scalene

bush visits the burn ward

2007-11-10T19:09:00.000-08:00

this photo says a lot...

http://news.yahoo.com/photo/071108/ids_photos_ts/r176736904.jpg

i wonder how the young corporal managed to remain civil, to the man (sic) who stole his face, his life, his youth. how did he resist, or did he feel at all, the urge to rip the smirking face off the man (sic) who started this war based on a pile of lies.

story

oh yes, and the unbearable irony of the "commander in chief" playing "shoot-em-up" war games on the computer, during his visit to the hospital.

pentagon justifies photo censorship

2007-03-11T17:47:00.000-07:00

my comments inline

U.S. Military Defends Deleting AP Images from Afghanistan

Published: March 10, 2007 10:20 AM ET
ISLAMABAD The U.S. military asserted that an American soldier was justified in erasing journalists’ footage of the aftermath of a suicide bombing and shooting in Afghanistan last week, saying publication could have compromised a military investigation and led to false public conclusions.

Translation: Who are you going to believe, us or your lying eyes? We can't take that gamble!

The comments came March 9 in response to an Associated Press protest that a U.S. soldier had forced two freelance journalists working for the U.S.-based news agency to delete photos and video at the scene of violence March 4 in Barikaw, eastern Afghanistan. At least eight Afghans were killed and 34 wounded.

“Investigative integrity is one circumstance when civil and military authorities will reluctantly exercise the right to control what a journalist is permitted to document,” Col. Victor Petrenko, chief of staff to the top U.S. commander in eastern Afghanistan, said in a letter March 9.

Translation: We screwed up, and we need to make sure the public never sees any evidence that might contradict our cover story.

He added that photographs or video taken by “untrained people” might “capture visual details that are not as they originally were.”

Translation: The untrained public cannot be expected to understand the facts and the truth.

The Associated Press disputed the assertions.

“That is not a reasonable justification for erasing images from our cameras,” said AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll in New York. “AP’s journalists in Afghanistan are trained, accredited professionals working at an appropriate distance from the bombing scene. In democratic societies, legitimate journalists are allowed to work without having their equipment seized and their images deleted.”

Afghan witnesses and gunshot victims said U.S. forces fired on civilians in cars and on foot along at least a 6-mile stretch of road from Barikaw following the suicide attack against the Marine convoy. The U.S. military said insurgents also fired on American forces during the attack. One Marine was wounded.

A U.S. soldier deleted the AP journalists’ footage that showed a civilian four-wheel drive vehicle in which three Afghans were shot to death about 100 yards from the suicide bombing. The journalists had met requests from the military to not move any closer to the bomb site.

Other Afghan journalists said the military also deleted their footage.

Petrenko said that if people who are not part of the investigation entered such a “secured area,” they could disturb evidence and other clues, “potentially fouling the conclusions of the investigation.”

Petrenko said that taking pictures could also misrepresent what had happened in the incident.

“When untrained people take photographs or video, there is a very real risk that the images or videography will capture visual details that are not as they originally were,” he said. “If such visual media are subsequently used as part of the public record to document an event like this, then public conclusions about such a serious event can be falsely made.”

The AP also raised concerns about the military’s efforts to restrict its coverage of the Feb. 15 crash of a U.S. helicopter in southern Zabul province in which eight soldiers were killed and 14 wounded. Two AP journalists and their vehicle were searched extensively in an effort to prevent footage of the wreckage getting out.

Petrenko justified that action on the grounds of “operational security” exercised when “equipment, aircraft or component parts are classified.”

He maintained that the U.S. military had no intention of curbing freedom of the press in Afghanistan.

“We are completely committed to a free and independent press, and we hope that we can help encourage this tradition in places where new and free governments are taking root,” Petrenko said.

“It so happens that on these two recent occasions, military operational or security requirements were compelling interests that overrode the otherwise protected rights of the press.”

Translation: We love a free press, as long as they only publish what we tell them to.

holocaust trustee blasts hebron settlers

2007-01-20T10:25:00.000-08:00

this man told it like it is.

Israel's Holocaust trustee blasts Hebron settlers
By Dan Williams 12 minutes ago

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - A senior official of Israel's central Holocaust memorial on Saturday assailed Jewish settlers who harass Palestinians in a tinderbox West Bank city, saying the abuse recalled the anti-Semitism of 1930s Europe.

The fierce attack by Yosef Lapid, chairman of Yad Vashem's advisory council, was prompted by Israeli television footage showing a Hebron settler woman hissing "whore" at a Palestinian neighbor and settler children lobbing rocks at Arab homes.

The spectacle stirred outrage in the Jewish state, where many view the settlers as opposing coexistence with a future Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Lapid, a Holocaust survivor who lost his father to the Nazi genocide, said in a weekly commentary on Israel Radio that the acts of some Hebron settlers reminded him of persecution endured by Jews in his native Yugoslavia on the eve of World War Two.

"It was not crematoria or pogroms that made our life in the diaspora bitter before they began to kill us, but persecution, harassment, stone-throwing, damage to livelihood, intimidation, spitting and scorn," Lapid said, reiterating remarks made earlier this week in Israel's Maariv newspaper.

"I was afraid to go to school, because of the little anti-Semites who used to lay in ambush on the way and beat us up. How is that different from a Palestinian child in Hebron?"

Hebron has been a frequent flashpoint of more than six years of Israeli-Palestinian fighting. Some 400 settlers live there, under heavy Israeli military guard, among 150,000 Palestinians.

"The man is obviously a very, very sick person, to compare the Jews in Hebron to barbarians and compare us to the Nazis," David Wilder, a spokesman for the settlers in Hebron, said in response to Lapid.

