Jitway

An American soldier has been disciplined and ordered from Iraq, the U.S. military said on Sunday, for using a copy of the Koran for target practice at a shooting range near Baghdad. Such an act of desecration of the Muslim holy book could inflame anger against the U.S. military presence in Iraq, but an Iraqi community leader told Reuters an apology by senior American military commanders had helped calm tensions. Saeed al-Zubaie, head of a U.S.-allied Sunni Arab tribal council in the area where the Koran was found, said the book had been used as target practice. It was peppered with 14 bullet holes and offensive language had been scrawled inside, he said. "I was feeling bitterness, but as long as they apologized we are OK with them. Our anger has cooled," said Zubaie, adding that Sunni Arab tribal units who work alongside U.S. forces in the area had threatened to quit unless the military took action. The U.S. television news network CNN said U.S. commanders were met by hundreds of protesters when they went to the village of Radwaniya near Baghdad to deliver the apology. Colonel Bill Buckner, a U.S. military spokesman, said commanders were ordered to swiftly investigate after Iraqi police found the Koran on May 11 at a firing range in Radwaniya. He described the incident as "serious and deeply troubling." "Coalition commanders have briefed local leaders on the results of the investigation and expressed their deep regret," Buckner said in a statement. "They have also undertaken disciplinary action against the soldier who was involved and he has been removed from Iraq." Besides being shipped out of Iraq, it was not clear what other disciplinary action was being taken against the soldier. CNN, which said it was present on Saturday when U.S. commanders made the apology in Radwaniya, said the soldier had been dismissed from his unit. His whereabouts were not immediately known. In his statement, Buckner stressed that the U.S. military respected Islam and the Koran. CNN said when Major-General Jeffery Hammond, the commander of U.S. troops in Baghdad, and other officers arrived to deliver the apology to local leaders in Radwaniya they were met by hundreds of protesting Sunni Arab tribesmen. "I am a man of honor, I am a man of character. You have my word this will never happen again," Hammond told the crowd. "In the most humble manner, I look into your eyes today and I say, please forgive me and my soldiers," CNN reported on its website. It said Colonel Ted Martin, a brigade commander, held up a new copy of the Koran which he kissed and touched to his forehead as he handed it to the tribal elders. "I hope that you'll accept this humble gift," Martin said. Give me a flocking break. If this happened over here and say someone from Iran shot up a bible. Do you think we would make a big deal of it or call for a apology? Hell no, so he shot it up big deal. This is what happens when soldiers get bored. We are trying to help them and be their saviors. But oh no don't dare step on someones religious beliefs. WHATEVER. Also the Brigade commander kissed the new Koran. Telling you if I was that commander I never would have no way in bloody hell. Source HERE

