Morning Whip, July 16, 2005

For details click on “read more” below or on this article’s title. #10: Harry Potter
The book[*1] is out. BBC liveblogged it here[*2] .

#9: NBA Arena turned into church
Houston’s Compaq Center becomes the new 16,000 seat home of the Lakewood Church[*3] .

#8: Planet with three suns
Astronomers find planet[*4] 149 light years from Earth that they dub “Tatooine planets” after Luke Skywaker’s home in Star Wars.

#7: KC Wizards “Break The Record Night”
Kansas City pro soccer team hopes to draw 30,309[*5] or more to game with Salt Lake tonight.

#6: KU disciplines itself
Kansas University voluntarily reduced scholarships[*6] in football and women’s basketball after discovering violations in those programs. Men’s basketball escaped sanctions despite former coach Roy Williams’ allowing graduating seniors to receive gifts from boosters.

#5: Royals lose to Detroit 4-1
No run support for Lima.[*7] Royals need to go 50-23 to finish .500, 32-41 to avoid 100 losses.

#4: Shuttle Update: Launch no earlier than late next week
NASA engineers struggling to find sensor problem[*8] which cancelled this week’s “Return to Flight.”

#3: Tee-ball coach puts hit out on autistic player
Coach alleged[*9] to have paid $25 to injure a disabled player so that he could not play on the coach’s team.

#2: Military tribunals upheld by Appeals Court
Circuit court ruling that said that Guantanamo military tribunals were not “competent tribunals“ is slapped down hard[*10] by the U.S. Court of Appeals, which rules among other things that the Geneva Convention is not enforcable in U.S. Courts, and that terrorists aren’t covered by the Conventions anyway.

#1: Chinese general threatens to nuke U.S.
Chinese general Zhu Chenghu rattles the nuclear saber[*11] if America defends Taiwan. It’s OK though, he was just speaking for himself, not for the ChiCom government. Right.