| 28 Weeks Later (review)
Call it 28 Weeks Later, but it's the five years on from the horrifying 28 Days Later that have made all the difference: we are all immeasurably more anxious and on edge post-Katrina, mired in Iraq, nervous about tainted spinach and poisoned pet food and dying honeybees and April heat waves (as our friends in Europe just endured). And all that gnawing fear and nervous unease is roiling through this chillingly matter-of-fact nightmare of a movie, like a CNN breaking-news report that just hasn't broken yet. It's six months after the Rage virus has been eradicated in England, or so humanity's overblown sense of superiority over sneaky and capricious Nature is quick to believe: as if something so inherently, depressingly human as anger-gone-viral could ever be destroyed. The last of the ferocious, mindless Rage zombies has long since died of starvation in the quarantined U.K., and now a NATO force has moved in to start the massive cleanup -- burning millions of bodies, for starters -- and prepare the way for British refugees to start returning home.
Japanese anti-war conference unites Okinawan, Iraqi struggles
On Aug. 4, the National Assembly for Peace and Democracy opened at a conference hall in Kamata, a city within the Tokyo metropolitan area. Attended by some 500 activists from throughout Japan, as well as participants from South Korea, the Philippines, Indonesia and the United States, this was the 37th annual National Assembly, better known by its Japanese acronym Zenko. The group first emerged from the struggle against Japanese involvement in the Vietnam war, and history has now brought it full circle, as Washington again calls upon Tokyo to back up a US military adventure—this time in Iraq, where Japan still maintains troops in an officially "noncombatant" role. The most honored guests at the Zenko conference were Samir Adil and Nadia Mahmood, leaders of the Iraq Freedom Congress (IFC), a civil resistance coalition which came together in 2005 to oppose the occupation and demand a secular state.
Whales Make It To Sea
Search boats and helicopters scoured San Francisco Bay and open ocean outside it on Wednesday but saw no sign of the mother humpback and her calf. The pair had been spotted less than 10 miles from the Golden Gate Bridge late Tuesday near Tiburon, Calif. The whales might have slipped beneath the bridge under cover of darkness and returned to familiar waters of the Pacific Ocean after milling around in an inland river delta for more than two weeks. The humpbacks, members of an endangered species that migrates annually between Mexico, Costa Rica and California's coast, presumably are feeding and healing after a risky sojourn that mobilized resources of at least five government agencies, created a local frenzy and captured global attention. Reason for run unknown Why, after so many days in waters as far as 90 miles from the coast, did the whales suddenly decide to make virtually a bee-line run back to salt water? "Really hard to say," says Doreen Gurrola, assistant education director at the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, Calif.
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