Another community spokesman, Noam Arnon, played down the televised harassments as "fringe incidents," and told Israel Radio: "In six years, 37 Jews have been murdered in Hebron, and now they're preoccupied with curses?"

CRACKDOWN OR COMPLACENCY?

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert ordered a cabinet-level probe last week into Palestinian allegations that abuse by Hebron settlers is commonplace and routinely ignored by Israel.

Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh said he hoped for an Israeli crackdown against the settler "provocateurs," but Palestinian officials called for comprehensive action.

"If they are serious about coexistence, the Israelis must take practical steps on the hundreds of daily violations against Palestinians in the old city," Hebron Governor Arif Jabari said.

Jabari's apparent pessimism was shared by Lapid, a former Israeli justice minister.

"We Jewish citizens of Israel wave a reprimanding finger at most," he said. "Worse still, I tolerated this silently as justice minister too."

The World Court has branded the settlements illegal but many Jews claim a biblical birthright to the West Bank, which Israel captured from Jordan in the 1967 Middle East war.

Israel withdrew settlers and soldiers from Gaza in 2005, a move billed as breaking the diplomatic deadlock with the Palestinians.

The rise since of Hamas, a Palestinian Islamist group whose charter calls for the Jewish state's destruction, and a recent war against Hizbollah guerillas in Lebanon has hardened the resolve of Israeli rightists against ever leaving the West Bank.

Lapid said while there was no comparing the Holocaust, in which 6 million Jews died, with Palestinian suffering from Israel's policies, this did not mean Israelis could not be culpable.

"It is inconceivable for the memory of Auschwitz to warrant ignoring the fact that there are Jews among us who behave today toward Palestinians just like German, Hungarian, Polish and other anti-Semites behaved toward Jews," he said.

(Additional reporting by Haitham Tamimi in Hebron and Allyn Fisher-Ilan in Jerusalem)

un demands israel stop settlements

2006-12-16T10:40:00.000-08:00

nice. but isn't this the same thing they've been saying for 30 years, to no effect? Israel just keeps on building (stealing), no matter what they say or what anyone else says. while the world talks, Israel keeps building, stealing, and killing. and the US keeps supporting Israel.

UN demands an immediate halt to Israeli settlements
dpa German Press Agency
Published: Saturday December 16, 2006

New York- The United Nations has demanded that Israel immediately halt its controversial settlement policy, it was reported Saturday. "Settlements in the occupied Palestinian Territories, including East Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights (are) illegal and an obstacle to peace as well as economic and social development," a resolution passed by the UN General Assembly with 162 votes in favour late Friday in New York said.

Eight countries, including Israel and the United States, voted against the resolution, while 10 abstained.

the so-called tragedy of rumsfeld

2006-12-14T13:23:00.000-08:00

the real tragedy here is not how history will judge the "legacy" of this overrated fool --- the real tragedy is the tens of thousands of lives taken, the families broken, the bodies shattered, the hundreds of billions of dollars squandered, and the real opportunities for peace that were lost, because of his arrogance and his boss's inability to admit a mistake.

Rumsfeld career ending in ignominy in Iraq
...
He was the primary architect of the war plan," said military analyst Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution. "He was no scapegoat. He deserves the blame he received."

he was not only the primary architect of the war plan, he was a primary cheerleader for the war before it started, and a primary force in keeping the military on its disastrous course long after it became obvious to everyone else that it was a disaster. how can any sane person look at this situation and see this as a "tragedy for Rumsfeld"? he didn't lose any children. he didn't lose any limbs. he's already obscenely rich, and he'll go back to a civilian life among the privileged and make even more money, surrounded by a bubble of admiring sycophants who'll fill his ears with praise for the rest of his years. some "tragedy". in my book he's about as "tragic" as Pol Pot. he deserves to be put on trial for war crimes.

lead found in schools' water

2006-11-08T23:45:00.000-08:00

more proof you can't be too paranoid about lead.

Lead found in drinking water at 36 Seattle schools
Wednesday, November 8, 2006 - Page updated at 01:34 PM
By Seattle Times staff

More than 300 school drinking fountains and sinks have been blocked from use after tests turned up elevated levels of lead, Seattle Public Schools officials announced this morning.

The tests were conducted last spring when arsenic was found in some fixtures, and the results were presented to a school district committee last week. A district news release did not identify precise amounts of lead but said it was higher than the district's standard of 10 parts per billion. The Environmental Protection Agency standard is 20 ppb.

Lead was found in water fixtures around the district in 2004, prompting officials to spend $13 million to replace pipes; about 1,000 new fixtures have been installed in schools.

The most recent results, however, show lead contamination in some newer schools that don't have lead pipes or fixtures and did not turn up high lead levels during the 2004 tests. Fountains where lead has been found will be taped off and signs placed nearby until more information on the test results can be determined.

school bus driver fired for flipping off chimpy

2006-11-02T15:34:00.000-08:00

so, why hasn't dick cheney been fired for telling reporters to ``F*** off''? apparently, we demand a higher standard of conduct for bus drivers than for the man who's a heartbeat away from the presidency. i agree that a bus driver should not make obscene gestures like that. but firing seems too way too harsh a punishment. it's also completely unfair given the conduct of this administration, whose record has been an unbroken stream of ``f*** off''s to the working class over the past 6 years.

Bus Driver Flips Off Bush, Gets Fired
Seattle Woman Files Union Grievance To Regain Job As School Bus Driver

SEATTLE, Nov. 2, 2006 (CBS/AP)

(AP) A school bus driver fired after she reportedly made an obscene gesture at President Bush has filed a union grievance in an attempt to get her job back.

