A rare earthquake shook parts of the South with a loud roar early Tuesday, cracking foundations, shaking pictures off walls and startling residents from their sleep but causing no serious injuries.

The 4.9 magnitude quake, tying the record for Alabama, struck around 4 a.m. CDT and was centered near Fort Payne, Ala., close to the Georgia line, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

We have lived here for over five years, and this was the first significant shake since we have been here. It's been so long since I have felt an earthquake that when it woke me up, I thought the kids were jumping on the bed. Silly me.

Iraqi civilians are preparing a complaint to present in court in Belgium accusing allied commander Gen. Tommy Franks and other U.S. military officials of war crimes in Iraq, according to the attorney representing the plaintiffs.

The complaint will state that coalition forces are responsible for the indiscriminate killing of Iraqi civilians, the bombing of a marketplace in Baghdad, the shooting of an ambulance, and failure to prevent the mass looting of hospitals, said Jan Fermon, a Brussels-based lawyer. He is representing about 10 Iraqis who say they were victims of or eyewitnesses to atrocities committed during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Excuse me? Where are the Iraqi civilians screaming out about the crime of Saddam Hussein? I don't think these 10 Iraqi's have much to do with this, actually.

Mr. Fermon said the complaint against U.S. officials is based on a 1993 Belgian law that gives a Belgian court authority to judge war crimes committed by noncitizens anywhere in the world.

The plaintiffs sought to file the complaint with the recently inaugurated ICC, but "since the United States did not ratify the treaty to join the institution, we felt compelled to go to a court in Belgium," he said.

Ah ha… Now I see what they are up too. Someone is gung-ho on shoving the ICC issue in our face? I wonder…

The filing of the complaint threatens to heighten tensions between Brussels and Washington, which have been strained since Belgium joined France and Germany to lead European opposition to the war in Iraq.

Oh yes, that's right. Sheesh, what a difference a war makes.

You know, there is a very significant reason for this:

Eerie Silence in Hollywood as Anti-War Stars Vanish

and we all know what the reason is.

"What's the point of me saying anything right now, while they're in the end zone doing the dance and spiking the football?" Farrell said. "They are going to do the thing they are going to do, but we'll be heard from when it's appropriate and in the manner that is appropriate."

Translation: Please wait for a response, while we think of something else to protest, since we totally blew it on this one.

While my postings seem to be prolific at times, comments to my posts have never been ?steady?. In fact, out of 959 entries, I have only had 149 comments. Imagine my response tonight when I got 22 comments all within the same 10 minute period. All 22 comments came from Canada and they were all in response to my SARS STATS entry. 20 of the comments came from the same yuk (person) and only stated that I ?suk?, and I ?suk even more?.

Just my luck, leave it to a yuk to say I suk.

The last two were from a different person who seemed to hit the comment button before they were done commenting. I would like to respond here to the last of those two comments.

Their original comment states:

The flu kills over 50,000 Americans per year (on average). SARS has killed less than 20 Canadians within a month, not to mention at an average age of 75, and these people have all been quite sick from something else. Why is the media blowing this way out of proportion??? Visit the URL if you don't believe me. The URL they provided is http://www.niaid.nih.gov/factsheets/flu.htm

The fact sheet they reference states,

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that 20 to 26 percent of Americans come down with the flu during each flu season, which typically lasts from November to March. Children are two to three times more likely than adults to get sick with the flu, and children frequently spread the virus to others. Although most people recover from the illness, CDC estimates that in the United States more than 100,000 people are hospitalized and about 50,000 to 70,000 people die from the flu and its complications every year.

While the CDC?s own website reports:

In the United States, these winter influenza epidemics can cause illness in 10% to 20% of people and are associated with an average of 36,000 deaths and 114,000 hospitalizations per year.

To be fair in my response, I will use the HIGHEST (or worst case) figures from the NIH fact sheet. In short, for arguments sake, we will assume that 26% of the American people come down with the flu each year and 70,000 of those people die from it (even though WE ALL know better).

A lot of people think the media and the World Health Organization are ?blowing this way out of proportion?, but I beg to differ and I will demonstrate below why the media and the WHO are NOT "blowing this way out of proportion".

Our study of the FLU virus in the United States shows:

If the current population of the United States is approximately 290,830,539 and 26% (or 75,615,940) of the population come down with the flu, we can assume that approximately 70,000 (or 0.0925%) of the people will die from the flu or it's complications. Yes, you read that correctly, using the numbers quoted by the NIH, less than one-tenth of one percent of the population of the United States will die from the flu virus (or it?s complications). Even in a worst case scenario like the "Spanish Flu" pandemic of 1918-1919 where the U.S. population was approximately 103,208,000, and roughly 500,000 people died, the deathrate from the FLU virus was only 0.484% or one-half of one percent.

Now, lets review the known cases of the SARS virus WORLDWIDE:

According to the WHO (as of 4/26/2003) there are 4,836 known cases of SARS, of which 293 (or 6.06%) have died. Did you get that? On a worldwide level the SARS virus is roughly 65.51 times more deadly than the flu virus in the United States.

If we breakdown those statistics by individual countries we see that,

China has 2753 known cases and 122 people (or 4.43%) have died which makes it 47.89 times as deadly in China.

Hong Kong has 1527 known cases and 121 people (or 7.92%) have died which makes it 85.62 times as deadly in Hong Kong.

Singapore has 198 known cases and 21 people (or 10.60%) have died which makes it 114.59 times as deadly in Singapore.

Vietnam has 63 known cases and 5 people (or 7.93%) have died which makes it 85.73 times as deadly in Vietnam.

And finally,

Canada has 142 known cases and 18 people (or 12.68%) have died which makes it 137.08 times as deadly in Canada. (The death toll in Canada rose over the weekend to 21 (or 14.79%) making it 159.89 times as deadly.

I think we can quickly surmise that the SARS virus is FAR more deadly than the FLU virus, and appropriate measures must be taken to contain it before it becomes a WORLDWIDE PANDEMIC. In fact, I do not think the media has given ENOUGH attention to the SARS virus, and several governments have not done enough to help contain it. The World Health Organization should be commended for issuing travel advisories to the affected areas until the outbreaks can be contained. It could be a couple years before a vaccine is developed, so containment looks like our best option at this point.

FRANCE gave Saddam Hussein's regime regular reports on its dealings with US officials, The Sunday Times reported, quoting files it had found in the wreckage of the Iraqi foreign ministry.

The conservative British weekly said the information kept Saddam abreast of every development in US planning and may have helped him to prepare for war.

…

Bernard Jenkin, defence spokesman for Britain's opposition Conservative Party, told the paper that the briefings went beyond diplomatic courtesies and pointed to French "duplicitousness".

And people still wonder why France did not support the war.