Recapping "24," get in line to protest in D.C. and endangered species news from Qatar

- Panic was the order of the night on 24. With CTU down after being struck by a terrorist EMP device delivered via Trojan horse tactics, CTU staffers and leaders attempted to get their office back up and running. To start the hours, CTU director Bryan Hastings orders meetings to asses the state of things and also sends Kayla Hassan sent back to U.N. so she can be evacuated with her father, IRK President Omar Hassan, and the rest of her family. Before she leaves, Kayla demands to know what’s going on. Hastings tells her that her boyfriend Tarin is alive, that he used her to deliver the EMP to CTU and that he is part of the plot to detonate a dirty bomb in Manhattan. Once she gets back to the U.N., Hastings wants her to look through photo files of the terrorists to see if she can identify the ones Tarin is working with. Out in the field, Jack and Cole continue their pursuit of the terrorists, but without the help of CTU’s aerial drones tracking them. Jack calls old pal Phil Holden at NSA and asks for satellite surveillance to keep tabs on the terrorists. No satellites are in the area, so instead Jack settles for monitoring traffic cameras and shutting down all bridge and tunnel traffic into Manhattan. Knowing that leaves the terrorists with only one route to smuggle their nuclear fuel rods into the city, Jack heads to the waterfront bordering the East River. Samir and his men are already there, unloading the fuel rods into a Zodiac boat for transport. One of Samir’s lookouts spots Jack’s SUV and alters Samir, who orders an all-out attack on the vehicle. When their cell phones are jammed, Jack and Cole realize they are walking into an ambush and try to get away. Instead, they end up pinned in a small dock area with their vehicle rendered inoperable. Several terrorists rain down bullets to keep them pinned down while Samir and Tarin escape in the Zodiac with the fuel rods. Back at CTU, an NSA teams shows up to help get the office back up and running. Frank Haynam leads the NSA team and because the CTU office used to be his home base, he knows it well. He and his men head right to the server room to get to work but when Chloe offers to help with a solution that he thinks will put CTU back online sooner, Haynam rejects it as being too risky. A spurned Chloe turns to fellow data analyst Arlo for support but he isn’t any help and she ends up calling Renee Walker instead. She agrees to go out in search of Jack, whom CTU can't locate because its surveillance systems are down, and urges Chloe to do whatever it takes to get Haynam to listen to her and follow her plan. To Chloe, that means going back to the server room, presenting her plan again and pulling a gun on him when he turns her down. She orders everyone out of the room, locks the door and goes to work tapping in to the CTU trunk line to get the server back up and running. Elsewhere in CTU, Dana Walsh continues to fend off the pesky advances of Arkansas parole officer Bill Prady, who insists on her turning over surveillance footage from the robbery of an NYPD storage locker because he believes one of his parolees, Kevin Wade, committed the robbery with an accomplice and because he knows Dana was in contact with Kevin prior to the robbery. She informs him that the EMP wiped out all the footgae he’s after and all but pushes him out the door as he asks her to keep him apprised of the situation if any footage is recovered. At the waterfront, Jack, Cole and the two CTU agents with them decide to remove the bulletproof door panels from their SUV and use them as a shield to cross an open area so they can reach a land line to make a call for help. The plan works at first, but agent King gets rattled and breakd formation, leaving himself exposed. He is shot by a sniper while the rest of the team makes it safely to cover. However, agent Owen can't leave him comrade behind and goes back for King, leading to him getting shot as well. Jack and Cole pull both agents to safety but are once again pinned down and not yet to the emergency phone to make the call for help. Meanwhile, Kayla Hassan arrives back at the U.N. for a tearful reunion with her family. She looks through the photo files but doesn’t immediately recognize any of the terrorists. Security informs the Hassan’s that they will be evacuated to a secure underground bunker with President Taylor and other government officials. Over at CTU, Hastings is summoned to the door of the server room by Haynam because of Chloe’s gun-toting antics. Maintenance begins the process of breaking through the door but in the meantime, a CTU lackey pulls Hastings aside and informs him that Bill Prady wants to speak with him. But first, he must deal with Chloe, who is still working feverishly on her plan when the door is kicked down. She surrenders her gun and apologizes for pulling it in the first place. She is then attacked by Haynam and Dana, who both rip her plan as being too risky. Chloe defends herself to Hastings and begs for 10 more minutes to prove her plan works. He agrees over Haynam’s objections and moments later, she gets some of the system back up and running. Chloe also tells Hastings to call Renee, who is still out looking for Jack. After she returns to her desk and Hastings stops by to praise her for her work on the system, she cuts him off and in the funniest moment of the episode, she cuts him off with, “I’m not good with praise.” Speaking of Jack, he decides to volunteer for suicide mission to distract the terrorist snipers so Cole can make the call for help. As his last request, Jack also asks Cole to make sure Hastings keeps his promise, meaning dropping the charges against Renee. With that, he sprints out jack goes out into the open, trades fire with the terrorists and is shot. Cole makes it to the phone and gets the call out and in the meantime, Renee shows up on the scene to gun down a few terrorists. She then spots Jack on the ground, motionless, and runs over to help him. He is still alive thanks to his bulletproof vest, but is having trouble breather. Renee remains with him while Cole departs with the CTU and NYPD teams that arrive on the scene. Jack regains his breath and asks for an update on finding the terrorists. Back at CTU, Dana goes to the holding cell where Prady is waiting to meet with Hastings and confronts him. He angrily snaps that he knows she helped Kevin commit the robbery and is going to nail her ass to the wall for it. Then, in a stunner, she attacks him and chokes him to death. Prady struggles but ultimately succumbs and goes limp Dana hides his body behind a panel in the wall and then makes a phone call……to Samir. She’s with the terrorists, which is yet another reason to hate her (aside from the lame Kevin-related storyline that dragged down this season). Samir and his team have successfully forded the river and get into a stolen taxi cab with the nuclear rods. Dana promises to help them get clear of authorities and off they go to end the hour……..