The 43-year-old driver, whose name was not released, was driving middle school children back to school after a zoo visit on June 16 when the president and Republican Rep. Dave Reichert drove slowly by in a motorcade.

From the bus, the children waved; with the windows down in their car, Bush and Reichert waved back.

That's when the driver gave the president the finger, according to Reichert and Issaquah superintendent Janet Barry.

"The congressman hadn't seen it, but the president turned to him and said, 'That one's not a fan,'" said Reichert spokeswoman Kimberly Cadena.

Reichert later called Barry to tell her about the incident, but the bus driver had already been fired. District officials learned about the incident after the driver boasted to colleagues about it, Cadena said.

District spokeswoman Sara Niegowski said the driver has filed a wrongful termination grievance through the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. The union did not return calls seeking comment.

Niegowski said the firing was not politically motivated.

"The bus driver was not terminated for making an obscene gesture at the president. The bus driver was terminated for making an obscene gesture in view of the students," Niegowski said. "That's not the role modeling we need for our students."

condor threatened by lead poisoning

2006-10-27T08:58:00.000-07:00

not only condors, but children of hunters. interesting stuff, especially about how condors tend to feed near the wounds. it makes sense.

Lead poisoning eyed as threat to California condor
Posted 10/23/2006 10:43 PM ET
By John Ritter, USA TODAY

SAN FRANCISCO — One of the great feel-good environmental stories of the past 30 years is the recovery of the majestic California condor, North America's largest bird, a scavenger-turned-billboard for the campaign to save endangered species.

On the brink of extinction, saved by a captive-breeding program, the condor population has grown from just 22 birds in 1982 to 289 today; 135 are in the wild and more are released every year.

Even so, condors have failed to gain a secure foothold in the hills and deserts of California and Arizona because of lead poisoning, the most often diagnosed cause of death, environmentalists say.

Environmental groups say the most likely source is condors' eating of game that was shot by hunters using lead bullets. Frustrated that most hunters have not switched to substitutes, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and other groups notified California officials in July that they will sue under the Endangered Species Act to force a ban.

At a meeting of state fish and game staff this month to discuss potential hunting-rule changes to recommend, the groups again asked for a ban on lead ammunition. A decision is likely early next year. Lead shot used in shotguns to hunt waterfowl has been prohibited since the 1980s.
...

Many hunters who have tried alternatives, mainly copper bullets that don't poison wildlife, find them as good or better than traditional ammunition, though more expensive. A high-performance copper bullet costs $2 to $2.50, about $1 more than lead.
...

The coalition that threatened the lawsuit says a July study that analyzed blood of condors in the wild and compared it with blood of captive birds proves that lead from bullets is poisoning and killing condors.

The study in the journal Environmental Science & Technology was the first to identify a lead isotope in bullets bought at retail outlets in condor country and then match it to lead found in condor blood. Twenty of 26 condors sampled had high lead levels, and many exceeded levels toxic to humans.
...

Supporters of a lead ban say hunters and their families also are at risk. Studies in Greenland and Canada have found elevated lead levels in people who eat seabirds and other animals shot with lead ammunition. On contact, a lead bullet fragments into tiny pieces and powder that disperses well beyond the wound.

"Subsistence hunters especially who hunt for most of their protein, if they have kids in the household, to me that's a significant potential risk," Smith says.

Condors, flying as high as 15,000 feet with 9-foot wingspans, spot a meal and go straight to the bullet wound, because that's the easiest place to feed. They'll eat almost any dead mammal, from a squirrel to a cow.
...

election could be hacked

2006-10-23T09:45:00.000-07:00

the cat's out of the bag. will repubs be able to steal another election?

Electronic Voting Machines Could Skew Elections
Researchers, Candidates Have Little Confidence in Machines Designed to Make Elections Easier to Call
By JAKE TAPPER, REBECCA ABRAHAMS and EDUARDO SUNOL

Oct. 22, 2006 — - Cheryl Kagan, a former Maryland Democratic legislator, was shocked when she opened her mail Wednesday morning.

Inside, she discovered three computer discs. With them was an anonymous letter saying the discs contained the secret source code for vote-counting that could be used to alter the votes cast through Maryland's new electronic voting machines.

"My understanding is that with these disks a malicious person could skew the outcome of an election," Kagan said.

Diebold, the company that makes the voting machines, told ABC News, "These discs do not alter the security of the Diebold touch-screen system in any way," because election workers can set their own passwords.

But ABC News has obtained an independent report commissioned by the state of Maryland and conducted by Science Applications International Corporation revealing that the original Diebold factory passwords are still being used on many voting machines.

The SAIC study also shows myriad other security flaws, including administrative over-ride passwords that cannot be changed by local officials but can be used by hackers or those who have seen the discs.

The report further states that one of the high risks to the system comes if operating code discs are lost, stolen or seen by unauthorized parties -- precisely what seems to have occurred with the discs sent to Kagan, who worries that the incident indicates the secret source code is not that difficult to obtain.

"Certainly, just tweaking a few votes in a couple of states could radically change the outcome of our policies for the coming year," she said.

Worry That Elections Could Be Hacked

Computer experts and government officials have voiced serious concerns that if these machines malfunction, no paper record will exist for a recount. Even worse is the fear that an election could be hacked.

Princeton University researchers using an Accuvote TS -- a touch screen version of the Diebold machine -- showed how easy it would be to deploy a virus that would, in seconds, flip the vote of any election.