UPDATE China declares 3 days' mourning for quake victims. China declared three days of national mourning for earthquake victims and ordered a suspension of the Olympic torch relay, as the search for survivors of the disaster grew bleak Sunday. The State Council said the mourning period would start Monday and include three minutes of silence observed nationwide at 2:28 p.m., the time the quake struck. Beijing Olympic organizers said in a statement that the torch relay would be suspended "to express our deep mourning to the victims of the earthquake." The relay already had resumed last week after the quake on a more somber note, with runners starting with a minute of silence and asking for donations along the route. Organizers have said the relay would go on as planned in quake-hit Sichuan province next month. In the disaster zone, efforts appeared to shift Sunday from searching for buried survivors to clearing corpses from shattered buildings as the government said the confirmed death toll rose to 32,476. Another 220,109 people suffered injuries, according to a statement from the State Council, China's Cabinet. The government has said it expects the final death toll will surpass 50,000. Near the quake's epicenter, few hopeful relatives were seen in Beichuan, where several dozen corpses in blue body bags lay in a street. Soldiers regularly pulled more dead from the wreckage. "It will soon be too late" to find trapped survivors, said Koji Fujiya, deputy leader of a Japanese rescue team that pulled 10 bodies from a flattened school Sunday. "We hope with our hard work we will find more people alive." A "slightly bruised" man was pulled out alive from a collapsed hospital Sunday after being trapped for 139 hours, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. Experts say buried earthquake survivors can live a week or more, depending on factors including the temperature and whether they have water to drink. A Malaysian rescue team in the town of Muyu, further north, sifted slowly and methodically through the wreckage. However, they were not tapping on the debris in hopes that survivors would hear and respond as other crews had done earlier — instead using giant cutters to split steel girders. Dozens of students were buried in new graves dotting a green hillside overlooking the rubble, the small mounds of dirt failing to block the pungent smell of decay wafting from the ground. Most graves were unmarked, though several had wooden markers with names scribbled on them. Zhou Bencen, 36, said he raced to the town's middle school after the earthquake, where relatives who arrived earlier had dug out the body of his 13-year-old daughter, Zhou Xiao, crushed on the first floor. Zhou cradled his wife in his arms, holding her hand and stroking her back while she sobbed hysterically. "Oh God, oh God, why is life so bitter?" Liao Jinju wailed, over and over. The couple's 9-year-old son survived. Chinese President Hu Jintao has urged rescue teams to reach remote villages battered by the earthquake where the level of damage remained unknown, according to Xinhua. That was reinforced by a group of about 15 people who surrounded an Associated Press reporter at a gasoline station in Mianyang city Sunday, appealing for help for their village, Xiushui. "The government is doing nothing to help us," said one man, who identified himself only by his surname, Chen. "If I gave you my complete name the government would track me down." Chen did not say how many people lived there. He handed over a note signed "by the people of Xiushui," reading: "Please go to our village of Xiushui to cover the situation. The government is doing nothing to help us get water or housing." More international aid was arriving, with two U.S. Air Force cargo planes loaded with tents, lanterns and 15,000 meals landing Sunday in the Sichuan provincial capital of Chengdu. The World Health Organization said conditions for homeless survivors were ripe for outbreaks of disease and called for quick action to supply clean water and proper hygiene facilities. Chinese health officials have not reported any disaster-related outbreaks so far. Also in the quake area, three giant pandas were missing from the world's most famous reserve for the endangered animals. All the pandas at the Wolong Nature Reserve were first reported safe Tuesday, but an official with the State Forestry Administration now says three are missing, the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported Sunday. Panda houses at the reserve were severely damaged and five staff members there were killed, forestry spokesman Cao Qingyao told Xinhua. The 60 other giant pandas at the Wolong Nature Reserve were safe, according to the agency. The reserve is 18 miles from the epicenter of the earthquake. Phone calls to the state forestry administration and to the forestry bureau in Sichuan province rang unanswered Sunday night. Fixed phone lines to the reserve remained down. Officials have been able to call the reserve only by satellite phone. Meanwhile, flood threats from rivers blocked by landslides from the quake appeared to have eased after three waterways near the epicenter overflowed with no problems, Xinhua said. County officials diverted released water as a precaution. The quake damaged some water projects, such as reservoirs and hydroelectric stations, but no reservoirs had burst, Liu Ning, engineer in chief with the Ministry of Water Resources, told Xinhua. Nuclear facilities jolted by the quake were confirmed safe and troops were sent to reinforce security there, air force Maj. Gen. Ma Jian, deputy chief of operations for the military's General Staff Headquarters, told reporters in Beijing. China has a research reactor, two nuclear fuel production sites and two atomic weapons sites in Sichuan province, the French nuclear watchdog has said, all located 40 to 90 miles from the epicenter. This will take years to rebuild and to get back to some sense of a normal life. My heart goes out to all these people. Source HERE

GNR - It's So Easy

Louise Glover

WinUAE 1.5.0 Beta 19 is a amiga emulator. Get it HERE Credit for this goes to Toni Wilen over at eab.abime.net

VisualBoyAdvance v: 1.8.1-beta1 Build: 890 is a gameboy advanced emulator. Looks like someone picked this project back up after forgotten left the scene. Get it HERE