- Just because Congress has been focusing all of its attention on health care the past few days doesn’t mean the rest of the world stops turning. There are a lot of other problems in this country that aren’t going away and thousands of angry protestors jammed into our nation’s capital Sunday to remind lawmakers of that fact. The protestors took part in a rally demanding immigration reform. President Obama recently announced his endorsement of a new bipartisan plan and the mere prospect of that plan being enacted was enough to inspire the march on the National Mall. The organization Reform Immigration for America, which supports a path to citizenship for those in the United States illegally, advocates changes to bring about "economic justice for all Americans." Lining up on the other side of the battlefield is the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which would prefer to see illegal immigrants rounded up into the back of box trucks with poor ventilation, driven to the border and dumped like sacs of flour back into the land from whence they came. FAIR claims to seek "effective, sensible immigration policies that work for America's best interests,” i.e. keep foreigners out and make America an exclusive club for those who already belong to it. The group is urging Americans to contact their representatives and demand tougher borders and an end to illegal immigration. "The American people deserve more than empty rhetoric and impractical calls for mass deportation," Sen. Charles Schumer, D-New York, and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, wrote Friday in the Washington post. The two senators are the creators of the bill and they believe it will help in fixing what they term a "badly broken" system. "Our plan has four pillars: requiring biometric Social Security cards to ensure that illegal workers cannot get jobs; fulfilling and strengthening our commitments on border security and interior enforcement; creating a process for admitting temporary workers; and implementing a tough but fair path to legalization" for the 11 million immigrants in the United States illegally, the two senators wrote. The main tenets of the plan include creating an effective employment verification system to hold employers accountable for hiring illegal workers and creating "a zero-tolerance policy for gang members, smugglers and terrorists.” If you think the battle over health care has been intense, just wait for the all-out war that ensues if this immigration bill ever comes before Congress for a vote. As much as people value their health, one thing they are even more passionate about is protecting their national borders and keeping out people they view as freeloaders. FAIR and its anti-outsiders membership could not have been happy when Obama issued a statement saying he was "pleased" to see the "promising, bipartisan framework which can and should be the basis for moving forward.” Before dealing with the issue of illegal immigration, it would also be a solid idea to get a better handle on the exact number of illegal immigrants currently in the country. I know, these people are in hiding as is, so they aren’t going to step up to be counted. However, if we don’t know the scope of the problem we are facing, dealing with it becomes something of a guessing game. In January, the Department of Homeland Security said the number "decreased to 10.8 million in January 2009 from 11.6 million in January 2008," so that’s the best guess at the moment. Regardless of the outcome on this issue, I very much look forward to the angry, vitriolic rhetoric sure to fly from both sides and the warnings from each that the world as we know it will come to an end of the opposing side gets what it wants…………

