All Things News

Not to worry, it appears that the hostage situation in Green Bay continues…

Straight from the Chicago Tribune: “On Thursday, the Packers’ official Web site briefly reported he was retiring, but the page under the breaking news section was live for only a few minutes.

“There’s nothing to it,” Packers spokesman Jeff Blumb told the Associated Press. “People who handle our Web site had set up a dummy page in the event he was to retire. They were asked to take down that page.” Favre’s agent, Bus Cook, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that Favre, in his annual rite of winter, had not made up his mind whether to return for his 18th season.”

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Straight from Slashdot: “ZonkerWilliam recommends a bulletin from the American Institute of Physics, which discusses a study noting that recent spacecraft, such as NEAR, appear to display velocity anomalies much like those seen in Pioneer 10 (which were observed beginning ten years ago). The anomalies amount to up to 13 mm/sec., with a measurement accuracy of 0.1 mm/sec. Quoting:

“A new look at the trajectories for various spacecraft as they fly past the Earth finds in each case a tiny amount of surplus velocity. For craft that pursue a path mostly symmetrical with respect to the equator, the effect is minimal. For craft that pursue a more unsymmetrical path, the effect is larger.”"

Straight from Fox News: “Gunnery Sgt. William ‘Spanky’ Gibson was shot by a sniper in May of 2006 while on foot patrol in Ramadi, Iraq. When the firefight was over, his left leg was gone.

But Gunnery Sgt. William Gibson, a decorated Marine, didn’t stop serving his country, even after his leg was amputated above the knee. He didn’t settle for a desk job stateside, either. He’s back in Iraq — his second tour — on active duty with the U.S. Marine Corps.

“It’s great — it’s a great feeling,” Gibson told FOX News in an exclusive interview at Camp Fallujah in Iraq.

It seems like yesterday that Gibson was cut down in a gunfight and left unable to walk without crutches and prosthetics.

“The first thing that went through my mind was, get my weapon out and function,” he said. “I knew there was something seriously wrong with me — the round luckily enough severed the nerve, so there was no pain.

“Problem was, I could not get up and stand on my feet because of the destruction the round took.”

Doctors had had no choice but to amputate, and Gibson says he steeled himself for the reality of learning to live without full use of his left leg — and moving forward one step at a time.

“I realized, well, it ain’t growing back, so let’s start recovering,” he said. “Initially, I didn’t allow it to affect me to the point of despair … Now, I roll over and look at my wife and say, this kind of sucks. But you get over it quickly.”

By July of 2006, only two months after his was shot, Gibson was back at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. The experience was marked by a series of firsts: the first time he got back into his uniform; the first time he walked, with crutches on his new prosthetic leg; the first time he was back training with his fellow Marines. That’s when he knew he had to go back to Iraq.

“That was my first step,” he said, “the first step to feeling like I was still a Marine.”

He remembers all the camaraderie and gratitude coming from the other servicemen and women for the sacrifices he’d made in combat. It was then, he said, when he knew he had to go on.

“I definitely felt the obligation to stay in the Marine Corps and pay back that honor,” Gibson said. “Because it is an honor to wear the uniform, and I realized that very quickly.”

So Gibson began training in earnest again — only with his new leg, not his old.”

Straight from Fox News: “”The more Qassam fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, they will bring upon themselves a bigger holocaust because we will use all our might to defend ourselves,” Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai said.Israel was forced to activate a rocket warning system in the Gaza Strip to protect Ashkelon, a city of 120,000 people, from Palestinian rockets.

Vilnai’s deployment of the word appeared to show Israel’s growing frustration that Hamas and other militant groups in Gaza refuse to curb their attacks, despite heavy tolls inflicted in Israeli air strikes and tank raids, the Times of London reports.

Ashkelon was hit by several Grad rockets fired from Gaza on Thursday, a sign of the widening scope of violence between Israel and Hamas militants in Gaza. One hit an apartment building, slicing through the roof and three floors below, and another landed near a school, wounding a 17-year-old girl.”