"We're taking the vote-counting process and we're handing it over to these companies -- and we don't know what happens inside these machines," said Edward Felten, a professor and a researcher at Princeton's Center for Information Technology Policy, which ran the study.

Diebold called the Princeton study "unrealistic and inaccurate."

But many computer scientists, including cyber-security expert Stephen Spoonamore, disagree, pointing out that the Accuvote TS was used in the 2004 presidential election and is still used in at least four states -- including all machines in Georgia and Maryland. Spoonamore said the hack attacked the operating system layer of software and would affect any touch screen machine built by Diebold.

Diebold argues that the software from the 2004 elections has been updated to fix any possible security problems. But Spoonamore is not convinced, saying Diebold's "system is utterly unsecured. The entire cyber-security community is begging them to come back to reality and secure our nation's voting."

There is also the matter of computer glitches. In primary elections and test runs this year, there were glitches with electronic voting machines from Diebold and other companies.

Machines malfunctioned in Texas, where 100,000 votes were added.

In California, directions for voters with vision problems came out in Vietnamese.

And in Maryland, screens froze and memory cards went missing.

Gov. Robert Ehrlich, a Republican running for reelection, advised residents to vote by absentee ballot because he had no confidence in the machines.

"I don't care if we paid half a billion dollars or $1 billion," Ehrlich said. "If it's going to put the election at risk, there's no price tag for a phony election or a fraudulent election."
...

job at pc plant ups risk of cancer

2006-10-19T23:55:00.000-07:00

Job at PC plant may raise risk of cancer death
Thu Oct 19, 11:33 AM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Death rates, both overall and cancer-related, are considerably higher among workers engaged in manufacturing computers and component parts, when compared with the general population, according to a report in the journal Environmental Health.

While similar findings have been reported among employees who work in plants that manufacture computers, semiconductors, integrated circuits and other components, this report involves the largest database to date, Dr. Richard W. Clapp notes in the report.

A court order required that IBM provide to the plaintiffs in litigation "the IBM Corporate Mortality file," maintained by the company. It includes 31,941 records concerning decedents who had worked at their plants for at least 5 years. The data included the sex, birth date, death date, and underlying cause of death for the period from 1969 and 2001.

The lawyers for the plaintiffs handed the records over to Clapp, an epidemiologist at Boston University School of Public Health, to search for patterns of excess mortality among the employees. For comparison with the general population, Clapp procured data from the Mortality and Population Data System at the University of Pittsburgh.

Results showed that among the company employees, proportional mortality ratios (PRM) averaged 107 among men and 115 among women, as compared with the general population.

Cancer appeared to target specific organs, such that among men, the proportional cancer mortality ratios (PCMR) were 166 for cancers affecting the brain and central nervous system, 162 for kidney cancer, 179 for melanoma and 126 for pancreatic cancer.

In women, PCMRs were 212 for kidney cancer and 163 for cancer of all lymphatic and hematopoietic tissue.

There were also excessive numbers of deaths due to multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, and ALS.

In his report, Clapp notes that employees were routinely exposed to solvents and chemicals such as photoresist; metals, such as arsenic, nickel and chromium; electromagnet [sic] fields, especially ultraviolet light, radiofrequency, and x-ray radiation.
...

berkeley offers free classes

2006-09-28T11:26:00.000-07:00

although this article says berkeley is first to do this, i think
MIT started doing something similar over a year ago. MIT also
puts the course notes online.

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/15627859.htm?source=yahoodist&content=sjm_news

Go to UC for free, on Google Video
BERKELEY CAMPUS SHARES 100 INTRODUCTORY COURSES
By Lisa M. Krieger
Mercury News

The best of college is now available, for free, without unpleasantries such as 8 a.m. classes, pop quizzes or term papers.

In a new deal with Google Video, the University of California-Berkeley is sharing with the public, via the Internet, dozens of videotaped seminars, speeches, special events and even entire courses taught by some of the campus' leading professors.

``It's click and play,'' said Dan Mogulof, director of public affairs at the university.

Easy to view and accessible to everyone, the Web site offers more than 100 introductory-level lectures in subjects such as physics, biology, chemistry, information systems and bioengineering. Viewers can't earn credit, but they don't have to find a parking space either.

``We are a public university,'' said Mogulof. ``We have fabulous faculty and incredible events. We want to share the wealth across the state, country and world.''

Also online are a noontime poetry reading series, a debate over the politics of obesity, and speeches by luminaries such as economist Robert Reich, who proposed that a Massachusetts liberal will be the next president.

A growing number of universities are providing audio and video recordings of campus events. But at most schools, including Stanford and Santa Clara University, public access is limited to public lectures and sporting events. Complete course lectures are available only to registered students.

UC-Berkeley is the first campus to post entire course lectures online and the only school with its own page on the Web site of Google Video, a new, vast and often chaotic video marketplace that features everything from ``I Love Lucy'' reruns to amateur footage of car crashes and cats flushing toilets.

``We're the first, but we expect others to follow suit,'' said Obadiah Greenberg, who helped design the project with UC-Berkeley's Educational Technology Services.

The campus already offers free videotaped course lectures and special events through a campus-based Web site (http://webcast.berkeley.edu). But that site -- which offers live and on-demand archives of lectures, including ``administrivia'' -- requires installation of the program RealPlayer.

The Google Video project will be easier for those less technologically inclined -- including legions of older Cal alumni, nostalgic for the intellectual inspiration of faculty members, said Mogulof. The Google site is more polished than the university's Webcasts, with higher resolution and light editing.