UPDATE An aftershock brought new havoc to the earthquake-stricken region of China on Friday, as it struggled to bury some of its estimated 50,000 dead, dig out more survivors and help thousands of injured and homeless. President Hu Jintao flew to the battered province of Sichuan and Premier Wen Jiabao said the quake damage could exceed that of the devastating 1976 tremor in the northeastern city of Tangshan, which killed up to 300,000 people. Wen called on officials to ensure social stability as frustration and exhaustion grew among survivors, many of whom have lost everything and are living in tents or in the open. China put the known death toll at just over 22,000 on Friday but has said it expects it to eventually exceed 50,000. About 4.8 million people have lost their homes. Thousands of men, women and children were heading on foot for Mianyang, a city near the epicenter, saying they were abandoning their ruined villages for good. Anger has focused on the state of school buildings, many of which crumpled in Monday's 7.9 magnitude quake, burying thousands of children and prompting the Housing Ministry to order an investigation. Hu and Wen stressed that searching for survivors remained the top priority. "We cannot talk about giving up too easily," Wen said. "Life should go on. I believe people in the quake area can definitely build their hometowns even better with their own hands. That is also the biggest consolation for the dead." The country is on precautionary alert against possible radiation leaks, according to a government Web site. The disaster area is home to China's chief nuclear weapons research lab in Mianyang, as well as several secretive atomic sites, but no nuclear power stations. Thousands of residents from Beichuan, one of the places worst hit, streamed away from the town carrying babies, bags and suitcases. The town was a scene of devastation, with virtually every building either demolished or damaged beyond habitation. To the south, in the village of Houzhuang, residents said they were coping on their own, aid and troops yet to reach them. "We ate some corn, but now we are suffering from diarrhea after drinking water from the ditch for two days," one said. BUCKLED ROADS, LANDSLIDES The aftershock, measuring 5.9 on the Richter scale, hit Lixian, to the west of the epicenter in Wenchuan, cutting newly repaired roads and telecommunications. "A number of vehicles were buried in landslides. The casualties were not known," Xinhua news agency said, adding four of its reporters narrowly escaped death when a house collapsed. China has mobilized 130,000 troops to the disaster area, but with buckled and blocked roads, supplies and rescuers have struggled to reach the worst-hit areas. Offers of help have also flooded in. The first foreign rescue teams, from Japan, Russia, Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore have arrived in Sichuan province. At China's request, the World Food Program said it was sending enough ready-to-eat meals for 118,000 people. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced emergency funds of up to seven million dollars and said more would be available. The United States said it had provided China with satellite images of earthquake-stricken areas, and would send two planeloads of relief for victims this weekend. Xinhua said 33 people were dug out of the rubble in Beichuan still alive on Friday. Peng Zhijun, 46, had eaten cigarettes and paper napkins and had drunk his urine to survive. A 50-year-old worker was rescued from a collapsed fertilizer plant after being trapped for 100 hours, a witness told Reuters. Many survivors were on the move, desperately seeking food, shelter or medical treatment. Ning Feng told Reuters he had spent two hungry days limping out of the town of Yingxiu after deciding that waiting to be rescued could be more dangerous than risking landslides and exhaustion on the trek out. "I had to do it on my own. Who was there to help me?" the 19-year-old painter of traditional Tibetan art said, as he stopped to rest on the winding mountain path. ANGER OVER SCHOOL DEATHS In Dujiangyan, a school collapse buried 900 students. In Wufu, nearly every building in the village withstood the quake but for a primary school, whose collapse killed about 300. "Our child wasn't killed by the earthquake. She and the others were killed by a derelict building. The officials knew it was unsafe," said Bi Kaiwei, whose daughter, 13, was killed. Rescuers found two girls, one in a coma and the other dead, holding hands in the ruins of their school, Xinhua said. Housing Minister Jiang Weixin said the schools had not been designed to withstand such a powerful earthquake, but added that corruption may have led to substandard construction. "At this stage we cannot rule out the possibility that there has been shoddy work and inferior materials," Jiang told a news conference in Beijing. There were also concerns about epidemics if the dead were not soon buried or cremated. "A lot of tourists have been killed. We don't know how to deal with the bodies, some of which have been highly decomposed, but their relatives will come to look for them," an army officer in the badly hit Yinmugou resort in Pengzhou told Sichuan TV. "I am really worried about epidemics," he said. Hundreds of damaged dams have also raised fears of collapse and flooding of areas struggling to recover from the quake. This is just sad. So many dead and who knows really how many there are. All the lives lost is just sad. Source HERE

I love big butts and I cannot lie.

