The excerpt below is from the Guardian. You can look at other outlets' coverages here.

As many as 100,000 more Iraqi civilians have died in the 18 months since the US-led invasion last year than would have been expected in the period before the war, a study claimed today.

Researchers said the chances of a violent death were 58 times higher after the invasion than before it.

The study, whose results were published today by the respected Lancet medical journal, was based on interviews with Iraqis, most of them doctors. The findings were compared with the pre-war death rate.

The survey indicated that violence accounted for most of the extra deaths seen since the invasion, and that air strikes from coalition forces caused most of the violent deaths, the researchers said.

"Most individuals reportedly killed by coalition forces were women and children," they added.

Approximate death toll from 9/11: 3,000
Americans KIA/MIA in Vietnam over the 18 years of the war: 58,226
Allied casulty from the Battle of Normandy (2 1/2 months): 37,000

American cities with a population of approximately 100,000 include Albany, NY; Waco, TX; Glendale, AZ.

Times like this, I see the appeal of religion. If I believed in God and heaven and hell, I could console myself with the notion that the architects of this war would burn in the hot place.

Everybody says it's going to be close. All I can say is that it's going to be weird.

I'm done researching all the candidates, propositions and measures and made my picks on the sample ballot last night. Some hinged on endorsements from the LCV. A lot of work, but well worth it. This general election involves some hairy state props in addition to that whole thing about averting an apocalypse. So here's my ballot:

1. President/Vice President: John F. Kerry / John Edwards
2. U.S. Senator: Barabara Boxer
3. U.S. Representative (California 12, Baby!): Tom Lantos
4. State Assembly: Gene Mullin
5. SM County Board of Education, Trustee Area 4: John Belforte
6. Trustee Area 6: Ted Lempert
7. Trustee Area 7: Memo P. Morantes
8. SM County Harbor District Members, Board of Harbor Commisioners: Pietro Parravano, Will Holsinger, Beverly Fontana
9. Peninsula Health Care District Members, Board of Directors: Nylda Gemple, Dan Ullyot
10. Prop 1A: YES
11. Prop 59: YES
12. Prop 60: YES
13. Prop 60A: NO
14. Prop 61: YES
15. Prop 62: NO
16. Prop 63:YES
17. Prop 64: NO
18. Prop 65: NO
19. Prop 66: YES
20. Prop 67: YES
21. Prop 68: NO
22. Prop 69: NO
23. Prop 70: NO
24. Prop 71: YES
25. Prop 72: YES
26. Measure A: YES
27. Measure B: YES
28. Measure C: YES
29. Measure D: YES
30. Measure E: NO
31. Measure P: YES

Russia ratifies the Kyoto Protocol. Their 17% share of the world's emissions tips the scale; the Protocol is now in force, 7 long years after the historic agreement was drawn up.

I actually feel a little teary. Amid all the terrible setbacks of the last 3 years, Russia' announcement last month that it would reverse its position on the Protocol (in exchange for an entry into EU, no doubt) was the first significant piece of good news in a long time.

The participating countries of the Protocol together account for 61% of the world's emissions. With Kerry, we have a shot at turning that into 97%.

As if blasting the landscape and underpaying and discriminating against their workers weren't enough, Wal-Mart has gone and built a megastore (800 employees!!) on an ancient Native Hawaiian burial site. You built a Wal-Mart on an ancient burial site?? I hope they get the Overlook Hotel treatment. Actually, I hope the curse falls on the management in general and the Walton siblings in particular. What with not being able to afford healthcare and being sexually harrasses, rank and file Wal-Mart workers don't deserve any more suffering.

Americans remain notoriously in denial about the ongoing environmental apocalypse. While the disconcerting evidence of feminization in nature has been building for a number of years, it has received almost no significant attention in this country. (Unlike in, say, Denmark.)

Despite this obstinacy, I think this may be the only phenomenon to wake the American public up to the fact that they need to wake the fuck up and start working on reversing the damage literally like there's no tomorrow. Why? Because most American men (who rule this country from municipal to federal level, either as elected representatives, powerful interest group members or block-voting citizenbots) are so scared of 'emasculation' that it's embarrassing to behold.

Fishing and hunting guy still believes that environmentalists are his enemy? The male bass in the beautiful and pristine (according to the EPA, that is) are producing eggs. Endocrine disruption is the culprit, and it happens to be a widespread ill responsible for a number of public health crises as well. Middle-class suburbanites spending tens of thousands of dollars getting pregnant? Male sperm count in the U.S. has been going down, down, down for 70 years now. And if the pink-ribbon movement seems to be everythwere, it's not just the bandwagon effect. The breast cancer rate among American women have been rising steeply. In fact, it rose 26% between 1973 and 1988.

Most Americans are deeply and fatally disconnected from the world, where it be their own local community, the geopolitical sphere, or the planetary ecology. Environmental issues must be couched in terms they understand--as immediate threats to their own health and pocketbook--for America to give a damn. Instead of infertile panthers, disappearing places of heartaching beauty and dead frogs, we're going to have to coax the public to look at the health and economic consequences.

"Japanese underwhelm Iraqis"

Here, officials and ordinary Iraqis express growing disappointment at Japan's reconstruction efforts. As the gap between local expectations and Japan's relatively modest projects widens, disappointment could turn into hostility.

Great. Chance to show that there is an international community out there who want to help Iraq without strings attached, and we blow it.

Just watch it.

Human Lie Detectors Almost Never Miss, Study Finds
Most people believe they could easily detect such lying behavior, but in fact most miss a good 50 percent of lies, says deception expert Maureen O'Sullivan of the University of California San Francisco.

But O'Sullivan says she has found a special group -- just 1 percent of those she has tested -- who catch a lie nearly 90 percent of the time.

"We call them wizards," O'Sullivan told a briefing sponsored by the American Medical Association on Thursday. "Wizardry is a special skill that seems magical if you don't have it."