The school also uses iTunes to deliver podcasts of audiotaped course material. Users download the lectures individually or subscribe to semesterlong podcasts, which transfer new sessions to MP3 players when connected to a computer.

``Google appreciates the opportunity to partner with progressive universities like UC-Berkeley to make undiscovered lectures and entire courses available to our users,'' according to a press statement by CEO Eric Schmidt, a Cal graduate.

``UC-Berkeley's content -- much of which wasn't easily accessible online -- will enhance the comprehensive and diverse range of offerings by Google Video,'' he said.

At Stanford University, audiotaped course recordings are available on iTunes, but only to students. The university is planning to record and post several courses for its Web site, available to the public later this year or in January, said Scott Stocker, director of Web communications for Stanford.

While Stanford is researching the possibility of video coverage, Stocker said that he believes audio is often a more effective teaching tool than video.

``You can listen on mobile devices, untethered from the computer,'' he said.

``Stanford is definitely exploring ways to make course content available on the Internet through a variety of distinct mechanisms,'' said Stocker. ``We have had some discussions with Google Video but haven't made any agreement yet.''

``New technologies emerge so quickly,'' he said. ``We are trying out a variety of them.''

Said UC-Berkeley's Greenberg: ``There is a move in higher education to provide open access. We look forward to more schools joining us.''

More than 250 hours of UC-Berkeley content is now available online (http://video.google.com/ucberkeley).

too much testosterone kills brain cells

2006-09-26T16:17:00.000-07:00

<i>can you say "Barry Bonds"?</i>

Too much testosterone kills brain cells

<a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060926/hl_nm/testosterone_dc_2">By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent</a>
2 hours, 8 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Too much testosterone can kill brain cells, researchers said on Tuesday in a finding that may help explain why steroid abuse can cause behavior changes like aggressiveness and suicidal tendencies.

Tests on brain cells in lab dishes showed that while a little of the male hormone is good, too much of it causes cells to self-destruct in a process similar to that seen in brain illnesses such as Alzheimer's.

"Too little testosterone is bad, too much is bad but the right amount is perfect," said Barbara Ehrlich of Yale University in Connecticut, who led the study.

Testosterone is key to the development, differentiation and growth of cells and is produced by both men and women, although men produce about 20 times more of the hormone.

It can also be abused, and recent scandals have involved athletes who use the hormone, or steroids that turn into testosterone in the body, for an unfair advantage.
...

a heck of a civics lesson

2006-09-21T11:39:00.000-07:00

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2006/09/20/national/a213157D29.DTL

Ky. Flag-Burning Teacher Avoids Charges

Wednesday, September 20, 2006
(09-20) 21:31 PDT Louisville, Ky. (AP) --

A middle school teacher who burned two American flags as part of a civics lesson won't be charged, but may still face discipline from the school board, officials said Wednesday.

Dan Holden, who teaches seventh-grade social studies at Stuart Middle School, burned the flags last month during a lesson on freedom of speech. The students were asked to write an opinion paper about how they felt about it.

eye makeup blamed in lead poisoning

2006-09-09T16:34:00.000-07:00

more proof you can't be too paranoid about lead.

City bans eye makeup after lead found in tots
By Douglas Birch
Sun reporter
Originally published September 9, 2006

The Baltimore health commissioner ordered a ban yesterday on sales in the city of several brands of an eye cosmetic popular in parts of Asia, after two toddlers whose parents applied the product suffered significant lead poisoning.

Dr. Joshua M. Sharfstein said he asked the owner of one city specialty market to remove from its shelves several types of kohl eye makeup, marketed as Kajal, Al-Kahl and Surma.

A citywide ban could go into effect as early as Monday, he said. Violators could be fined up to $1,000 for each offense.

The city health commissioner acted after the state Department of the Environment found that two tubes of one brand sold in Maryland, "Hashmi Surma Special," contained 39 percent and 45 percent lead, respectively.

According to state officials, the higher figure is 750 times the current national limit for lead in paint. These levels, Sharfstein said, represent "just a huge amount of lead."

While investigating the lead poisoning of a Baltimore County boy and a girl in Silver Spring, state environmental officials discovered that both were poisoned by kohl products made in Pakistan. Both are between 2 and 4 years of age.

One of the families bought the makeup at a Baltimore market, officials said. The other family couldn't recall where they purchased it.

Horacio Tablada, waste management director of the state environment agency, said there are probably several markets in the state selling these lead-containing cosmetics, which is also sometimes used as a teething powder for infants.
...

repub senator says bicycle helmets for "sissies"

2006-08-25T19:24:00.000-07:00

what a moron. and he actually thinks he's presidential material...

VA-Sen: Allen's Confederate Flag "collection" (scroll down to mid-page for anecdote about bike helmet.)

nuremburg prosecutor says bush should stand trial for war crimes

2006-08-25T19:04:00.000-07:00

saddam is already on trial. the fact that bush isn't, is an injustice.

Bush and Saddam Should Both Stand Trial, Says Nuremberg Prosecutor
by Aaron Glantz

A chief prosecutor of Nazi war crimes at Nuremberg has said George W. Bush should be tried for war crimes along with Saddam Hussein. Benjamin Ferenccz, who secured convictions for 22 Nazi officers for their work in orchestrating the death squads that killed more than 1 million people, told OneWorld both Bush and Saddam should be tried for starting "aggressive" wars--Saddam for his 1990 attack on Kuwait and Bush for his 2003 invasion of Iraq.

"Nuremberg declared that aggressive war is the supreme international crime," the 87-year-old Ferenccz told OneWorld from his home in New York. He said the United Nations charter, which was written after the carnage of World War II, contains a provision that no nation can use armed force without the permission of the UN Security Council.
...

amnesty accuses israel of war crimes

2006-08-23T19:33:00.000-07:00

in case there was any doubt.

