Friday morning.

“Happy 234th birthday. And most of you don’t look a day over 18,” MCAS Yuma Commanding Officer Col. Mark Werth said during the celebration. Read the full story

AIR FORCE ACADEMY — Kyle Halderman has been an Air Force player who always has provided anticipation.

Two years ago as a freshman arriving from Katy, Texas, he was an understudy to Chad Hall. While Hall was becoming the Mountain West Conference’s offensive player of the year, Halderman showed promise of moving into Hall’s footsteps.

He played in all 13 games a year ago and lived up to the promise that he could fill Hall’s shoes. Hall led the Falcons with 266 yards receiving and three touchdowns, including a 74-yarder against CSU. With 350 yards, including a 74-yard run against Wyoming, Halderman was the team’s fifth-best rusher.

With the Falcons in need of some long plays to loosen up the opposing defenses, anticipation abounds that Halderman could spark Air Force’s offense again.

“If he could get back to making big plays like last year, that would help a lot,” quarterback Tim Jefferson said. “We have to have some way of balancing our offense.”

Halderman missed the first seven games of the season mending a broken collarbone, which occurred in preseason practice. He returned for his first action Saturday against Utah and caught three passes for 54 yards.

“The biggest issue for me was just getting back into a game,” Halderman said. “One of the first plays I had, Robert Johnson, Utah’s free safety, was coming in and I blocked him. It was a pretty big hit, but after getting past that first one, I was ready to go.”

Starting today against CSU, Air Force needs two victories in its last four games to become bowl-eligible. However, coach Troy Calhoun isn’t counting past one game.

“All your sights have to be set on what’s in front of you right now,” Calhoun said. “The way you have a chance to win a game at the Air Force Academy is purely through concentration, focus, teamwork, and that’s the only way we have a chance to play well this weekend in Fort Collins. That’s what we’re going to do.”

Halderman isn’t predicting he’ll provide the big-play potential again this year.

“I’m almost a new guy coming in this year,” Halderman said. “I have to prove myself. I have a little different responsibility this year. I do have to make plays, but there are other players who have been making plays. Hopefully, I can add a spark and my experience can help them along. My main focus is making my blocks.

“It feels great to be back. My collarbone is pretty strong. I won’t have to hold back at all.”

http://www.denverpost.com/sports/ci_13681575

Nigeria’s space agency is no joke. It has launched satellites and aims to put Africans into space.

LONDON, U.K. — Recently I received an email labeled “Strictly Confidential” from Dr. Bakare Tunde, who said he was astronautics project manager at Nigeria’s space agency. He also told me he was the cousin of the first African in space, Air Force Major Abacha Tunde, and that this poor intrepid astronaut had been stranded on a secret Soviet military station ever since the Soviet Union dissolved in 1990.

“He is in good humor,” read the email, “but wants to come home.” No wonder he was keen to hurtle back earthwards, Tunde told me his cousin had accumulated almost $15 million in pay. For the price of my bank account details, I could claim 20 percent and fly the brave chap home to collect my portion of the earnings and transfer the rest on to him like the good space-supporter that I was.

This classic 419 scam is indeed far-fetched but one aspect of it is true.

Nigeria really does have a space agency. The west African nation’s National Space Research and Development Agency is already celebrating its 10th anniversary. And as America and Europe’s space agencies set their sights on joint exploration of Mars, Nigeria has big plans of its own: It wants to send a Nigerian up into space in 2015, making Nigeria home to the first black African astronaut.

Sitting across from Gerald Okeke, it’s hard to fathom that the quietly spoken fellow might one day fly beyond the earth’s atmosphere. Okeke, 28, is one of 27 Nigerian engineers being trained how to design and build an earth observation satellite in the U.K., at private British company Surrey Satellites Technology in Guildford, southeast of London. We are sitting in the canteen of the spacecraft-mad company, from whose ceilings dangle silver starburst lights and whose rubbish bins are shaped like shiny rockets.

