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Biodiesel is a cleaner burning diesel replacement fuel made from natural, renewable sources such as new and used vegetable oils and animal fats. Just like petroleum diesel, biodiesel operates in compression-ignition engines. Blends of 20% biodiesel with 80% petroleum diesel (B20) can be used in nearly all diesel equipment and are compatible with most storage and distribution equipment. These low-level blends generally do not require any engine modifications, however, users should consult their original equipment manufacturer and engine warranty statement.
Higher blends, even pure biodiesel (100% biodiesel, or B100), may be able to be used in some engines (built since 1994) with little or no modification. However, engine manufacturers are concerned about the impact of B100 on engine durability. Additionally, B100 is generally not suitable for use in low temperature conditions. Transportation and storage of B100, however, require special management.
Using biodiesel in a conventional diesel engine substantially reduces emissions of unburned hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, sulfates, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, nitrated polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and particulate matter. These reductions increase as the amount of biodiesel blended into diesel fuel increases. The best emission reductions are seen with B100.
Nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions from biodiesel increase or decrease depending on the engine family and testing procedures. NOx emissions (a contributing factor in the localized formation of smog and ozone) from pure biodiesel increase on average by 10 percent. However, biodiesel's lack of sulfur allows the use of NOx control technologies that can not be used with conventional diesel. Additionally, some companies have successfully developed additives to reduce NOx emissions in biodiesel blends.
Average Biodiesel Emissions Compared to Conventional Diesel, According to EPA
Emission Type
Total Unburned Hydrocarbons
Carbon Monoxide
Particulate Matter
(+)2% to -2%
PAH (Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons)**
nPAH (nitrated PAH's)**
Ozone potential of speciated HC
* Estimated from B100 result
** Average reduction across all compounds measured *** 2-nitroflourine results were within test method variability
Biodiesel fuel can be made from new or used vegetable oils and animal fats, which are nontoxic, biodegradable, renewable resources. Fats and oils are chemically reacted with an alcohol (methanol is the usual choice) to produce chemical compounds known as fatty acid methyl esters. Biodiesel is the name given to these esters when they're intended for use as fuel.
Biodiesel can be produced by a variety of technologies. The oils and fats are filtered and preprocessed to remove water and contaminants. The pretreated oils and fats are then mixed with an alcohol and a catalyst. The oil molecules (triglycerides) are broken apart and reformed into methylesters and glycerol, which are then separated from each other and purified.
Approximately 55% of the biodiesel industry can use any fat or oil feedstock, including recycled cooking grease. The other half of the industry is limited to vegetable oils, the least expensive of which is soy oil. The soy industry has been the driving force behind biodiesel commercialization because of excess production capacity, product surpluses, and declining prices. Based on the combined resources of both industries, there is enough feedstock to supply 1.9 billion gallons of biodiesel (under policies designed to encourage biodiesel use). This represents roughly 5% of on-road diesel used in the United States.
The use of biodiesel has grown dramatically during the last few years. The Energy Policy Act (EPAct) was amended by the Energy Conservation Reauthorization Act of 1998 to include biodiesel fuel use as a way for federal, state, and public utility fleets to meet requirements for using alternative fuels.
Pure biodiesel (B100) is considered an alternative fuel under EPAct. Lower-level biodiesel blends are not considered alternative fuels, but fleets can earn one EPAct credit for every 450 gallons of B100 purchased for use in blends of 20% or higher.
That amendment started the sharp increase in the number of biodiesel users, which now include the U.S. Postal Service and the U.S. Departments of Defense, Energy, and Agriculture. Countless school districts, transit authorities, national parks, public utility companies, and garbage and recycling companies also use the fuel.
Currently, there is a biodiesel tax incentive that is a federal tax credit. The credit equates to a one penny per percent of biodiesel in a fuel blend made from agricultural products like vegetable oils, and one-half penny per percent for recycled oils. This incentive is taken by petroleum distributors and passed on to consumers. The United States Department of Agriculture developed a study that estimated this incentive will increase the demand for biodiesel to at least 124 million gallons per year. And depending on other factors, including crude oil prices, the industry projects that demand could be much higher.
Florida's Department of Greenways & Trails is pumping biodiesel into its fleet of field trucks. The field vehicles tow tractors and heavy-duty maintenance equipment over the rugged terrain of the 110-mile Cross Florida Greenway and along paved highways. The average vehicle travels more than 300 miles a week.
In the state of Florida, there are a wide range of biodiesel users including Florida Power and Light, the city of Jacksonville, and the Everglades National Park.
As of March, 2006, the Broward County Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport is using five new biodiesel hybrid electric buses. These biodiesel hybrid electric buses will be used primarily on the Airport's remote parking route and intra-terminal loop. Currently, the Broward County Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport is using a B20 biodiesel blend (20% biodiesel, 80% diesel).
Environmental Benefits
Biodiesel contains no sulfur or aromatics, and use of biodiesel in a conventional diesel engine results in substantial reduction of unburned hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide and particulate matter (all air pollutants under the Clean Air Act). A U.S. Department of Energy study showed that the production and use of biodiesel, compared to petroleum diesel, resulted in a 78.5% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions (a greenhouse gas). Moreover, biodiesel has a positive energy balance. For every unit of energy needed to produce a gallon of biodiesel, 3.24 units of energy are gained.
Economic Benefits
Increased utilization of renewable biofuels results in significant microeconomic benefits to both the urban and rural sectors, and the balance of trade. A study completed in 2001 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that an average annual increase of the equivalent of 200 million gallons of soy-based biodiesel demand would boost total crop cash receipts by $5.2 billion cumulatively by 2010, resulting in an average net farm income increase of $300 million per year. The price for a bushel of soybeans would increase by an average of 17 cents annually during the ten-year period.
In addition to being a domestically produced, renewable alternative fuel for diesel engines, biodiesel has positive performance attributes such as high fuel lubricity and high oxygen content, which may make it a preferred blending stock with future ultra-clean diesel.
Since biodiesel can be used in conventional diesel engines, the renewable fuel can directly replace petroleum products; reducing the country's dependence on imported oil.
Quality Benefits
Biodiesel is registered as a fuel and fuel additive with the EPA and meets clean diesel standards established by the California Air Resources Board (CARB). B100 (100 percent biodiesel) has been designated as an alternative fuel by the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Department of Transportation.
Biodiesel can be used in conventional diesel engines, and special vehicles or engines to run biodiesel do not need to be purchased.
The National Biodiesel Board, the trade association for the biodiesel industry, has formed the National Biodiesel Accreditation Commission (NBAC) to audit fuel producers and marketers in order to enforce fuel quality standards in the U.S. NBAC issues a 'Certified Biodiesel Marketer' seal of approval for biodiesel marketers that have met all requirements of fuel accreditation audits. This seal of approval will provide added assurance to customers, as well as engine manufacturers, that the biodiesel marketed by these companies meets the American Society for Testing & Materials (ASTM) standards for biodiesel and that the fuel supplier will stand behind its products.
Biodiesel offers safety benefits over petroleum diesel because it is much less combustible, with a flash point greater than 150°C, compared to 77°C for petroleum diesel. It is safe to handle, store, and transport.
Biodiesel Related Links


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Old Reviews - Capitan Suizo
Hotel Capitan Suizo
John and family of 4
Wilmington, NC USA
August 2005
We stayed at the Capitan Suizo for 5 days during our 9 day visit to Costa Rica. We did find the hotel to be a garden setting with a large pool and short walk to the beach. Everyone was friendly and the rooms were very clean. There is internet service, but only one terminal, so its hit or miss getting air time. The second level rooms have a nice balcony, but do not have air conditioning or a TV. We found this to be a real problem for us as it gets very hot and humid in the afternoon and evenings plus not having a TV can create some boring moments, especially with kids. The first floor units do have AC, so I would demand one of them if you want to stay there. The ceiling fans just don't cut it. We also had a few bug visits, but nothing that shocked us, as we came with warnings about that. The walk into Tamarindo is about 15 minutes over dirt roads. There are some good restaurants (Geicko's, Happy Days, Taco Stop). The town itself is not really for a family vacation. It is full of dirty, muddy roads with little to do. The Beach at Capitan Suizo is not good at all for snorkeling and there are a lot of rocks just below the water surface. Be sure to locate them at low tide for your safety. We found a lovely beach at Playa Conchal for both snorkeling and swimming. We also chartered a boat for 5 hours for $250 which was a highlight as we love to snorkel. We also did a horseback ride trip, prepared by a local by the name of Mario (your hotel staff will know of him), which was terrific. I would not go back to this hotel due to location (wanted snorkeling beach...go to Conchal), Town (not for family) and lack of AC. I would rate it 2 star.
Hotel Capitan Suizo
Texas - USA
April 2005
Flying into Liberia, Costa Rica is the best route to go not only in location to resort but also getting in/out of customs. It was a breeze. Resort is located about an hour from airport. Tamarindo Beach is a small surfer town. April may not be the best month to visit as the heat was almost unbearable. On the up side, no mosquitoes.
We were greeted very warmly by the staff. We chose to stay in a bungalow. They are quite large in size, excellent patio areas and although it has an inside bath & shower, we chose to use our outside shower all week. The pool here is really large and resort is located right on beach.
