He just does it to make the Shrubbery’s kids look bad.  First Prince Harry joins the Army. Then he goes into a combat zone. Now the BBC reports Prince Harry is helping to refurbish a special needs school in Lesotho.

The prince’s charity, Sentebale, is supporting the project at the only school of its kind in the African country, which caters for 43 children.

He has been joined by more than 20 colleagues from the Household Cavalry’s Blues and Royals regiment, in which he is a lieutenant, for the project.

Reporters watched the 23-year-old moving materials by wheelbarrow as he helped build a disabled access ramp.

The group are working to rebuild the Thuso Centre in the northern town of Butha Buthe, which caters for children with profound physical and mental disabilities.

There he is, on his own time, spending his own money, rebuilding a school for handicapped children. Is this any way for a child of wealth and privilege to act? He is just starting trouble, helping the less fortunate and getting dirty doing it.  It’s like having a former American President and First Lady building houses for poor people.

Class – some people are born with it, and others will never understand the concept.

On CBS you have a report on Ahmadinejad’s comments at a Muslim summit in Malaysia, Iran’s President Downplays War With U.S.

(AP) Iran’s president said Tuesday he did not see any possibility of a war between his country and the United States or Israel.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said he believed Washington and Tel Aviv have been “focusing on propaganda and psychological war” against his country.

“I assure you that there won’t be any war in the future,” Ahmadinejad told a news conference during a visit to Malaysia for a summit of developing Muslim nations.

Very reasonable and non-hostile, too bad he might have some influence over parking tickets in Tehran and little else.

And then you have this CNN report of a statement from an official with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Iranian military warns U.S., Israel against attack

[Read more →]

While the White House staff did this, the State Department should have vetted it. This is incompetence suitable for a 4th world nation. The BBC reports that Bush sorry over Berlusconi insult

The White House has apologised to Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi for a briefing describing him as a political “amateur” who is “hated by many”.

The “insulting” biography was included in a press kit distributed to reporters travelling with President George W Bush to a meeting of world leaders in Japan.

He was “one of the most controversial leaders” of a country “known for governmental corruption and vice”.

Only last month, Mr Bush visited his old ally, calling him a “good friend”.

The four-page description of Mr Berlusconi had been taken from the Encyclopedia of World Biography.

Berlusconi has been around for a while and supplied troops to Mess-opotamia, so he isn’t some new figure on the scene.  He was out for a while, but the White House should have known who he was.  Plagerizing books when we pay people to supply short biographies of world leaders is grade school thinking.  There has to be a standard State Department briefing book on the G-8, and that should have been used.  Uncouth doesn’t begin to describe these people.

Position: 23.1 N 55.8 W. [10 PM CDT] Update
Movement: Northwest [310°] near 12 mph.
Maximum sustained winds: 80 mph.
Wind Gusts: 95 mph.
Hurricane Wind Radius: 30 miles.
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 140 miles.
Minimum central pressure: 985 mb.

Bertha is making the turn to the North and is over cooler water than yesterday, showing weakening. The threat to the US and Bermuda has lessened, but the steering isn’t certain.

4PM: Continued weakening over cooler water, and it is definitely turning.