“There is much to learn but we are coping,” says Okeke, whose father was also a scientist. “It’s a big challenge. Talking about space in Africa is kind of a new field but it’s a very big opportunity for us to explore.”

He says it would be an honor to be picked as Africa’s first black space sailor — who must be aged 27 to 37 at the time of lift-off and whose selection will begin next year ahead of four years of training. Okeke has already spent several years studying in the U.K., which he says is challenging. “The weather can be trouble and we try to cope with the food even though it’s not what we eat in Nigeria,” said Okeke.

His is not the only sacrifice in an expensive and widely questioned mission. Nigeria spends $20 million a year on its space program, in a country in which for every thousand children born, 137 will die before they are five years old. A collapse in the value of Nigeria’s naira currency — in part attributable to the global downturn — has meant the costs of its payments in U.S. dollars have also rocketed by a third.

“Even in the U.S. some people are opposed to the space program so we are not surprised this happens here,” says Seidu Onailo Mohammed, CEO of the Nigerian space agency. “But we want to assess the problems that have devastated this land. We need to monitor our environment, assess problems of flooding, deforestation — all this can only be done if we have a viable space program. Plus after so many years it’s a good idea to think of an astronaut.”

The country jetted up a $13 million earth observation satellite, made in the U.K. and launched from Russia, in 2003. A much more expensive communications satellite, costing hundreds of millions of dollars, was launched from China in 2007. It failed within 18 months but a replacement is due to be propelled into space by 2011, paid for by insurance.

But still the Nigerian agency wants more money. The government believes it will all pay off in the end.

Already the earth observation satellite has taken some pretty impressive snaps including pictures of poppy growing in Afghanistan, the state of cyclone damage after Myanmar’s authorities restricted access to international rescue teams in 2008 and, closer to home, identifying the whereabouts of illegal tankers parking far out at sea to steal Nigeria’s oil supplies.

Nigeria has managed to sell about 1,000 of its satellite images and hopes over the course of each satellite’s lifetime such data sales will cover the costs of manufacture and operation.

“We are bringing down space to apply it on the ground,” says Francis Chizea, Director of the Nigerian space agency. “It’s going to be very very important for the economy. We can map the wetlands and advise on areas very good for rice production; monitor desertification in the north; find the best place to locate dams; assess the environmental impact of oil drilling; locate oil spills and track movements on the border.”

It’s all been made possible by a new approach to space science that has let developing nations in on the extra-terrestrial act.

“We’ve been able to shrink a satellite from a double-decker bus down to the size of a TV set,” says Martin Sweeting, the British founder of Surrey Satellites Technology, a radio fanatic as a child who decided space shouldn’t be the privilege of the rich nations. “It’s now possible for an African country to have its own satellite for $10 to $15 million. It can yield real benefits at the right price.”

South Africa, Algeria and Egypt are all marshaling their own satellite facilities, so there’s no question Africa’s scientists are reaching for the stars.

http://www.globalpost.com/

Prison sought for 26 Americans in CIA case

Sept. 30, 2009
COLLEEN BARRY,Associated Press Writer

MILAN (AP) — An Italian prosecutor in the first trial anywhere scrutinizing the CIA’s extraordinary renditions asked a Milan court on Wednesday to sentence 26 Americans to jail terms ranging from 10 to 13 years for the abduction of an Egyptian terror suspect.

Read the full story

Kim Phuc Phan Thai is the young girl in the center of this iconic photograph from the Vietnam War. Taken by the photographer Nick Ut after a napalm strike it shows Kim Phuc (as she is less formally known) running naked having suffered horrendous burns to her back and arms. She has sometimes been called “napalm girl” as a result of this picture.