Rosa (Tour Desk) is extremely efficient and a nice lady. Four months before visiting we had already scheduled our sport fishing tour since this is prime fishing area. Capulla is who we went through - chartered a 36 ft. Topaz. Caught fish right away - including a big 4 ft long Dorado who put up quite a fight. Staff was very accomodating and filleted the fish and packed on ice. German chef at resort did fabulous job of preparing it for us for dinner.
Canopy Tour
- we went to the newest one that opened about 30 min. outside town - Cartahena Canopy. I tried to chicken out once we climbed the first tree but the guide said I would regret it and he was certainly right. As we zipped from tree to tree - I never wanted the tour to end. This is a must!
High Tide is who we went through for an ATV tour. You'll want to do this as well to see some of the country side. You end up on a bluff overlooking the whole area. Rigo, the guide, was a real sweet kid.
The resort restaurant serves good food. However we had a difficult time finding lunch options outside the resort that we liked. The day before we left we walked down the dirt road by the hotel, headed back toward town and on the right side of the road is a place with a Taco Stop sign. Wish we'd found it earlier - their tacos (nothing like in US) were fabulous.
This is important - due to the remote location of this town - they don't have access to malls as we do here in the US. Three months before our trip I shipped 2 large boxes of childrens clothes and toys. The shipping cost was outrageous, it took almost 3 months to get through customs and someone from the resort had to drive a distance to get them. I would encourage any of you who can afford this to please bring a 2nd suit case filled with new items for the kids. The resort staff couldn't stress how much this was appreciated as the kids have so little there and we are so blessed. Now, go get a pencil and write this down: Jorge Espinoza is the awesome guy they have in reservations. You can't meet him without liking him immediately. He will go out of his way to make sure all your reservations and transportation are taken care of before you arrive. We took a special gift bag for him filled with different items from our area with logo on it. I also included a box of Lindt Lindor Truffles - white chocolate balls. You can find these in the special candy section in Wal-Mart or possibly your grocery store. Grab as many of those as you can afford to carry on with you (they would melt if you pack in suit case) and take to him. He couldn't get over how good they were and it would be a nice gesture. When you get back and do your review - please keep this going so he's stocked with those. Tell everyone the Maldonado's from Texas send their regards and have a nice trip yourself. Oh! one more thing - we've never traveled anywhere else that we felt so safe and the local people were so friendly.


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Gold or Water: The Fight Goes on in El Salvador
This is the second of a two-part series about mining in El Salvador. You can read the first part here.
At this moment, unbeknownst to most of the world, the government of El Salvador is in the midst of a decision that could make it the first country in the world to ban gold mining. Corporate eyes are trained on this tiny nation, hoping it will decide that mining revenues are too lucrative to forgo. So too should those of us who believe that people and their ecosystems come first be doing our part to make sure that corporate interests do not determine what should be a democratic decision among Salvadorans.
Earlier this year, we traveled to El Salvador for The Nation to learn more about how the first progressive government (led by the FMLN party) in El Salvador in decades was deliberating over its choices. As part of its 2009 election promises, the government of Mauricio Funes had announced it would grant no new mining permits during its five-year term and that it was considering a permanent ban. Once elected, the Funes government initiated a major "strategic environmental review" to help set longer-term national policy on mining.
So, we found ourselves at the Ministry of the Economy, which along with the Environment Ministry, is leading the review. (Can you imagine the U.S. Treasury Department and EPA joining forces to do a collaborative review of U.S. policy?) With us was the man overseeing the review process from the economy ministry: engineer Carlos Duarte. Duarte explained that the goal was to do a "scientific" analysis, with the help of a Spanish consulting firm.
We pushed further, trying to understand how a technical analysis could capture the two sides of such a high-stakes issue. On one hand, El Salvador is a country of deep poverty, with people desperately in need of jobs. How could it not be tempted by visions of earnings from gold exports, especially now that gold's price had skyrocketed from under $300 an ounce a decade ago to over $1,500 an ounce at the time of our meeting with Duarte. This view is perhaps best epitomized by former Salvadoran finance minister and mining company economic adviser Manuel Hinds, who said that "renouncing gold mining would be unjustifiable and globally unprecedented."
On the other hand, there is the environmental cost. Here we quoted to Duarte from Maria Silvia Guillen, the head of the Salvadoran human rights group FESPAD: "El Salvador is a small beach with a big river that runs through it. If the river dies, the entire country dies."
Read Part 1:
Gold or Water? A Deadly Debate
To protect their water supply, Salvadorans are trying to ban corporate gold mining—and facing threats and violence as a result.
How, we asked Duarte, could the Salvadoran government conduct a "scientific" analysis of this? Did not the answer, at some point, necessitate a value judgment of what is the real "national interest"? Duarte explained that the Spanish firm, backed up by four technical experts from other countries, had carried out a lengthy study of the issues and held consultations with people affected by mining, ranging from mining firms to the groups in a national anti-mining "Roundtable" that came together in 2005. While hoping this process would produce a consensus, Duarte admitted that such a result was unlikely. More likely, he told us, the two ministries would have to lay out "the interests of the majority," from which they would then make a policy recommendation either that mining be banned or that it be carried out under certain specific conditions.
We learn from others that the consultation meetings themselves were filled with tension and conflict. Indeed, the first group consultation in April 2011 in San Salvador had turned into a pitched debate between leaders of the anti-mining "Roundtable" and representatives of the mining companies. And, the conflict became even more intense—and deadly—when the consultations went to gold country in northern El Salvador. Indeed, grassroots water activist and student, Juan Francisco, was last seen publicly putting up posters in favor of a ban on the very day of the consultations in that town. His body, with two bullets in his head, was found in a mass grave some days later. (Other anti-mining activists were assassinated in 2009.)
Thus, the stakes are very high. In Sal Salvador, FMLN members of legislature's Environment and Climate Change Committee are, at the request of the executive branch, waiting for the outcome of the strategic environmental review before taking action themselves. We visited the national legislature—its hallways a political cacophony of red posters bearing the photos of FMLN leaders (and the ever-present martyr Archbishop Romero) competing with offices adorned with posters of the leading opposition party, ARENA—to meet with members of the committee.
Congressman Gilberto Rivera from the FMLN stronghold of Chalatenango expressed impatience at how long that review was taking and his conviction that "economic and political powers" were "putting pressure on non-FMLN legislators." However, the FMLN does not have an absolute majority in the legislature; still, those we met expressed confidence that the bill they have drafted to ban metals mining could pass if the executive branch recommended such a ban.
In the meantime, Salvadorans—and we—wait for what we hope will be a precedent.
As we wait, we are struck by how this Salvador debate mirrors other struggles around the world. Even the repressive government of Burma recently announced the suspension of a Chinese-financed dam across the Irrawaddy River, given the environmental concerns being voiced by Burmese. In the United States, Nebraska is holding similar conversations related to the 1,700 mile tar sands pipeline proposed to link Canada to the Gulf Coast; many there are worried the pipeline could destroy their aquifer. In our own state of Maryland, the government made a decision three years ago to value social and environmental measures as well as economic ones—and is now in the midst of measuring 26 indicators of "genuine progress." Too much of this is, unfortunately, off the mainstream media's radar screens.
Back in El Salvador, the government continues its deliberations. Grassroots activists, linked with the national Roundtable, continue their brave fight to ban gold mining. And we wait, hopeful that democracy will prevail.
Local opposition to a proposed road in Trinidad brings new understanding of "progress," and what it means to be rooted.
With the citizen-backed blockage of a proposed aluminum smelter, is Trinidad and Tobago changing course toward a rooted future?
More and more people, communities, and nations are taking steps to reduce their vulnerability to a volatile global economy.


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Attestation Issued for Compliance with AICPA Guidelines and High Standards of Information Security Risk Management
AUSTIN, Texas, Dec 19, 2012 — /BackupReview.info/ — Spanning Cloud Apps, the makers of Spanning Backup for Google Apps, today announced that the company has successfully completed the Statement on Standards for Attestation Engagements (SSAE) No. 16, Type 2 audit process, making it the only Google Apps backup provider to do so. Effective immediately, Spanning is SSAE No. 16 Type 2 compliant, certifying the operational effectiveness of the company's systems. The company achieved Type 1 compliance in June, 2012, certifying the suitability and security of its systems architecture design.
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"Completing the SSAE 16 Type 2 audit process is a testament to Spanning's commitment to data security, privacy principles and operational excellence. Spanning Backup is the only backup solution for Google Apps to have undergone such a rigorous process. Spanning customers can confidently trust that their data is safe and secure with us," said Charlie Wood, founder and CEO, Spanning. "As we continue to enhance our service and introduce new products, we are committed to completing third party security audits to demonstrate our ability to exceed the demands of safely handling and protecting our customers' enterprise-scale data. If your business is powered by Google Apps, Spanning is the responsible choice for protecting your data."
Spanning's products are architected and certified to serve both domestic and international customers. Prior to completing the SSAE 16 audit process, Spanning achieved certification with the U.S.-E.U. Safe Harbor Framework and the U.S.-Swiss Safe Harbor Framework, as set forth by the U.S. Department of Commerce regarding the collection, use, and retention of personal information from European Union member countries and Switzerland.