Amnesty report accuses Israel of war crimes
David Fickling
Wednesday August 23, 2006
Guardian Unlimited

Israel deliberately targeted civilian infrastructure and committed war crimes during the month-long conflict in Lebanon, according to an Amnesty International report.

The report said strikes on civilian buildings and structures went beyond "collateral damage" and amounted to indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks under the Geneva conventions on the laws of war.

Kate Gilmore, the Amnesty executive deputy secretary general, said the bombardment of power and water plants and transport links was "deliberate and an integral part of a military strategy".

"Israel's assertion that the attacks on the infrastructure were lawful is manifestly wrong," she said.

"Many of the violations identified in our report are war crimes. The pattern, scope and scale of the attacks makes Israel's claim that this was collateral damage simply not credible."
...

israeli terrorism in lebanon

2006-08-23T07:25:00.000-07:00

the numbers don't lie. despite hypocritical braying and orwellian spin-doctoring, it is clear that not only has Israel killed more civilians numerically, but the percentage of combatants killed vs civilians killed is much greater than the corresponding figures for Hezbollah. the argument that Hezbollah is using "human shields" doesn't hold water either. by that measure, Israel is also using "human shields", by siting their own military infrastructure in populated areas.

this argument about Hezbollah's supposed use of "human shields" is especially hypocritical given the IDF's history of literally using human shields (taking Palestinian hostages on patrol with them) in Gaza.

furthermore, even if one side were using "human shields", the Geneva Conventions require both sides to respect civilian life and infrastructure. it is not a new situation to have intermixed civilian and military targets. Israel should respect the sanctity of the human "shields" instead of cynically using them as an excuse for indiscriminate bombing.

graphic: the high price of war

hezbolla picks up shovel

2006-08-20T10:29:00.000-07:00

forget about comparisons with the govt of Lebanon; this puts to shame the US govt's feeble efforts post-Katrina.

With speed, Hezbollah picks up the shovel
Group's engineers, funds pour into war torn Lebanon

By Thanassis Cambanis, Globe Staff | August 19, 2006

BEIRUT -- Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah's grand promises to rebuild Lebanon began to materialize at Shahed High School yesterday, in the form of neat packs of $12,000 in US dollars handed without ceremony to people displaced from their homes.

``I like Hezbollah more and more," said Riyadh Nasser, 53, as he waited in a south Beirut suburb for the money from the Shi'ite Islamist movement. The money is meant to pay for a year's rent and new furniture, until his original home can be rebuilt.

Glossy posters of Nasrallah and the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, surrounded Nasser in the high school classroom-turned-branch office for Construction Jihad, as Hezbollah calls its engineering department.

Lebanon's government is still talking about its own reconstruction plan, but Hezbollah has already flexed its organizational muscle to deploy heavy machinery, hundreds of engineers, and thousands of workers across the country, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars, and in the process leaving the government looking flat-footed.
...

israel committed to killing nasrallah

2006-08-20T09:56:00.000-07:00

why must Nasrallah die? why is it right to assassinate Nasrallah, but wrong to assassinate (say) Olmert or Bush? and isn't this policy a clear violation of the terms under which the US gives military aid to Israel? a state that behaves in this fashion is an outlaw state, undeserving of US aid. a state that behaves in this fashion is a rogue state, and does NOT have an unconditional right to existence as a self-governing state; any more than apartheid South Africa, or nazi Germany.

Israel Committed to Block Arms and Kill Nasrallah
Steve Erlanger, August 20, 2006

`` Furthermore, he [a senior Israeli commander] made it clear that Sheik Nasrallah remains a target as the head of a group that Israel and the United States have labeled terrorist. “There’s only one solution for him,” he said. At another point, he said simply: “This man must die.” ''

nuke plant contaminates groundwater

2006-08-19T22:34:00.000-07:00

another example showing why nuclear power needs to be phased out ASAP.

Radioactive Leak Reaches Nuclear Plant's Groundwater
By Seema Mehta and Dave McKibben, Times Staff Writer
August 18, 2006

Radioactive, cancer-causing tritium has leaked into the groundwater beneath the San Onofre nuclear power plant, prompting the closure of one drinking-water well in southern Orange County, authorities said.

Officials have not found evidence that the leak from the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, California's largest, has contaminated the drinking water supply.

As a precaution, San Clemente officials shut down and are testing a city well near the contaminated area.
...

In recent years, tritium leaks have been found at more than a dozen nuclear plants across the nation, prompting the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to form a task force this year to study the cause of the contamination. The findings are scheduled to be released this month.

Sandwiched between Camp Pendleton and the Pacific Ocean in northwestern San Diego County, the San Onofre power plant has had a controversial presence on the coast since its construction in the 1960s.

In the years since, sea lions and endangered sea turtles have been killed when caught in the plant's seawater intake pipes for its cooling system. Since Sept. 11, 2001, nearby residents also have grown wary of the plant as a potential terrorist target that stores highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel.
...

While workers were taking apart the containment dome that housed the inactive reactor, they discovered that groundwater beneath the reactor complex was tainted with tritium, said Ray Golden, spokesman for the power plant. The source of the leak has not been determined, he said.

Tritium occurs naturally in the environment but is also a byproduct of nuclear fission, said Victor Bricks, spokesman for the NRC's regional office in Arlington, Texas. It has a half-life of 12 years, meaning its radioactivity is reduced by half every 12 years.