Looking to keep up the current string of positive news, Sony on Friday detailed its game lineup for the rest of the year and into 2009. Part of the announcement also revolved around games intended to take advantage of the PlayStation Network, Sony's online gaming service. While the service is said to have eight million registered users, it still is seen by many as inferior to Xbox Live. Sony's own studios plan to release at least 15 games during the period, including several highly anticipated titles which it hopes will help the console catch up to its competitors in sales. "For the second half of 2008 and beyond, we will see a spectacular line up of triple-A titles and original gaming content that will satisfy PlayStation fans across the board," SCEA's marketing chief Scott Steinberg said in a statement. According to NPD, Sony has only sold about 4.1 million consoles in the US as of March, compared with 8.8 million for the Wii and 10 million for Microsoft's Xbox 360. Part of the criticism against the PS3 has always been the gaming selection. The PS3 titles announced Friday include SOCOM: US Navy SEALs Confrontation, the oft-previewed LittleBigPlanet, NBA 09 (also releasing for the PS2 and PSP), MotorStorm Pacific Rift, and the highly anticipated Killzone 2. Several PlayStation Network titles are also en route: wipEout HD, PixelJunk, and Siren: Blood Curse. The PSP will not be forgotten, with Hot Shots Golf: Open Tee 2 and Secret Agent Clank are slated for release later this year. If the game charts are any indication, Sony may need a little in-house help to jumpstart video game sales for its brand. Data for the month of March -- before Grand Theft Auto shipped -- showed that the best a PS3 game could do was 10th (Army of Two), while the Wii had three games in the top ten, and the Xbox 360 had five. PSP Hot Shots Golf: Open Tee 2 - June 3, 2008 Secret Agent Clank - June 17, 2008 NBA 09 - Fall 2008 BUZZ! Master Quiz - Fall 2008 PLAYSTATION Network wipEout HD - Summer 2008 Elefunk - Summer 2008 PixelJunk Eden - Summer 2008 SIREN: Blood Curse - Summer 2008 SOCOM: US Navy SEALs Confrontation - September 16, 2008 PS3 Singstar - May 20 2008 SOCOM: US Navy SEALs Confrontation - September 16, 2008 LittleBigPlanet - October 2008 NBA 09 - Fall 2008 BUZZ! Quiz TV - Fall 2008 MotorStorm Pacific Rift - Fall 2008 Resistance 2 - Fall 2008 Killzone 2 - February 2009 Oh, and June 12th, Metal Gear Solid of course. This sound great but they sure got a long way to catch Xbox. Still I got both so I get my fill off both gaming networks. Source HERE

Latest Game Informer spills beans on cymbal-enabled drum kit, character and guitar creation, song-creation toolset, and music sharing. Earlier this week, rumors surfaced that the the June issue of Game Informer would be jam-packed with details of Activision's Guitar Hero 4, due out this fall. That issue has since arrived in subscribers' mailboxes, confirming the accuracy of the original post and providing more details on developer Neversoft's second crack at the rhythm gaming franchise. As initially revealed by Activision CEO Bobby Kotick in a recent interview, Guitar Hero 4 will add drums and vocals a la Rock Band. Game Informer's feature includes a shot of the referenced drum kit, which includes three pads, two elevated cymbals, and a pedal (as opposed to Rock Band's four pads and a pedal). For those keeping track, that means the Guitar Hero 4 kit has one extra input than the Rock Band equivalent, raising compatibility questions for the two series' instruments yet again. The developer is going wireless with Guitar Hero 4's drum pads, and will be making them pressure-sensitive so the game can tell if players are wailing on the drums or meekly tapping them. The details in Game Informer also clear up the mystery surrounding the "innovation" which Activision promised was coming to the Guitar Hero series in a recent earnings report conference call. The article outlines the game's studio mode, which will give users a variety of ways to create their own songs. Players will be able to jam along with one of the game's existing tracks, record songs as they're played, or meticulously detail note charts. As rumored, the game will also allow users to share the songs they create. Players will initially only be able to upload five songs for others to enjoy, but if those tracks are rated highly by other users, the creators might "get signed," raising the cap to 10 songs or more. Sounds good especially about the drums being able to tell how hard you are hitting them. I wonder if Rock Band will follow? Source HERE