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"It is important for businesses that outsource IT operations, such as data backup, to cloud-based vendors to take audits of this rigor into consideration when selecting a service provider. And similarly, cloud-based vendors should actively be demonstrating their risk management precautions and accountability to customers," said John Moellenberg, Partner, Holtzman Partners. "We commend Spanning for their continued commitment to operational excellence, for submitting their employees and services to onerous examination and for ensuring that their product adheres to the highest standard of security, privacy and reliability."
Customers and prospects can request a copy of the SSAE 16 Type 2 audit report. For more information about products, pricing, or to sign up for a free trial, please visit http://spanning.com/
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Cold, mist and a narrow highway carved out of steep eroding cliffs awaited our group of bicyclists as we lined up near Half Moon Bay to ride 400 miles in seven days from the Bay Area to the Los Angeles area.
Despite months of training rides, I wondered if I was ready.
Some friends suggested that riding Highway 1 is too far, too strenuous and too dangerous.
"Why would you do it?" one friend asked.
I knew the ride could be done. I had ridden this route with some of the best natural scenery anywhere: rocky coasts, crashing waves and surf, and mountains that plunge sharply into the sea.
But that was three decades ago, when I was in my 20s. Pedaling nearly 60 miles a day for a week didn't seem so imposing back then.
I had one big advantage this time, though. I had company to act as a windbreak, find directions, camp with and carry gear in two escort vehicles.
I was a guest adult chaperone riding with some 15 boys and 11 parents and adult chaperones from Boy Scout Troop 36 in Danville. For the Scouts — ages 13 to 18 — the ride in early August was a rite of passage in a troop where every member is expected to complete a rigorous multiday hike or ride.
The boys were restless as we mounted our bikes and lined up on San Gregorio State Beach for last instructions.
"Do not ride off a cliff," said Steve Krome, a Troop 36 assistant Scoutmaster who was spearheading the ride for the second time in three years.
"And do not ride over pine cones," he cautioned.
It was a reference to a Scout on the previous coastal ride who hit a pine cone and sprawled onto the highway. Realizing his vulnerability as cars bore down on him, the Scout had quickly picked himself up, scrambled to safety and become a Troop 36 legend.
I vowed to give a wide berth to pine cones.
We turned onto Highway 1 in single file and started up the first hill with our taillights turned on to blink red, announcing our presence to motorists whenever we were on the often-foggy highway.
We drank in the scenery of rocky terraces, white beaches, long coastlines and flocks of pelicans soaring by.
This was the reward for the exertion of riding Highway 1. From a bicycle, the sights, sounds and smells are closer, more visceral and more accessible than from inside a metal-and-glass cocoon.
"There is no way you can see as much in a car," said Geoff Landon, a parent and veteran cyclist.
Bikes, he added, can easily stop to soak up scenery in many places along narrow Highway 1 where there is no parking for cars for miles.
Well before dark on our first day on the road, we made it to our campground at Manresa State Park near Watsonville. We devoured a dinner prepared by the Scouts with food and stoves hauled by our escort truck.
In the morning, we headed a little inland past Castroville, where the fragrance of strawberries in nearby fields permeated the air as we whizzed by in a pack bunched together to ease wind resistance. No one in our group can remember smelling strawberries as aromatic. Lines of farmworkers harvested berries as we pedaled past their fields.
Just past a highway intersection, we pulled over for a break at a food stand selling burritos and fried artichokes grown in fog-drenched fields nearby.
Was it time for second breakfast, third breakfast? Or first lunch, several riders joked. It would become a theme of the trip: Ride hearty, eat often like a hobbit, and don't bonk for lack of energy.
We were not the only cyclists making the trip to Los Angeles.
One group was riding from Canada to Los Angeles. One Bay Area couple were on their trip pedaling to Los Angeles and camping along the way.
"This is just great," the new bride said with a big smile as she pedaled along with her camping gear on her bike.
We had an easier load than that couple. A truck and a sport utility vehicle hauled our luggage, sleeping and duffel bags and tents.
Since I had chosen to sleep under the stars without a tent, I became the camp's first alarm system for hungry wild animals at night.
In the Monterey camp, a raccoon family tried to mug me. I awakened to scratching and scraping on my duffel bag. I groggily flipped on a flashlight. Baby raccoons scampered up a tree above and peered down. Their mom stood her ground by the foot of my sleeping bag and growled.
I pulled my gear a few feet away from the visitor. It made the babies feel comfortable enough to climb down and slink off into the bushes.
The next morning, we pedaled past the mansions, golf courses and cypress trees on the Seventeen Mile Drive, through Carmel and then headed into Big Sur — the ruggedly scenic, iconic place that inspires artists, tests cyclists and challenges Caltrans to keep the highway from falling into the sea.
As sea otters floated lazily on their backs in kelp beds offshore, we switched in low gear to ride up and down a roller coaster of slopes on the highway that is sliced into coastal mountains rising 2,000 feet tall.
The sound of waves crashing into rocks below provided a soothing counterpart to the slow turning of the bike pedals.
The highway steered us inland into blue skies and 80-degree temperatures that baked us as we eked up the steepest incline in Big Sur. On this day, we climbed a cumulative total of some 8,000 feet — as much as riding up Mount Diablo twice.
Some of us were barely turning the pedals, but we made it to the top. We sucked down drinks at a country store and then headed down toward our campsite at Limekiln State Park.
It would be the toughest day of the trip for me and many others before we reached our destination near Ventura, where the boys would catch an early-morning bus to Disneyland.
All the Scouts made it. As the week progressed, their steering became straighter. The pack drew closer together on flat stretches to ride more efficiently with less wind resistance. These teen riders were tough. Only when asked did the boys acknowledge they had sore rear ends and legs, typical for such a long ride.
During one stretch near Ventura, we had to ride on the shoulder of Highway 101 for a few miles — a legal practice because there is no alternative route there. Our group moved swiftly in a pack as the gusts from passing trucks smacked us — an unnerving experience.
After the trip, Krome was impressed but not surprised by the fitness and grit of the young men.
"This trip is about teaching boys to go beyond what they think are their limits," he said. "I think some thought at first, 'I can't ride 400 miles on a bike.'
"But they did something most people will never do."
Contact Denis Cuff at 925-943-8267. Follow him at Twitter.com/deniscuff.


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3' 10 x 9' 10 Hossainabad Persian Runner Rug
This rug is currently unavailable.
Authentic Persian Rug
Hand Knotted
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Has fringe.
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New York, April 13, 2012--Chinese authorities should halt their censorship of Web content in the aftermath of senior politician Bo Xilai's dismissal, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. Internet officials in China have deleted at least 210,000 online posts and shut down as many as 42 websites since mid-March for allegedly spreading rumors, the state-run news agency Xinhua reported on Thursday.
The Xinhua report did not tie the crackdown to the mid-March ouster of Bo Xilai, the former Chinese Communist Party leader in the southwestern city of Chongqing. State news websites reporting on the story did not name any of the websites that had been shut down or the posts that were deleted. However, the move appears to be the latest in a series of attempts to maintain order online after Bo's dismissal sparked rumors of an attempted coup.
Comment functions on two leading microblogs were disabled for three days earlier this month, and state media reported that police had detained six unidentified individuals for allegedly fabricating or disseminating rumors. Censors even blocked the city name "Chongqing" and the word "tomato"--a code name for Bo--from searches on the popular microblog site Weibo.
"Each time authorities censor information in the Bo Xilai scandal, they intensify the public's interest in the story at home and abroad," said Bob Dietz, CPJ's Asia program coordinator. "The country's leadership is allowing its censors to send a message that there is something to hide."
Separately, The Wall Street Journal reported that several Chinese and overseas websites could not be accessed within the country for two hours on Thursday. In addition, Internet users outside China could not access key Chinese websites, the report said. The Journal also reported that the blocking did not seem to be the result of equipment failure but said it was not clear if the blackout was intentional.


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Im current developing an app which has two tabs (in the future there may be more added) which have to exact same variables, fields, Jtables, and so on.
currently i have named everything textbox1 and textbox2, and i pass in a port number to each method used.
just wondering if theres a way i can set a panel to show twice (or as many times as needed) on each tab of the JTabbedPane. This will help me stop repeating code.


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Learn how to download and watch these online videos by reading the online video guide, windows video guide, and mac os video guide. See what other videos are available on the videos from the resistance online video page or find out more about the portland indymedia video collective.
To download the video (after making sure the required software is installed as outlined in the online video guide) follow the link below:
homepage: http://portland.indymedia.org/en/videos/#ACalltoMediaArms
contribute to this article
add comment to discussion
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Ok this is it, this is the Official Rugby Thread.
So Voltman, Richie Rash, and anyone else who is a big fan of rugby, get in here, and we'll down a few Irish Coffees and chat about the game they play in heaven.
Ok this is it, this is the Official Rugby Thread.
So Voltman, Richie Rash, and anyone else who is a big fan of rugby, get in here, and we'll down a few Irish Coffees and chat about the game they play in heaven.