Tritium, an isotope of hydrogen that can cause not only cancer but also miscarriages and birth defects, is increasingly stoking fears in communities near nuclear plants across the country.
...

Samples of the groundwater beneath San Onofre's decommissioned unit contained 50,000 to 330,000 picocuries per liter, Bricks said.

In drinking water, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's safety limit for tritium is 20,000 picocuries per liter, a measurement of radioactivity based on one-trillionth of a unit. The state of California has recommended a "public health goal" of no more than 400 picocuries per liter, a level the agency determined could still cause one cancer case per million people exposed.

San Onofre has extracted more than 10,000 gallons of the contaminated groundwater and piped it into the Pacific about 8,600 feet offshore, where it is instantly diluted in seawater, Golden said.

Since groundwater will continue to seep into the contaminated area, plant officials will continue removing contaminated water and discharging it into the ocean until they can remove all traces of the contamination.

It's unknown how much tritium has seeped into the ground, where it came from, or when the leak occurred, Golden said. It's likely that it leaked from the reactor, the spent-fuel pool, various water storage tanks or pipes. The leak probably occurred sometime between 1968 and 2004, Golden said.

Edison officials have tested nearby soil, water and sand all around the plant over nearly four decades and have never seen unusual radiation levels, so there is nothing to indicate that the contaminated groundwater has left the site, he added.

israel kidnaps palestinian deputy PM

2006-08-19T16:22:00.000-07:00

if it's a crime for Hezbollah to take Israeli soldiers captive, and that crime justifies unlimited war against the civilians of Lebanon; then why doesn't this kidnapping by Israelis justify unlimited war against the civilians of Israel? again Israel exhibits a blatant double standard.

if it's a crime to belong to a "terrorist organization", and Israel has the right to unilaterally decide what constitutes a "terrorist organization"; then why don't the Palestinians also have a right to unilaterally decide that the entire government of Israel is a "terrorist organization", and act accordingly?

Israel seizes deputy Palestinian PM
By Wafa Amr Sat Aug 19, 2:35 PM ET

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) -
Israel seized Palestinian Deputy Prime Minister Naser al-Shaer, a top official of the Hamas militant group, at his home in the occupied West Bank on Saturday.
...

Israel has more than two dozen Hamas lawmakers and several other cabinet ministers in custody since late June, after it launched an offensive in response to the kidnapping of a soldier in a cross-border raid from the
Gaza Strip.
...

An Israeli army spokesman confirmed troops had taken al-Shaer into custody, saying it was "due to his membership in a terrorist organization."

US rice crop contaminated by GE strain

2006-08-19T15:54:00.000-07:00

another example of how GE crops, and the corporations that market them, can't be trusted. also how the Bush administration can't be trusted to regulate the corporations.

Rice found to contain engineered protein
By KEVIN FREKING, Associated Press Writer
Fri Aug 18, 6:35 PM ET

WASHINGTON - Long-grain rice samples from the United States have tested positive for trace amounts of a genetically modified strain not approved for consumption, but it doesn't pose a threat to humans or the environment, federal officials said Friday.

The genetically engineered rice was detected by Bayer CropScience AG. The German company then notified U.S. officials. The strain is not approved for sale in the United States, but two other strains of rice with the same genetically engineered protein are.
...

The rice was developed to resist a specific type of herbicide.

"There are no human health, food safety or environmental concerns associated with this (genetically engineered) rice," said Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns.

Johanns said he saw no need to recall the product. He also said that Bayer would request permission to market the product. Still, he added, an investigation was needed to determine how a regulated product was released into the market and whether any violation of USDA regulations occurred.

The sample came from the 2005 food crop. Johanns said he did not know where the product came from. Department officials later said the rice samples came from storage bins in Arkansas and Missouri; however they did not know specifically where the rice was grown.

Johanns said he could not estimate how much of the product is on shelves or has been exported.

"I was asked what percentage of rice may be impacted by this? I just hate to venture out there because there is nothing I have that I could base that statement on," he said.
...

carter says: israel attack unjustified

2006-08-19T15:32:00.000-07:00

Jimmy Carter is right again.

Spiegel interview with Jimmy Carter, August 15, 2006

``Carter: I don't think that Israel has any legal or moral justification for their massive bombing of the entire nation of Lebanon. What happened is that Israel is holding almost 10,000 prisoners, so when the militants in Lebanon or in Gaza take one or two soldiers, Israel looks upon this as a justification for an attack on the civilian population of Lebanon and Gaza. I do not think that's justified, no.''

baltimore to ban lead-tainted jewelry

2006-08-15T11:18:00.000-07:00

more proof you can't be too paranoid about lead.

City plans to ban tainted jewelry
U.S. fails to protect children from lead, health chief says
By Chris Emery
Sun reporter
Originally published August 15, 2006

Declaring that the federal government has failed to protect children from lead, Baltimore's health commissioner has announced plans for a citywide ban on the sale of jewelry found to contain dangerous levels of the metal.

Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, the commissioner, said that this month his agency surveyed six sellers of jewelry made for children and found four of 17 products had unacceptably high amounts of lead.

"The fact that we keep finding lead in these products, despite the fact that it's unsafe, is a clear sign that the federal regulation has failed," he said yesterday at a news conference.

Federal officials agree that there's a national problem but say they've taken strong steps to curb it. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has negotiated voluntary recalls with a number of companies. In March, for example, Reebok International Ltd. of Canton, Mass., agreed to withdraw from the market 300,000 heart-shaped charm bracelets distributed as gifts with the purchase of certain shoes.