Even today few would be expected to survive such napalm burns but Kim Phuc PhanThai is alive and well and with us now. 65% of her body was burned and she had 14 months of treatment in the burns unit in Saigon and 17 operations to graft skin from the undamaged areas of her legs to her back and arms. Read the full story

1 – Project X-Ray

In the early years of American involvement in WWII, a plan was conceived by a Pennsylvanian dental surgeon to strap tiny incendiary devices to bats and drop them by the thousands over Japanese cities. The bats—able to carry nearly three times their own body weight—would fly under the cover of night and take roost in traditional, highly-flammable wood and paper Japanese houses. As dawn approached, timers on the devices would ignite the “bat bombs” and entire cities would burn to the ground without the loss of life accompanied by, say, an atomic attack. The project was slowed by many complications and was ultimately shut down in 1944 because the bats would not be ready for combat until 1945. Read the full story

The Air Force is set to launch a government communications satellite aboard an Atlas V rocket.

The exact nature of the satellite has been kept very secret. No federal agency has laid claim to ownership.

The launch window runs from 5:35 p.m. to 7:45 p.m. Tuesday night. Watch it LIVE on News 13 when it happens.

http://cfnews13.com/ Read the full story

CBS Report:

Report: Torture Program Architects Made Millions

Two military retirees and psychologists with “no relevant scholarship” made millions of dollars as the driving force behind the CIA’s controversial interrogation program ultimately terminated under the Obama administration, according to a New York Times report Wednesday.

Beginning in 2002, the CIA contracted Dr. Jim Mitchell and Dr. Bruce Jessen to devise an interrogation strategy for suspected al Qaeda operatives that included waterboarding, a technique later characterized as torture.

The ripple effects of the program are still being felt months after it was cancelled by the White House, as Attorney General Eric J. Holder Jr. weighs the pursuit a criminal investigation. He’s expected to make a decision in the coming weeks. The CIA is also set to release a 2004 report on the program by the agency’s inspector general, according to the Times.

Mitchell and Jessen, who both served as Air Force psychologists training service members in interrogation resistance, pursued completely different research while obtaining their degrees, according to the report.

After serving in the Air Force as an explosives expert, Mitchell completed his doctorate at the University of South Florida in 1986. His research compared diet and exercise in controlling hypertension.

Jessen studied “family sculpting” – where patients construct models of family members to define their emotional relationships – on his way to earning a doctorate from Utah State University.

Both men worked in the Air Force’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape, or SERE, training program, which was created to prepare service members for the harsh Chinese-style interrogations undergone by Americans during the Korean War. Jessen served as the program’s top psychologist during the 1980s before moving on to head a “graduate” training program. Mitchell replaced Jessen after the move.

Around the time of the 9/11 attacks, the now retired Mitchell created training company Knowledge Works. Using his extensive military contacts, Mitchell began circulating his theories on demoralizing al Qaeda suspects into cooperation, according to the report. His ideas were well received within the CIA and, with Jessen, he wrote a proposal that based American interrogation strategy on enemy practices – slaps, stress positions, sleep deprivation, wall-slamming and waterboarding.

In 2002, Abu Zubaydah, reportedly al Qaeda’s third in command, was being interrogated at a CIA prison in Thailand. FBI investigators had originally used conventional techniques like rapport-building to obtain intelligence. Mitchell arrived later and directed a more coercive treatment for Zubaydah including sleep deprivation and 83 waterboarding sessions over several months. During the interrogation, FBI and even some CIA officials reportedly expressed reservations about the use of torture techniques.

Jessen joined his partner in July before both men determined that the suspect had no more information to yield.

With Justice Department authorization of the enhanced interrogation techniques, business was booming for the pair. The each made between $1,000 and $2,000 a day. What started out as a home-based operation became a 60-employee business with offices in Spokane and Virginia by 2007.

But it just as quickly dried up. Beginning in 2006, elements within the Bush administration, notably Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, started questioning the legitimacy of the program. Public opinion began to steadily deteriorate until the Obama administration took office and terminated the program.

Now in danger of becoming ensnared in a criminal probe, Mitchell and Jessen have retained well known defense lawyer, Henry F. Scheulke III, according to the Times.

Wait…I thought we were in a recession…?

House Orders Three Jets

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“But apparently Congress is not philosophically averse to private air travel: At the end of July, the House approved nearly $200 million for the Air Force to buy three elite Gulfstream jets for ferrying top government officials and Members of Congress.”