Originally Posted by SupaFreak2005Originally Posted by steds
Thank you.....great thread
- This is Your Life...Are You Who You Want to Be -
Question: Once our forward pack potentially gets Keith Robinson back (although that is questionable) and our loosies consistently work together like they did against France, can the All Blacks be beaten?
from what i hear he may not be back, but otherwise i would say i'm looking foward to the lions going down, especially up front
I've heard a quote third-hand from the man saying that he is pretty much f****d. Bit of a shame really.Originally Posted by bryce
Maxwell to give 40 minutes with Gibbes off the bench for mine.
Unfortunately no.Originally Posted by Voltman
did anyone watch the IRB sevens final against NZ and Figi. ?
gibbes is a bit of a worry IMO, he looked to be well above his normal playing weight in the final rounds of the npc and his work rate is nowhere near what it used to be - admittedly he has being playing in the tight of late and i think he will stay a lock for the rest of his career.Originally Posted by Voltman
i hope ali williams can string together some consistent performances because he is the sort guy who can come onto the park as a sub, absolutley fizzing to go and really get stuck into it and potentially lift the team, he would be my ideal bench second rower provided he finds some form.
Robinson with that great big shining head could potentially be the best lineout jumper in the world. Add to his decent ball running skills, I have a lotta of respect for the man.Originally Posted by Voltman
Can the All Balcks be beaten? Its hard, but all yo0u have to tell the ABs is that its an important World Cup match and then *gasp* can-t *gasp* b-b-b *cough* b-b-breathe *gasp* Im *cough splutter* ch-ch-choking...
Tee, hee!Originally Posted by KennyD
When did the ABs last bump into Bill? 87 was it?
Seriously tho, The Lions winning in NZ is a huge ask. Off the top of my head it's happened once ever. That said, with our potential tight five, (England with Shane Byrne @ Hooker, essentially. No disrespect to Wally, but it'd be nice to have a guy who can throw in) if we play ugly, ten-man, old-skool England-stylee we have a chance. But if NZ can anything approaching parity of possession I fear for us.
If I could have one thing for Xmas it'd be D1ck Hill fit for the summer.
Oh, and Jonno will tour. As skipper. He can't leave it alone.
Cricket Web's current Premier League Tipping Champion
- As featured in The Independent.
"Ben Stokes, that most unlikely saint, worked the second of the two miracles he needs for his canonisation." - The Guardian's Andy Bell on the England all-rounder's Headingley ton
Play your ugly rugby with Wilko then...drop drop drop, PG, PG, drop, PG...Originally Posted by BoyBrumby
And even though I dont now who Shane Byrne is, hes most likely a hella lot better than that, that...that thing Tompson. I mean his face come on, we are trying to encourage children to watch rugby nowadays, not scare them away.
Ironically enough there's a court-order preventing Wally going near children. Joke, not true! But he's bit of a child-scarer in the looks dept, yes.Originally Posted by KennyD
Byrne's the be-mulleted Mick Hooker. Had a very tidy six nations & was magic at Twickers when they d1cked us there. Unlikely to win any beauty contests either tho...
& there's something to be said for kicking points...Charlie H would do well to remember that....
Ahh Hodgson, yes, I like his attacking play, hes very organised and his opassing is spot on, but that goal kicking and jis defence is a problem. And Andy Gormasall!, perhaps one of the easiest conversions you can get, and I know hes only a backup kicker, but he must have been kickin himself after the game for missing those 2 simple points.Originally Posted by BoyBrumby
To be fair to Gomersall, he's very much a goal-kicker of the deputy-assistant-fourth choice variety. Our actual back up was Henry Paul, who Andy Robinson hauled off after about 20 mins. No injury, a real bum call. If Robbo didn't fancy Henry he shouldn't have picked him in the first place. Sort of thing that can wreck a bloke's confidence. I wouldn't have blamed Henry if he'd have told us to shove it.Originally Posted by KennyD
BTW: is your Paul (Jeremy, too gay a name for a hooker by far!!) related to Henry & Robbie, do you know? I saw in the program he's NZ-born too & they look pretty similar. Mind you, small country, small gene-pool I guess!
About Jeremy, no, I dont think they are related at all.Originally Posted by BoyBrumby
And with Henry, he was having a shocker though. He took a crash ball like 3 times only to have it ripped out of his grasp, and 2 forward passes I can remember.
But I watched him a bit in the England premiership league with Gloustecer? (& sp?) Yeah and he was playing really well.
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Often when you work on other peoples code, or work with code in groups, its not a good idea to commit to the main repository. If not for any other reason, just so you dont piss off the person whos running the project.
That definitely doesnt mean that you shouldnt work on their code, though. The sensible thing to do is to create a patch that the person in charge of the repository can plug in and commit themselves.
Heres how to do that using Git.
Not only have I written this little tutorial, but Ive created a git repository to example this with, in which we will modify a very simple function to use a constant.
I have included generalised commands and instructions, and also ones specific to working on this repository.
Feel free to send me your patches for the repo and Ill let you know if you did it all right!
Get the Main Code
The first thing you need to do to work on their code is to get the code. This should be pretty easy to anyone thats ever used git.
git clone [address of the repo]
This will download a copy of the entire repo.
So, for my demo repo
git clone git://github.com/robotgoblin/PatchDemo.git PatchDemo
This will download everything in the repo to a folder called PatchDemo.
Work on the Code
Now you have to make your changes. It is very, very, very important that you work on your code on a separate branch.
git checkout -b new_branch_name
So, if youre working on PatchDemo
git checkout -b const_patch
Now make your changes and commit as you would normally.
If youre working on PatchDemo, change OutputMessage.cpp to have the following.
const char* MESSAGE = "Hello, from a constant!";
Now commit it.
Do not forget to test that it works!
If youre using PatchDemo, you just have to build the program and check to see if it outputs correctly.
Create the Patch
Now we need to create the actual patch that will make the changes weve made.
git format-patch [original branch] --stdout > name_of_patch_file.patch
For PatchDemo
git format-patch master --stdout > const_message.patch
Thats it, done.
Applying the Patch
If youre interested, the patch can be applied using the following commands.
First check the patch will work as you need it to. The first of these commands will show you what will be changed. The second shows you if any problems will arise from applying the patch (e.g. conflicts)
git apply --stat [patch_file] git apply --check [patch_file]
Now, apply the patch.
git apply [patch_file]
So, for PatchDemo run the following.
git apply --stat const_message.patch git apply --check const_message.patch git apply const_message.patch
If everything went well, submit your patch to whoevers in charge.


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Dear Senthilraj, Giri & MFW Team in Coimbatore,
I had mentioned in another post that I will share with you details about a workshop in Coimbatore where you can get the complete Oil Servicing, mechanical & electrical repairs & tinkering & painting related works done.
This workshop is run by Ganesh who earlier worked at MYTVS as Service Advisor and is well known to me. He along with few other mechanics are running this workshop near Goundanpalayam for now close to 2 years.
I just have spoken with him and apprised him that my friends will contact him & pay a visit to his workshop. Please know that they might have a small & decent set up only. Anandhkumar you might know him when you would have visited MYTVS in Coimbatore more than 2 years ago.
I will send his contact number to Senthilraj & Giri as PM and request you guys to pay a visit to his workshop & get to know him personally & also understand what all services he provides.
Hope this can be of some help to you all in Coimbatore. I have interacted with him many times earlier while I was staying in Coimbatore 1 & 1/2 years ago when I used to take my Palio to MYTVS and he has done a good job on the FIATs.
Have wonderful weekend.


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Labor vows to give Dems a jolt
LOS ANGELES — Members of the AFL-CIO erupted in applause this week when Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) told them that their agenda was "America's agenda."
Less certain, according to a collection of top union officials, is whether labor's agenda is still the Democratic Party's agenda.
Story Continued Below
Assembled here for the AFL-CIO's quadrennial convention, less than a year after unions played a pivotal role in helping Democrats win a powerful popular victory in the 2012 presidential election, labor leaders from across the country voiced impatience and exasperation with national politicians whom they say take union members for granted.
As a result, union leaders say they are more determined than ever to forge an independent path for organized labor — not turning their backs on Democrats but focusing their substantial resources on helping officeholders and candidates who actually champion their issues.
( Also on POLITICO: AFL-CIO to fight Pacific trade deal)
In the near term, that means plowing labor resources in 2014 into defeating Republican governors who have been labor's most vigorous opponents and creating a "progressive firewall" in the U.S. Senate that will prevent Republicans from capturing control. It does not necessarily mean, labor strategists said, pumping funds into reelecting red-state Democrats who are unlikely to go to bat for unions down the line.
And at the convention this week, the membership of the AFL-CIO also passed a resolution expressing support for eventual primary challenges to incumbents who fail to stick up for labor. "We must promote pro-worker candidates in primaries to hold Democrats and Republicans accountable for their votes and to elect more progressive officials," read the resolution, which also committed to putting more funds into Workers' Voice, the pro-labor super PAC.
Speaking to reporters Monday, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees President Lee Saunders issued this stern warning to candidates: "If they don't support working families or they cross us, whether they're Democrat or Republican, then we're going to be developing programs to go after them."