- It was another big weekend for Disney’s 3-D juggernaut Alice in Wonderland, which continues to excel and maintained its stranglehold on the top spot at the box office in its third weekend in theaters. The CG-heavy project led by Johnny Depp dropped 45 percent from last weekend but still made $34.5 million to put its total take at $266 million. Industry observers have been speculating how many of the 2,500 3-D screens Alice currently holds would jettison it for DreamWorks Animation’s How to Train Your Dragon, which opens next weekend. Based on this weekend’s strong performance, Alice won't relinquish those screens any time soon. Coming in second place was the live-action kid flick Diary of a Wimpy Kid, which opened to an estimated $22 million. Another new film, The Bounty Hunter, could muster only a third-place finish despite the name value of stars Gerard Butler and Jennifer Aniston. Who knows, maybe women nationwide were unable to drag their boyfriends away from the NCAA tournament action on their television screen long enough to get them to go see the PG-13-rated romantic action comedy. It still grossed an estimated $21 million to nail down third place, which is better than Universal did with its new release Repo Men. Not that I didn’t see this coming, but the R-rated sci-fi flick about a futuristic society where people repossess transplanted organs if people can't pay for them bombed out and only made $6.1 million. The only solace for Universal, which probably paid stars Forest Whitaker and Jude Law a decent amount to appear in the movie, is that the film wasn’t didn’t have a huge production budget. Close behind in fifth place was the R-rated comedy She’s Out of My League, which raked in $6 million as it continued to meet or exceed most observers’ expectations. The rest of the top 10 consisted of: the Matt Damon-led Green Zone (disappointing for the second time in as many weekends in theaters with $5.9 million for a two-week total of $25 million), Leo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island (No. 7 with $5 million for a total take that now stands at $115.7 million), Avatar (No. 8 with $4 million and a running cumulative tally of $737 million domestically in 14 weeks in theaters), Fox Searchlight’s Our Family Wedding (No. 9 with $3.8 million) and the Robert Pattinson-starrer Remember Me with $3.3 million for an overall take of close to $14 million. As for limited released, Kristen Stewart and her biopic of the legendary all-female rock band The Runaways appeared on 244 screens and earned less than $1 million for a per-screen average of $3,294. All told, a relatively solid slate of films with the few requisite clunkers but at least a few movies worth seeing…………

- It’s the best of times to be a Minnesota Twins fan in the long term and the worst of times to be a Twins fan in the short term. On the one hand, your team has signed its franchise player, All-Star catcher Joe Mauer, to a contract that will keep him with the team for the better part of the next decade. Mauer and the team have completed an eight-year, $184 million deal that includes a full no-trade clause and is the fourth-richest contract in Major League Baseball history. It’s a steep price tag, but for a franchise that has a history of raising up homegrown talent and having to watch that talent walk away because it can't afford to pay the same exorbitant salaries that major-market franchises can offer, it is a message to fans that the Twins are making a serious effort to remain competitive. Mauer as won three batting titles and two Gold Glove Awards and posted a career-high 28 home runs. He is arguably the best catcher in baseball and the Twins will be fortunate to have him for the next eight years. The other great point for Twins fans is that the team is less than a month form opening up Target Field, a new open-air stadium in downtown Minneapolis that will give the franchise a sparkling new baseball palace to make Minnesota Twins baseball more fun to watch. The ugly, quirky Metrodome is gone, along with its baseball-colored roof that made catching fly balls a continual adventure and its bouncy artificial turf surface that infuriated infielders who had to watch balls they should have fielded easily bounce right over their heads for base hits. Sure, an outdoor stadium might not seem like much of a benefit in the first month of the season, when temperatures in Minneapolis will probably be chilly and a few snowflakes could well fly. But in the long haul, joining the outdoor-baseball revolution will be a good thing. Having said all of that, Twins fans were dealt a serious blow over the weekend when All-Star closer Joe Nathan was lost for the season to a torn ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow that will require him to have the dreaded Tommy John surgery. Recovery time can be a season or more, so it could be close to the middle of the 2011 season before Nathan is ready to pitch again and even then, there is no guarantee that he will ever be the same again. As TJ surgery becomes more common, recovery from it has become a less frightening and career-threatening endeavor. Still, losing one of baseball’s best closers for an entire season will definitely hurt the Twins’ chances for a return to the playoffs. Ultimately, two pieces of good news and one piece of bad news, so weigh them out and see how you feel, Twins fans…………

- Of all the threats to endangered species - hunting, poaching, disease, climate change - I would not have predicted that anyone would call the Internet the biggest threat to animals residing on the endangered list. Yet as a group of conservationists meet in Doha, Qatar to discuss what to do about the myriad issues facing endangered species, they are fingering none other than the ‘Net as the chief culprit. Those findings were presented at the 175-nation Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). Those who conducted the research say it is easier than ever before to buy and sell anything from live baby lions to polar bear pelts on online auction sites and chat rooms. Funny, but I don’t remember any polar bear pelt auctions on eBay, but maybe I am looking in the wrong area of the site. And if I saw a baby lion with a decent “Buy It Now!” price, you know I’d be all over that. “The internet is becoming the dominant factor overall in the global trade in protected species," said Paul Todd of the International Fund for Animal Welfare. Todd went on to say that thousands of endangered species are regularly traded on the Internet, where buyers and sellers can hide under a cloak of relative anonymity. In the alleged online endangered species market, the United States is the supposed biggest culprit, but China, Russia and Australia are also big parts of the problem. Several proposals to address the problems facing endangered species were presented at the conference, but most of them were defeated, although a proposal to ban all international trade in a rare type of Iranian salamander, the Kaiser's spotted newt, was approved. Delegates will vote on changes to the trade in ivory later this week, but having already turned down attempts to ban trade in polar bears, bluefin tuna and rare corals, the success of the ivory measure is no sure thing. Key in all of these debates is the potential economic impact of any new laws, especially with the extremely negative economic climate that exists all around the world. Guess no one has suggested shutting down the Internet to save endangered species, although somehow I feel like that proposal might also be voted down…………