A man known for protesting the Discovery Channel stormed the network’s Maryland headquarters carrying a handgun on Wednesday, taking a “small number” of hostages while appearing to have a bomb strapped to his chest, police said. Police later shot and killed him. If you’re familiar with the White House Science Czar John Holdren, you’ll find this manifesto oddly familiar. As crazy as this rant of James Lee’s sounds, it mirrors the demands of the White House Science chief in one of his books about forced sterilization, population control and more.

Hundreds of thousands more Pakistanis fled their homes and scores of villages were inundated as floods that began in the north of the country almost a month ago spread to southern regions near the Arabian Sea.

A Manhattan cabbie was stabbed Tuesday night by a man who asked if he was Muslim. When the taxi cab driver responded, “Yes…” Michael Enright, his passenger, stabbed him several times, including a slash across his neck. Enright had recently been in Afghanistan embedded with a Marine Corps unit filming a project for school.

Whatever traffic hell you endured getting to work this morning is nothing compared to what’s happening in Beijing, where a mammoth traffic jam is entering its ninth day with no relief in sight. Thousands of trucks have jammed National Expressway 110 since Aug. 14, creating a traffic jam stretching 100 kilometers. As many as 400 officers are patrolling the mess — presumably on foot — 24/7 and locals are making a quick buck selling food and water to stranded motorists.

Russia has imposed a ban on grain exports until the end of the year, after a severe drought and a spate of wildfires devastated crops. Correspondents say the temporary ban is being motivated by more than just economics – Russians eat bread with practically everything and rising bread prices is an issue which has traditionally had the power to stoke popular unrest.

“It’s hard to imagine how anyone could believe that — in the United States — we should learn to cope with blackouts,” said University of Minnesota Professor Massoud Amin, a leading expert on the U.S. electricity grid. Replacing old-style electric meters with “smart meters” is often described as the first step in creating a smart grid. Building a national smart grid “won’t be cheap and it wont be easy,” acknowledged Amin. Much of it could be completed as soon as 2030 at a cost of up to $1.5 trillion. *** Austin, TX offers free thermostats to customers who allow the utility company to remotely control their air conditioners during specific months and hours. Scary. What was that about trading liberty for security? ***

About 12 million people have now been affected by Pakistan’s worst floods in 80 years, disaster officials have said, raising previous estimates by three times. More than 1600 people been killed by the floods, which started last week when torrential monsoon downpours hit the north-west of the country. Swollen rivers are now flowing south, raising fears that further destruction lies ahead.

A group of oil companies including BP, Shell, ExxonMobil, Citgo, Chevron and others are using a front group called “America’s WETLAND Foundation” and a Louisiana women’s group called Women of the Storm to spread the message that U.S. taxpayers should pay for the damage caused by BP to Gulf Coast.

The wellhead, located about 65 miles (104 kilometers) south of New Orleans, was ruptured when it was struck by a dredge barge being pulled by a tug, reportedly sending crude spewing some 20 feet into the air.

Matt Simmons shares some startling revelations in his latest Bloomberg TV interview, in which he says none of the propaganda matters on TV 24/7 (photoshopped or not) as the ultimate clean up cost will likely be well over $1 trillion, and as a result he is unconcerned about his BP short. He ultimately sees the stock going down to $1. On blaming the catastrophe on Transocean: “For two days they kept saying it’s a rig fire. When the rig sank they could no longer call it a rig fire. It’s a riser leak…Because if they said the truth they would all go to jail.”

The conclusion: “Unfortunately, we now have killed the Gulf of Mexico.”