( Also on POLITICO: SEIU joins Obamacare push)
Not all union chieftains go quite so far in their language, but there was a palpable sense among the labor brass here that simply supporting politicians with a "D" next to their name hasn't gotten the job done for their membership.
As Democrats have embraced the rhetoric of economic populism, casting themselves as the party of middle-class and working people fighting against an oligarch-controlled GOP, union priorities have languished in Congress. Even after President Barack Obama first took office and Democrats controlled both houses of Congress, the Employee Free Choice Act — a progressive organizing proposal, and labor's ultimate legislative priority — never moved an inch.
Recently, some unions have voiced concern about provisions of the Affordable Care Act that they say might lead to workers losing employer-backed or multi-employer insurance coverage. Big Labor could get snubbed again when Obama chooses a nominee to lead the Federal Reserve: The AFL-CIO has strongly endorsed Fed Vice Chair Janet Yellen for the job, while Obama reportedly favors centrist Larry Summers, a former Harvard president.
( Also on POLITICO: Sen. Warren rips SCOTUS as too far right)
For some here, all of that signals a worrisome decoupling of progressive economic ideas and the political institutions dedicated to advancing them. An ascendant Democratic Party is a small prize for unions if it represents a kind of Manhattan-and-Marin County liberalism, rather than the agenda of the union hall.
"[Democrats] talk about the plight of workers, the need to rebuild the middle class. Those are the symptoms. The problem is you're not empowering enough workers to form and join unions," said Ed Wytkind, who helms the AFL-CIO's Transportation Trades Department.
Citing Warren and Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown as model Democratic allies, Wytkind said there are plenty of figures in the party with "relationships with some of the more sinister corporations that have an agenda that is completely counter to the values that they claim to embrace."


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I'm trying to use DotNetZip (http://dotnetzip.codeplex.com/) in a monotouch project.
I have re-compiled it for monotouch, by making two new monotouch projects under MonoDevelop (one for ZLib and the other for DotNetZip), putting the code inside, removing code that references Windows Forms, and setting Compile Target = Library in the project options.
I set the active configuration in MonoDevelop to "Release - iPhone" before compiling.
Then, I referenced the resulting DLLs in my main monotouch project.
That works fine when running in the simulator, but when I try to debug this on the actual device (an iPod Touch 4 in my case), I get an error at runtime:
System.ExecutionEngineException has been thrown
Attempting to JIT compile method 'Vortaro.SearchTableViewSource:.ctor (Vortaro.SearchViewController)' while running with --aot-only.
That happens on this line:
using (ZipFile zip = ZipFile.Read ("dictionary.zip")) {
I also tested with a simple example that only does this when a button is clicked:
ZipFile.Read ("dictionary.zip");
and I get this error:
Unhandled Exception: System.ExecutionEngineException: Attempting to JIT compile method 'Ionic.Zip.ZipContainer:.ctor (object)' while running with --aot-only.
at Ionic.Zip.ZipEntry.ReadDirEntry (Ionic.Zip.ZipFile zf) [0x000b5] in /Users/(...)/ZipDirEntry.cs:199
When I look at the constructor to which the error points, I fail to see anything that could cause the JIT compilation:
public ZipContainer(Object o)
_zf = (o as ZipFile);
_zos = (o as ZipOutputStream);
_zis = (o as ZipInputStream);


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- Font:
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This report aired on Dateline NBC on Friday, Oct. 2, 2009. See related web-exclusive videos here.
The whole world has seen the backyard squalor. Has heard the tale of 11-year-old Jaycee Dugard - kidnapped, screaming, from a bus stop, spirited to this forsaken place nearly 20 years ago, has heard now she was pregnant at 14, how she raised two daughters in here. And has seen the eyes of the man beneath the accusing headlines. So many questions, now. How did she survive, how is she now?
Keith Morrison, Dateline NBC: Would you want to see her now?
Kelly Brosnahan: Oh, I would love to. I'd hope she remembers me and all the fun things we did together. I would love to see her.
Who is Phil Garrido--the man accused of keeping Jaycee and those girls on his property all these years -how did he get to be that way? Are there victims, still to be discovered? And did the law miss repeated opportunities to prevent any of this from happening?
Here's the astonishing record we've uncovered.
This is a story that should never have happened, about a man whose monstrous appetites, once stopped - and they were - should have stayed that way. But that's the trouble with evil intent: It isn't necessarily so simple to see. Peel away that malevolent look on his face, erect a barricade to keep the neighbors and the law at bay, and you have the disturbing tale of Phillip Garrido. Make sense of this if you can.
It began here: San Francisco's East Bay. Garrido was a child of the 60's, a boy whose mother thought he could do no wrong, or so it's been reported. Though, as he himself admits, he did lots of wrong things: as a teenager, he began abusing drugs. He became very fond of LSD. Landed in jail on a drug possession charge. And then, out again, a struggling musician, at the age of 21, was first accused of a sexual attack.
It was 1972. Antioch, California. Garrido and a friend picked up two girls walking to the public library. Or so it was alleged by Lieutenant Leonard Orman of the Antioch Police Department.
Leonard Orman: They started driving around. Apparently Mr. Garrido provided them with barbiturates.
The alleged victim remembers only that she was taken to this motel, was sexually assaulted, and then woke up in the hospital.
Leonard Orman: The victim made a decision not to testify, therefore the case was dropped.
And thus our use of the word "alleged." And thus also perhaps the first opportunity missed. There would be, as you'll see, several more. Garrido soon landed in Reno, married his high school sweetheart, lived, as far as anyone in the world around him knew, an unremarkable life.
And then in November of 1976, Phillip Garrido went hunting. This is where he came: It's just across the state line, in California. Where, in a South Lake Tahoe parking lot, he found what he was looking for.
Katie Calloway: After I got in my car and started backing out, actually, I heard a bang on my window. And it was this tall young man standing there in a denim suit.
This woman's name is Katie Calloway. She was 25 then, a blackjack dealer and single mother.
Katie Calloway: I rolled down my window. And he said, "Gee, I'm-- I'm really sorry. I didn't mean to frighten you, but my car won't start. I was just wondering, which way are you going??"
She had no idea of course that another woman would come forward to claim the man in the denim suit tried to abduct her just an hour earlier.
Katie Calloway: He didn't look to me like what i thought a rapist should look like.
Katie Calloway let the man into her car and began driving in the direction of her boyfriend's house.
Katie Calloway: And as I got to the side street I was going to turn on he says, "Well, actually it's just past that porch light right there." And at that point he slammed my head into the steering wheel. And just overpowered me. He grabbed my keys. Threw 'em on the floor. Had handcuffs out of his pocket. He said to me, "All I want is a piece of ass. If you cooperate you won't get hurt."
Nothing could have been further from the truth. Phillip Garrido had a plan for Katie.
They took a drive, 60 miles, to a storage facility in Reno. He forced Katie into one of the units in which he had crafted a sex palace of sorts: carpeted walls, pornographic magazines, sex toys. He took, by his own admission, 4 hits of LSD.And then, for hour after hour, committed unspeakable sins against his victim.
Katie Calloway: He said to me things like, you know, "Just imagine if you were in Roman times and you had to do everything the man said if you were their slave." You know?
For 8 hours, the horrors continued. Then, 3 a.m., Katie heard a knocking sound. A passing police officer had noticed that the lock on the unit had been opened not with a key, but a crowbar.
Katie Calloway: He banged very loudly on the door. And Garrido went out there to-- see who it was. And he came back in and he said, "It's the heat. Do-- do I have to tie you up or are you going to be good?" And I said, "No, I've been good. No problem. You know, you don't have to tie me up."
Garrido went back to talk to the cop.
Katie Calloway: I sat there for about-- I don't know, 20, 30 seconds. And I thought, "I've got to try. If this is-- if that's really a policeman out there, I've got to try and I've got to do it now. I just ran out there. I said, "Help me. Help me, please. Help me. He kidnapped me." You know? And-- and I ran over next to him. And the policeman said, "What's going on here?" And Garrido says, "Nothing. This is just my girlfriend. We're havin' a party back here. And I said, "No, i'm not. Keep him away from me. Keep him away!"
Phillip Garrido was arrested. Charged with kidnapping. Rape. Dan DeMaranville was the police detective assigned to interview Garrido.
Dan DeMaranville: One of the questions I remember asking him is-- is why is a guy that, you know, looks like you just committing a kidnapping and rape. You shouldn't have to do that. And he responded, "Well, I have a little problem. And one of the ways I get sexual gratification is by forcing women."
To a man, authorities in Reno believed they had caught a madman, a sexual sadist who, if, he had somehow slipped through their fingers would never have allowed his captive to get out alive.
Mike Malloy is a former deputy prosecutor in Reno.
Mike Malloy: He-- wouldn't have been able to make a sex slave out of her. So he would've had to dispose of her some other way. So I think the police officer who was on his toes and found that crime in progress because of good police work is the person who saved Ms. Calloway's life.
That is what happened, Thanksgiving, 1976. A predator, caught red handed. Brought to justice. But what happened next, though it rolled out in legal slow-motion, was - as you will see - perhaps the most puzzling chapter of the whole disturbing story.
