Four children were killed today when the roof of a sports centre near Barcelona collapsed, as destructive storms swept through the Mediterranean for a second day.

Four other people were killed in northern Spain and French emergency forces reported the first fatality as winds of up to 108mph (174km/h) battered the region.

Catalan emergency services said four children had died and 16 people were injured when part of a sports centre collapsed in the town of Sant Boi de Llobregat, near Barcelona, Reuters reported.

Stronger winds than that have now been reported.

HuffPo. Of course.

Obama Would Pick Will Smith To Play Him In Movie: "He Has The Ears!"

Actor Will Smith is Obama's pick to play him if a movie is made about his life, something the two have discussed.

"Will and I have talked about this because he has the ears!" the Illinois senator said in an interview slated to air Tuesday and Wednesday.

After escorting Pincus off the plane, all other passengers were forced off the flight to undergo security checks in accordance with international practice. The flight eventually took off after a delay of about two hours. Pincus was released by police and later caught a flight to London.

Raspelli referred to McDonald's hamburgers as "rubber," and French fries as "malodorous," tasting like "cardboard."Ê He went on to equate McDonald's food to "gasoline," describing it as "repellent."

Here is the problem: You and your minivan loaded up with a pack of rug-rats are driving along on Interstate 80 in Nebraska, and you start to get hungry. Option 1 is the greasy spoon at the truck stop where they sell chicken fried steak with biscuits and gravy at $15 a pop. Option 2 is McDonald's. Which do you choose?

also, in the US McDonald's is inarguably cheap.  actual poor people skip the soda and fries and have say two hamburgers for $2.  A man can live on that if he has to.  

Lose the game and spend the next several years in Guantanamo for consorting with the enemy must be a real aid for a coach in team motivation.

<slaps forehead> I'm still thinking old regieme aren't I (will get the hang of new friendly america, I promise)

If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.

There's lots of US sports and cultural trips here. It's commercial sanctions the US are involved in, and thst is completely self-defeating.

First, the fact the Iranians are frozen out of the global banking system means they didn't lose their  arses like everyone else in the Credit Crunch.

Secondly, the US apparently for ages made it very difficult for Iran to get decent internet pipes/connections, when in fact that would be the most subversive thing - apart from dollar loans "Economic Hit Man" style - that they could do...

And it is really good value, the people are really friendly, just a shame about the bloody traffic.

Modern conservatives engage in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy: the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.Galbraith

you are the media you consume.

Since 9/11 Americans have been told that the so-called war on terror required the government to know everything about its citizens while they needed to know as little as possible about the process of government. It was a Faustian pact that both Democrats and Republicans always felt uncomfortable with. It nurtured the fungus of corruption in an administration that shunned accountability and invited the opposite of trust. The 2008 election was a popular insurrection against the paranoia, secrecy and high-handedness of the Bush era. It was also a shot fired across the bows of the Clintons and the mouldy scent of dynastic entitlement.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

While plenty of people rejected Hillary on dynasty grounds, the elephant in the room remains Iraq.  Why people in the press are too stupid to get that, I've no idea, because it should be quite obvious.  Had Hillary voted against the war, she would probably be president right now.  There wouldn't have been any oxygen for Obama.

Here, too, is an example of the BBC as Useful Idiot to the Village problem, because it's an easy guess why the press here, with a few exceptions, refuses to acknowledge the role that Iraq played.  It would require the press to acknowledge how hopelessly out of touch it has become with the electorate.

The election was most certainly not "a popular insurrection against the paranoia and high-handedness of the Bush era."  It was a popular insurrection against what was, by any measure, a disastrous presidency.  Bush started off his second term by (1) trying to privatize Social Security, (2) trying to intervene in the Terri Schiavo case, and (3) surrendering New Orleans to the Gulf of Mexico.  All of which people found horrifying.  Then came the corruption scandals of the 2006 cycle, with Jack Abramoff and half the GOP getting caught.  By 2007 and 2008, the banks were failing.  By the time we got to the fall of 2008, things had gone completely to shit.  House prices were collapsing, people's 401(k)s were basically cut in half, the recession became one of the longest of the post-war era, etc.

It's not rocket science.  Things sucked, and the public decided GOP ideas were at least partly the cause of the suckage.  That's what normally happens when a party loses power, except to say that the degree to which Bush sucked was much greater.

Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country.

Since 9/11 Americans have been told that the so-called war on terror required the government to know everything about its citizens while they needed to know as little as possible about the process of government. It was a Faustian pact that both Democrats and Republicans always felt uncomfortable with.

Otherwise, it's a one sided piece that manages to miss both Howard Dean and the personal charisma side of Obama in discussing the way Obama used the internet in the elections. Its predictions are wrong: the 'beast' Obama created is entirely dependent upon Obama's infrastructure. If he chooses not to listen to his roots, they will dissipate and fall back to blogs, facebook groups and moveon.

The food in Malaysia was very tasty, by the way. So far here I've only had Pad Thai, which I absolutely had to start with.

you are the media you consume.