GameEx 9.29 is a front end for many emulators and some pc games. Get it HERE No change log as of yet.

iNES is 3.6 is a Nes emulator for windows, Linux and other platforms. Get it HERE

Mupen64Plus revision 452 is a Nintendo 64 emulator. Get it HERE Thanks go to Richard42 over at Emutalk.net for this one.

Stella release 2.6 is a Atari emulator Get it HERE

SSF v0.09 beta R2 is a Sega Saturn emulator. Get it HERE This is a japanese developed emulator and so I cannot post a change log. The site is HERE

GameEx 9.28 is a front end for many emulators and some pc games. Get it HERE

Trailer This is so cool I love all the stuff falling.

In a demonstration to The Chronicle, the music industry group discloses it uses the same software client as file sharers to catch pirates. No university is singled out above another, and LimeWire is used as RIAA's software of choice. The process begins with a search on the service for song titles owned by its member organizations. Click Here From there, once a track is located, the group uses the features of the software to determine who is sharing it. LimeWire will provide a list of files available for download from the host, as well as his or her IP address. Once this information is obtained, RIAA then determines the ISP with that particular IP using Media Sentry, and then which of those file sharers are located on college and university networks. This seems time consuming, but with Media Sentry the process is automated, including notification of the RIAA of the IPs with infringing files. RIAA will first send a DMCA notice to the the university asking for removal of the file, and rarely will download the file themselves unless human intervention is required in order to confirm the file is indeed the copyrighted song in question. The official -- who refused to be identified in the Chronicle's story out of fear of receiving hate mail -- said that RIAA typically will only send out pre-litigation settlement letters to the people in more serious cases. Unlike the above investigation, these files are always downloaded to verify their content for legal purposes. While the group cannot tell who is downloading the songs, they can uncover who is sharing them. The process also differs from that of commercial ISP's, where the investigation is completely manual. The official said that ISP's are already aware of the piracy problem, so there is no need for such a system at that level. However, colleges are apparently still coming to terms with the problem if RIAA is to be believed. See how easy they get ya. And to all you out there that use LimeWire you have been warned. Source HERE

Nuvalo has released an update to his port of MAME to the Nintendo Wii, heres the details: Get it HERE It is still a bit buggy but give it a try it does work on smaller roms.

Screen shot Trailer This looks awesome I loved playing this game on the N64. Can't wait.

JavaCPC v 4.2 is a Amstrad CPC emulator in JAVA Get it HERE

uBee512 v2.6.0 is a microbee emulator Get it HERE

D-Fend Reloaded v0.4.0 is a graphical interface for DosBox makes setting up DosBox easy. Get it HERE

An Australian driver has been fined for putting a seatbelt around a carton of beer instead of a five-year-old passenger, police said Tuesday. Constable Wayne Burnett told reporters he was "shocked and appalled" to discover the driver's priorities when he pulled a sedan over on the Ross Highway south of the desert town of Alice Springs. "I haven't ever seen something like this before," he said. "There were four adults in the car, two in the front seat and two in the back seats and in between those adults there was the carton of beer strapped in with the belt," he said. "The child was sitting in the lump in the centre, unrestrained." The driver was fined 750 dollars (707 US) for driving an unregistered and uninsured vehicle and failing to ensure a child was wearing a seatbelt. I always knew them aussies were strange. Must have been some Fosters...hmm good beer. Hey Robert was this you? Source HERE

Snes9x v1.43 improvement 12 beta 12 is a SNES Emulator based on Snes9x Get it HERE