Reno, Nevada. 1976. Phillip Garrido had been caught raping Katie Calloway, in a seedy storage unit "sex palace."
Dan DeMaranville: Look at his eyes. Look at the expression on his face. He's JDLR. He just don't look right. I don't care who you are. He just don't look right.
And not from his eyes, but from Garrido's own mouth came a terrifying, and prophetic, warning.
In court, Garrido admitted to watching little girls as young as seven, outside schools and restaurants. A psychiatrist presented an evaluation and said Garrido complained of hallucinations, said he felt LSD increased his sexual abilities, and said he felt powerless to resist what he called fantasies -driving him to commit rape.
Mike Malloy: He had such sexual fantasies that go beyond the norm, and he was going to carry out those fantasies no matter what it took and no matter who he might hurt in the process.
Garrido told the judge it was the LSD that made him do it. But with his arrest, he said, he found something better than drugs; he found God, and he vowed to straighten out his life.
The judge's sentence? For kidnapping, 50 years in federal prison. And for rape and other state crimes?
MikeMalloy: The judge agreed that this perpetrator deserved the harshest sentence available to the court, which was a life sentence of imprisonment in the Nevada state prison.
And so it was imposed. A life sentence. A 50-year sentence. To be served at the same time. Never, the court decided, would Phil Garrido be given the chance to leer at, touch or assault girls or women ever again.
Katie Calloway Hall: I'm thinking, he's going away for a long time.
Or so she assumed. And then, in November 1988, 11 years after Garrido was sentenced to 50 years plus life in prison, Katie Calloway saw someone approach her roulette table.
Katie Calloway Hall: When he asked for a drink, he said-- "you know, Katie, I haven't had a drink in 11 years. This is my first drink in 11 years."
She went cold. 11 years since the nightmare in the storage unit.
Katie Calloway Hall: And when he left he leaned over the table and he said to me, "Hope to see you again real soon, Katie." And the hairs on the back of my neck went up and I said, I think that's the guy that kidnapped me.
But wasn't that man still in prison?
Frantically, during her 20-minute work breaks, Katie attempted to track down Phillip Garrido. How could he be free? Be here? In Tahoe?
Here's how it happened: Garrido had been packed off to Leavenworth Prison in Kansas on the kidnapping charge. Three years into that sentence, Garrido, now divorced, married a woman named Nancy. A nurse's aide who'd fallen in love with him while visiting a relative in prison.
For the next several years, he and she did everything they could to convince people he was a changed man, that he deserved a second chance. And he got one. Under the guidelines back then, the Feds paroled him after ten years. Shipped him then, to Nevada, to complete his life sentence and there. Garrido took the final step out the door.
The Nevada Parole Board voted 3-2 to set him free. Phillip Garrido was no longer behind bars.
Dan DeMaranville: He only did less than 11 years. Not enough. Not enough time.
Katie Calloway, now terrified for her own safety, reached a man she never expected to have to speak to: Garrido's parole officer.
Katie Calloway Hall: He says, "And what do you want me to tell you? That he's well? He's not. He's a sick puppy. We know he's going to do this again. But we're sure it's not directed at you."
Well, that, at least, was true. It was 1988. Phillip Garrido had his freedom now. His activities could resume.
Nicole Sipes: It's beautiful, it's heaven, y'know?
Kelly Brosnahan: It was a wonderful place to grow up.
Tucked under the ancient alpine canopy that blankets the southern end of this national treasure is a lattice of quiet streets, a child's paradise. Or so it seemed as spring turned to summer, 1991, South Lake Tahoe. Jaycee Dugard was the new girl in town that year. Pretty, blonde, very quiet. And very shy.
She had just a couple of fast friends, among them Kelly Brosnahan. On June 7, a Friday night, Jaycee attended Kelly's sleepover party.
KeithMorrison: I think that's about the most fun thing girls can do at a certain stage, a sleepover!
KellyBrosnahan: Yeah, we had fun, and we were playing Nintendo and just the normal things you'd do at a sleepover.
And then it was Monday morning. Last week of school. Jaycee walked alone along her safe street to the school bus stop. Nicole Sipes, now a mother herself, was on the bus when it pulled up to Jaycee's corner.
By then, it had already happened.
NicoleSipes: The twins from across the street ran onto the bus and started yelling, "They took her, they took her, they took her."
What happened then is still a vivid memory, two decades later.
NicoleSipes: Everybody was scared. I mean, we're 11 and a police officer gets on and says we all have to stay on the bus, you know something really bad has happened.
KeithMorrison: Did you have any idea what?
NicoleSipes: No, we didn't know what had happened until after he had told us stay on the bus.
Kelly was on the playground, waiting for her friend Jaycee. Unaware of what had happened.
KellyBrosnahan: And I remember the kids coming from Jaycee's bus, and Jaycee wasn't coming. And the kids were saying that-- that there was a-- a car and s-- they heard somebody got kidnapped, and then another group of kids said they thought it was Jaycee.
Back home, as a massive search began, the single, frantic eyewitness to the abduction, Jaycee's stepfather, went on local TV.
Carl Probyn: I watched my daughter go towards the top of the hill and all of a sudden the car darted in front of her.
911 call:
Video: String of kidnappings related?
911 call: Video: String of kidnappings related?
Carl Probyn: My daughter was just kidnapped. It was a gray Ford. A man and a woman in the car.
Just like that, little 11-year old Jaycee Dugard was driven away in a gun-metal gray sedan. Gone. Her mother Terry. Inconsolable, appealed to whoever had taken her.
TerryProbyn on TV: I need her home. I need her to come home tonight. Jaycee, if you hear Mommy, I love you, and I want you to come home tonight safe and sound.
Keith Morrison: What was it like for you that next few days?
Kelly Brosnahan: I just (crying) remember it was really hard. It was awful, so awful. It was a very sad and very hard thing.
Keith Morrison: Did you have any idea what might have happened to her?
Kelly Brosnahan: No, no. I just know my friend was there one day and then the next day she wasn't. And I remember how hard it was to see Terry. She was just so distraught.
Then as if to add to Terry's grief, police took a hard look at her own husband, Jaycee's stepfather Carl Probyn. He was the last to see her, after all. And as the hours became days, the weeks turn into months, his life became increasingly untenable here in the glare of public suspicion. Eventually, his marriage to Jaycee's mother fell apart. And separately, they moved away.
But in those first hours he was able to accomplish something important: a sketch that was both helpful and, well, unhelpful. A sketch of the female abductor.
Retired FBI agent Mary Ellen O'Toole worked the case. She helped author an FBI manual on Video: Mother of abductee: 'I'm still hoping' child abduction.
MaryEllen O'Toole: Two things that were striking. Number one, this is not a crime that you see a woman commit, generally. And then number two, it was then, and it continues to be, unusual to have a couple involved in this kind of crime.
And O'Toole says there were other telling circumstances.
MaryEllen O'Toole: Plus, it occurred in broad daylight. Plus, it occurred in front of other people who could provide us with information about the car, about Jaycee, about the abductor, about what the dynamics of the neighborhood were like. So, to do that seemed to be very high-risk behavior.
But despite so many clues, the little girl was gone. No trace at all. The desperate searchers knew nothing, of course, of Phil Garrido or Nancy, his jail-house bride. There was debate about even believing the story that a woman had snatched Jaycee. And as the months piled up and those children grew up, here under the great pines of South Lake Tahoe, in this little family paradise, everything changed.
KeithMorrison: Kind of injects a little paranoia pill or something--
NicoleSipes: It did, yeah. They did horrible things, not only to her but to the whole community.
The search went on, of course, amid much diminished expectations. Investigators cast about, looking to see if other cases might lead them in the direction of Jaycee's abductor.
MaryEllenO'Toole: We had this cluster of child abductions, and of course one of the primary questions that we were dealing with at this time were they all committed by the same individual?
And it turned out there was one particular case that sounded a lot like Jaycee's. Video: Phillip Garrido eyed in another abduction
1988. Hayward, California. Three years before Jaycee was taken. But less than an hour's drive from where Phillip Garrido settled in after prison that very year. Two little girls rode a pair of scooters to the corner store.
KeithMorrison: How far?
KatrinaRodriguez: Couple of blocks away. We went inside, we purchased some sodas, some beef jerky and some Laffy Taffy.
Katrina Rodriguez and her best friend Michaela Garecht were nine years old. Michaela, who looked so much like Jaycee Dugard.
Katrina Rodriguez: We were just gabbing, walking away from the store.
It was Michaela who noticed someone moved one of the scooters away from the door over to a car perhaps 30 feet away.
Katrina Rodriguez: So, she went to go pick it up.
And then...
Katrina Rodriguez: I looked up when I heard screaming. And I just watched this man pick her up. She was kicking and screaming, and he shoved her in the car, got in the car himself, and pulled out and I kept watching as he drove out of the parking lot.
And now, more than 20 years later...
Michaela's mother Sharon is transfixed by the similarities.
SharonMurch: The appearance was striking. They were both dragged into a car. The Video: Kidnap witness: 'I'm left with the guilt' descriptions of the cars were similar.
And one more thing: look at the sketch of the abductor Katrina helped the police artist draw.
KatrinaRodriguez: I said at the time that it seemed as though he looked right through me.
Was this a young Phil Garrido? Now, reviewing the record is to wonder: Had the law missed him after a first rape? Is that why Katie Calloway suffered? Was it his early release on parole that led directly to the abduction of Jaycee? And was Michaela a victim, too?
And even after all that, how would Phil Garrido be able to hide in plain sight for decades to come?
Imagine your way, if you can, back to the mid 1990's, where, in South Lake Tahoe, California, optimists still held out a flickering candle of hope for Jaycee Dugard, gone four years by then.
In Hayward, California, Michaela Garecht's mother still stuck close to home, watching for that blonde head to come bobbing down the street. And not far away, Phillip Garrido went into the printing business.
TimothyAllen: I was probably one of his first customers.
Timothy Allen ran a glass and window shop. Sent his business to Garrido for a decade, eventually even met the printer's two young daughters.
TimothyAllen: And he almost had like a twinkle in his eye, too, looking down at the pride he had in these two young girls. I remember they didn't take their eyes off me. And that's-- that's kind of a little bit unusual for a kid.
But not suspicious, really, in spite of the... eccentricities.
JaniceGomes: Phillip had a very jumpy personality.
Janice Gomes opened a window cleaning business, and was also a loyal Garrido customer. Quirks and all.
JaniceGomes: And he told me that his daughter was helping in the business. And I'm thinking, why is he using a six-year-old to make my business cards? They keep coming back misspelled.
But the girl was not six. She was much older, and was in fact, Jaycee, now known as Alyssa, as Gomes's son once learned during a rare visit to Garrido's house here on Walnut Avenue, where the printer introduced him to a pretty blond girl.
JaniceGomes: He said, that's my daughter Alyssa. But she didn't make eye contact with my son like "Help me." She didn't act like she was worried or scared or fearful.
How little she knew about the printer and his family. When Gomes later became a child safety advocate, she went to Garrido again to print posters for missing little girls.
JaniceGomes: And Phillip had looked 'em over and he said, you know, I hear people say that "There's safety in numbers. Children should walk together in groups." He goes, "That's not necessarily true. You still can reach out and grab just one, and that's all you really want anyway, is just one."
So many signs, from a man freely offering such specific advice. Why didn't she see them? She wonders now, of course. As she remembers those strange feelings she couldn't shake when she visited Garrido's home.
This is where he lived. On the unincorporated fringe of Antioch, California, the sort of neighborhood in which a person doesn't ask too many questions.
JaniceGomes: And I was not real comfortable with going in his house. So, I was asking myself, does my husband know I'm here? Does my family know I'm here? You know?
Still, clients like Gomes had no idea that Garrido was a convicted sex offender. Or that parole officers were checking on him. Though we've discovered that he somehow avoided registering with California authorities for almost a decade, until 1999. And after that you could find his picture here, right on the Megan's law Web site. And gradually, some of the neighbors were clued in about the record of the man they called "Creepy Phil."
KeithReeves: Everybody's a little weird here. That's why they move here in the first place, 'cause they obviously wanna be in a hidden, secluded area kinda, y'know.
Neighbors like this man left Garrido alone. Him and whatever was going on behind that fence of his.
KeithReeves: We even joked about oh, he's probably got somebody locked in his basement, y'know?
KeithMorrison: Why would you say such a thing as that?
KeithReeves: Well, just 'cause he seemed like he might.
Some of the neighbors even saw the girls in the yard.
PollyWhite: A little girl popped up there and kind of surprised me and I asked her what her name was, and she just took off.
It was a neighbor's visiting girlfriend who blew the whistle, after seeing that two girls seemed to be living with the known sex offender, Creepy Phil. And sure enough, a sheriff's deputy responded to the house and spoke directly to Phillip Garrido.
But that visit is notorious now for what the deputy did not do. He did not check to determine Garrido's criminal record. Did not enter or search the house. Did not search the property. Did not did even walk into the now famous backyard, where, we now know he would have discovered a rabbits' warren of squalor of tents and sheds, designed for secrecy. A sad, decrepit prison compound for a young mother --Jaycee Dugard. And the two daughters she'd had with Phillip Garrido. And yet another chance to stop it all was missed.
The lawman was just feet away from the girls, who were on this side of that piece of fence you can see leaning on the other property. They were moments from freedom. If only he had done some investigating, if he'd looked behind the fence. But he did not.
Why not? How did a system designed to protect people against dangerous sex offenders, fail so spectacularly? Good question.
But something did happen, perhaps, that day. Something neighbors and clients of Phil Garrido could not help but notice.
TimothyAllen: He shows up here right after that talking about hearing voices, schizophrenia.
Something was changing, in ways increasingly bizarre.
Something was happening to Phil Garrido. Was it the unwelcome attention - however brief - of law enforcement in November of 2006? Whatever it was, his clients certainly noticed.
TimothyAllen: He'd always been slightly religious, but, in 2006, he started really talking about these wild religious views.
That's when Garrido began delivering a manifesto of sorts about schizophrenia addressed to attorneys, universities, and law enforcement, and promising to found a church based on a new understanding of God's desire.
JaniceGomes: He said, "Trust me. When my story hits, it's gonna be worldwide and it's a beautiful thing."
He launched a blog, too: Voices Revealed. His username? The Man Who Spoke With His Mind.
But did that mind fear the discovery of his secrets? In mid 2007, Google Maps' mapping car, equipped with cameras, made its rounds past Garrido's home on Walnut Avenue. Watch what happens: a van, green, dusty, decrepit - a van we now know to be Phillip Garrido's - turns out after the car and begins to follow. For block after block the van follows the camera car until suddenly, it turns away.
Paranoid? Perhaps. And yet this same Phil Garrido repeatedly called authorities to his house.
911 records reveal 7 visits to the Garrido home in the past two years; five of the calls--medical calls for Garrido's elderly mother--placed by wife Nancy or by Phillip himself.
911 call:
Operator: What's the problem, sir?
Phillip Garrido: My mom. She's 86. She's not responding, she's - her eyes are open and she looks like she's breathing really hard.
But the fire and EMS people Garrido called to his house were not his only official visitors, not at all. In the past year, parole officers sometimes visited the home twice a month. And never discovered the secret. All the while, Phillip Garrido hid in plain sight. Far from hiding, he bragged.
His wife Nancy began a blog called Talent Revealed, offering his music to investors, promising they'd double their money. And here is that music. Filled with lyrics, that, listened to now, turn the stomach.
Song: For every little girl, in the world, they wanna be in love. Yeah. You're just the same. Play a game. Just tell me that you want me.
In the end, he seemed to come unglued himself. The last straw for some friends and clients came in 2008, when he brought around a black box filled with electronic gadgets emitting hums and echoes, claiming it was his way to speak to God.
TimothyAllen: We thought that he was a nut. At that point, I made a conscious decision that i didn't really wanna spend a lotta time with him. We just felt that he was getting a little too kooky.
It was August of 2009 when Phillip Garrido's flaky behavior caused the charade to come undone.
TimothyAllen: He had brought his two daughters here to UC-Berkeley. He was here to ask permission to hold an event publicizing his group "God's Desire." But his erratic behavior when she confronted the campus police, aroused their suspicions and they checked and discovered that he was a criminal sex offender. So they informed his parole officer. It was, in effect, the campus cops who blew the whistle on Phil Garrido.
One can only imagine the scene that followed. There is no visual record of it.
Phillip Garrido reported to that parole officer--who had no idea Garrido had children. He went there with wife Nancy in tow, as well as the kidnapped girl, Jaycee Dugard, now a woman of 29, and- most shockingly- two girls. Jaycee's daughters. And his daughters, too. Now, unbelievably, 15 and 11 years old. The girl who was lost was, against all odds, found, and returned, finally, to her mother, who'd lost her all those years ago. A little girl walking to school.
No surprise the news shot round the whole world, and back here to South Lake Tahoe, Calif.
KellyBrosnahan: She missed everything. She missed out on everything. And it kills me for her. It just breaks my heart. And it was all his fault. That man was horrible to do that to her. She got robbed of being a kid, y'know?
KeithMorrison: Would you want to see her now?
KellyBrosnahan: Oh. I would love to. I'd hope she remembers me and all the fun things we did together. I would love to see her.
And now of course the questions: after two decades of failure to find Jaycee or catch her abductor, and with Phillip and Nancy Garrido arrested, jailed, and awaiting trial after pleading not guilty to dozens of counts of kidnapping and rape… Those who dealt with Garrido but failed to heed their own gut warnings are beating themselves up.
Timothy Allen: He is a rapist, an abductor and a sick, twisted monster. And I am just horrified that I had all this contact with him all these years.
The child safety advocate who let Garrido print her flyers couldn't believe it either.
JaniceGomes: How are you supposed to feel? This makes me sick to my stomach. I can't believe I didn't see this happen. How are we gonna get away with saying for 18 years we just thought he was weird?
As for law enforcement agencies, as you will see, their reactions differed widely. But the story, amazing though it certainly is, wasn't isn't over. A virtual army descended on that backyard in Antioch, seeking evidence of other crimes. What remained to be discovered about at least one other small blonde girl from long ago?
Many hundreds of miles and several states away from the headline developments in Antioch, California, a young mother saw the news, and went into something like shock.
KeithMorrison: Did those pictures resemble the man you saw in that parking lot that day?
KatrinaRodriguez: Remarkably.
Remember Katrina Rodriguez? She was 9 when she saw a man snatch her friend Michaela Garecht from that Hayward, California parking lot in 1988. Back then, she helped police draw the sketch of the man with the eyes that have haunted her nights ever since.
KatrinaRodriguez: When I look at Phillip Garrido's photographs, I see that intensity that I was looking for. It's..it's..just is an awful feeling. I look at that and I just see a horrible human being.
Hers was not the only revelation. In Hayward, just a couple of miles from that long ago crime, a police inspector named Robert Lampkin is still, all these years, working the Michaela Garecht case.
RobertLampkin: Y'know we'll go anywhere, any corner of the earth to try to bring Michaela home.
And so cadaver dogs descended on that backyard on Walnut Avenue. Dogs, and ground penetrating radar machines. And police armed with warrants in the cases of two missing girls, 13-year-old Ilene Misheloff, who also went missing in the East Bay, and 9-year old Michaela Garecht, that little blonde girl who looked so much like Jaycee Dugard, abducted by a man who looks, we now know, so much like Phillip Garrido.
So easily seen now, but, apparently, for so many, for so long… Impossible.
That first alleged rape went unprosecuted. Then he was caught red-handed kidnapping and raping Katie Calloway. And when that punishment was shortened, the charge against him says, he went out and raped a child of 11, Jaycee, and perhaps even more. He lived in the open, untroubled by those in charge of his parole. Even received a commendation from the U.S. parole commission for turning his life around. And all the while, he kept that secret in his own backyard.
Sheriff Warren Rupf: My first thoughts were, my God, how could any of us, how could a system let these kids down?
Contra Costa County Sheriff Warren Rupf sat down exclusively with Dateline. It was one of Rupf's deputies who visited Garrido's home in 2006 after a neighbor reported children living in tents in the backyard. But the deputy did not bother to do more than a cursory search.
KeithMorrison: What happened to that officer?
SheriffWarren Rupf: The officer's feeling bad, but…
KeithMorrison: That's it? Just feeling bad?
SheriffWarren Rupf: There have been those who've criticized me for not offering up his head in this matter. But he was working an overtime shift. He was chasing details.
KeithMorrison: He goes up to the door, he talks to this guy, and he didn't go look? I don't get it. Nobody gets it!
SheriffWarren Rupf: He did not know that the resident was a sexual predator. He did not have that information.
KeithMorrison: right but, you send an officer to somebody's house to check on a report like that. Isn't a routine search done to see whether or not maybe you have a sexual offender here?
SheriffWarren Rupf: That's the basis of my apology. But after having talked to the officer I understand why he did not go further. He'd already classified this improperly of course, in his mind, that this was kids camped in the backyard. Again, I'm not trying to hold that up as an acceptable work product. If I was, I wouldn't be apologizing as I am.
But if the sheriff--alone, by the way, in his willingness among officials to apologize for the failures in this case--if he felt mortified by his own department's failures, he's not willing to take the fall alone. He lashed out at parole officials in California who clearly had no idea what was going on in Phillip Garrido's backyard. And whose agents' supervision of Garrido from 1999 until this year is now being investigated by the state's inspector general.
And he's angry at federal officials who released Garrido from parole in 1999, and who now refuse to release dozens of pages from the official file.
KeithMorrison: You can understand, perhaps, why the public might be a little suspicious of the government's motives in refusing to release whatever documentation it does have?
SheriffWarren Rupf: I'm suspicious of that! And other than being outraged at our, I guess, failure in this case, I am most outraged with others that have not stood up and accepted responsibility for not having done a good job. No, I don't blame the public for mistrusting 'em. I don't trust 'em!
But one family - whose cause to be angry or mistrustful is unquestioned by anyone - has decided to avoid recriminations and look forward instead. If there's one result Jaycee and her mother Terry want most, said their lawyer McGregor Scott in this exclusive interview with Dateline, it's to make sure that what happened to them never happens again - not to anyone.
McGregor Scott: Terry Probyn genuinely wants to focus going forward to make sure that people like Phillip Garrido are held accountable, and if paroled, are monitored and staffed by the parole division at a level that clearly did not occur over the course of the last 18 years.
Keith Morrison: And she won't be shy about it? Video: How Jaycee's case is changing police protocol
McGregor Scott: She is very focused on taking this opportunity to serve as an advocate for reform so that other families will not have to live the nightmare that she has.
Keith Morrison: How the doing? How is jaycee doing?
McGregor Scott: Each time I meet with them and visit with them you can see progress, both with respect to Jaycee and the girls. And it's just a, just a remarkable thing to see.
And one last little thing: Phillip Garrido fired off a letter this week accusing officials of mistreating Jaycee, of refusing to allow a lawyer present when she was questioned.
To which her lawyer replied:
McGregor Scott: We just are simply not gonna dignify Mr. Garrido's letter with a response.
The digging around Garrido's property has stopped now. Searchers did find bits of bone, and the tension shot up briefly, but it's now been determined the bones were most likely animal. Of other potential victims? No evidence at all. News, which, in the grief-weighted logic of a mother missing her child, came as a relief.
SharonMurch: I had spent the entire morning at home in tears, over the very thought they might find Michaela. And when they didn't, it was just like a weight lifted.
Oh, she knows, she says, that even if her dream comes true, if Michaela is alive, there would be heartbreak, as there may well be now for Jaycee and her mother.
KeithMorrison: So you need to know what's coming. If you do find out?
SharonMurch: I know whatever we find out, whether we find her alive or not alive, I'm gonna have to hear things I'd rather not hear.
Still, here under the tree that marks the place Michaela was abducted all those years ago, her mother seemed to contemplate something that was almost hope. Jaycee survived, is home with her mother. Her alleged abductors in jail, awaiting trial. If one apparently impossible wish was granted, might others be granted too? Her long wait will go on.
© 2013 MSNBC Interactive. Reprints


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DALLAS (AP) - Six incumbents on the Texas Board of Education will retain their spots on the panel that has drawn attention in years past for ideological battles including over evolution.
Tuesday's results will play a large role in how much influence social conservatives will have on the board that is set next year to adopt new science textbooks. In years past, social conservatives have tried to draw doubts about the theory of evolution and elevate conservative figures in history lessons.
All 15 spots on the board are up for re-election because of re-districting. There are currently four Democrats and 11 Republicans on the board, with six of those Republicans considered part of the social conservative bloc.
The incumbents who kept their spots on Tuesday were: social conservative Republican Barbara Cargill, who currently chairs the board, for District 8; social conservative Republican David Bradley for District 7; Democrat Lawrence Allen Jr. for District 4; Democrat Mavis B. Knight for District 13; Patricia "Pat" Hardy, a Republican who has been a swing vote, for District 11; and moderate Republican Thomas Ratliff for District 9.
In other races involving incumbents Tuesday, social conservative Republican Carlos "Charlie" Garza faces a challenge from Democrat Martha Dominguez for his District 1 seat while social conservative Republican Ken Mercer faces a challenge from Democrat Rebecca Bell-Metereau.
Also Tuesday, Democrat Marisa Perez defeated social conservative Republican David Williams for the District 3 spot. Perez got a surprise win in the primary when she defeated Democrat incumbent Michael Soto.
Republican Sue Melton faced no major party opposition to win the District 14 spot after defeating social conservative incumbent Gail Lowe in the primary.
Republican Marty Rowley defeated Democrat Steven Schafersman for the District 15 spot vacated by Republican Bob Craig. Rowley, who says on his website he supports letting students "look at all sides of scientific theories, including evolution, intelligent design and global warming," has said that although he's conservative he won't necessarily always vote with that bloc.
Republican Donna Bahorich beat Democrat Traci Jensen for the District 6 spot formerly held by social conservative Republican Terri Leo, who didn't seek re-election. Bahorich has said she's a social conservative but says her vote will depend on the issue.
Republican Geraldine "Tincy" Miller has reclaimed her spot after being ousted in the primary two years ago following 26 years on the board. Miller, who has said she'll vote she'll vote her "conscience" and "conservative beliefs," defeated Democrat Lois Parrott to reclaim her District 12 spot.
The Texas Board of Education's responsibilities including establishing the state's public school curriculum, approving textbooks and managing the state's permanent school fund. Because all seats are up for election this year, newly elected members will draw numbers at the first meeting and eight will get four-year terms and seven will get two-year terms. After that, they'll have four-year terms.
An intense fight over how evolution is taught in science curriculum put a national spotlight on the board in 2009. The board ultimately decided that Texas schools would no longer have to teach the "strengths and weaknesses" of evolution. Teachers would still be encouraged to consider "all sides" of scientific theories.
The board did see a shift more toward the center after the defeat in 2010 of social conservative Republican Don McLeroy, the former board chairman who believed the Earth was only 6,000 years old and that the Christian influences of the founding fathers are important to studying American history.