Reebok, according to the commission, received a report of a lead poisoning death of a 4-year-old from Minneapolis who swallowed a piece of a bracelet. It was that report, Sharfstein said, that caused him to take action.

Among the suspect pieces of jewelry identified by the health department was a pearl ring, purchased as part of a three-piece "Princess Collection" set from a Claire's store in the Inner Harbor. It contained more than 100 times the level of lead acceptable under federal regulations.

Another ring, decorated with hearts and purchased as part of a "Girl Connection" jewelry set from a Port Covington Wal-Mart, contained six times the acceptable lead amount. Testing also showed high lead levels in two other rings purchased at Claire's stores in the city.

The federal limit is 600 parts per million of lead. Young children who mouth or swallow jewelry containing high levels of lead can suffer brain damage or even death, Sharfstein said.

Parents of children under 6 years old who suck on their fingers or like to put things in their mouths should be especially cautious about what jewelry they let their kids wear, experts said.
...

Claire's removed the pearl ring from its Baltimore stores after the high lead levels were discovered, according to Merissa Jacobs, a spokeswoman for the corporation, which has 31 stores in Maryland and mor e than 2,000 stores nationwide.

Jacobs said the rings are still being sold in Claire's stores elsewhere in Maryland and around the country, pending in-house lead testing of the product by the company. "We don't have anything that tells us there is a danger with this product," she said.

She characterized the chance of the jewelry injuring a child as a "remote possibility."
...

delay to remain on ballot

2006-08-07T22:05:00.000-07:00

i'm not sure this is a good thing. the fact that Scalia delivered the message makes me even more suspicious. as a general principle, i think the voters should not be deprived of a choice. had the shoe been on the other foot, i think dems would rightly have screamed. of course, this being texas, they probably would have been laughed at. so i guess, even though in principle the voters should have a real choice, this decision could be considered as turnabout for all the rules that Tom DeLay and his repub henchmen broke. i hope this doesn't set a precedent, though.

Texas Republicans abandon DeLay fight
By SUZANNE GAMBOA, Associated Press Writer
Mon Aug 7, 7:59 PM ET

WASHINGTON - Texas Republicans on Monday abandoned their court fight to replace former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay on the November ballot after being turned back at the Supreme Court.

The decision came after Justice Antonin Scalia rejected Texas Republicans' request to block an appeals court ruling saying DeLay's name should remain on the ballot.
...

Under indictment on money laundering charges in Texas, DeLay won a March primary election that made him the Republican nominee for Congress from his home district near Houston. In June, he resigned from Congress and said he would not seek re-election.

Democrats had sued to keep DeLay on the ballot, with the former lawmaker's legal troubles becoming a symbol for claims of Republican corruption.
...

idf soldier jailed for refusing to fight in lebanon

2006-08-04T11:56:00.000-07:00

kudos to these brave men of conscience for refusing to fight in this unjust but apparently popular war.

Israeli Soldier Incarcerated for Refusing to Fight

Aaron Glantz, OneWorld US Thu Aug 3, 11:54 PM ET

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug 3 (OneWorld) - Israeli authorities have sentenced an army officer to 28 days in a military prison for refusing to serve in the ongoing Israeli campaign in Lebanon.

32-year-old Reserve Captain Amir Paster, an infantry officer and student at Tel Aviv University, is the first Israeli soldier to be punished for refusing to serve in the current conflict and has received harsh criticism from the Israeli military for setting what it termed a bad example for his troops.

According to the soldier support group Yesh Gvul ("There Is a Limit"), Paster refused to serve on the grounds that Israeli operations were harming civilians, declaring at his trial "taking part in this war runs contrary to the values upon which he was brought up."

Supporters say Paster's act was courageous given that the vast majority of Jewish Israelis support the war.

"One poll showed 90 percent of Jewish Israelis support the campaign," journalist and Yesh Gvul activist Peretz Kidron told OneWorld, noting that has extended to groups like Peace Now and the pro-peace Meretz political party.

"A lot of people feel that the very existence of Israel is at stake, especially because the other side has also made indiscriminate attacks on Israeli centers," he added. [get real, folks. a few thousand lightly armed guerillas in lebanon does not constitute an existential threat to a regional superpower armed with nuclear weapons, fighter planes, helicopter gunships, tanks, and every kind of military advantage money can buy, backed by the US. this is ludicrous. the lopsided body counts prove it.]

Paster was the second Israeli reservist to publicly refuse to take part in the military campaign. On July 20th, 28-year-old TV producer Staff Sergeant Itzik Shabbat refused to served in the Occupied Territories to free forces in the standing army for the war in Lebanon.

"I know people will attack me and ask how could I not take part in this war when Qassams are falling on my hometown and Katyushas on the towns in the north," Shabbat told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. "In my opinion, only this type of opposition that I've chosen will put an end to the madness that is going on now and will shatter the false feeling that the entire home front supports this unnecessary war that is based on deceptive considerations."
...

key repub says: end the madness in middle east

2006-07-31T21:03:00.000-07:00

Key Republican breaks with Bush on Mideast
Nebraska's Sen. Hagel calls for immediate cease-fire

Monday, July 31, 2006; Posted: 6:08 p.m. EDT (22:08 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Urging President Bush to turn all U.S. efforts toward "ending this madness," a leading Republican senator Monday broke with the Bush administration and called for an immediate cease-fire in the Mideast.

"The sickening slaughter on both sides must end and it must end now," Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel said. "President Bush must call for an immediate cease-fire. This madness must stop."

The Bush administration has refused to call for Israel to halt its attacks on southern Lebanon, joining Israel in insisting that Hezbollah fighters must be pushed back from the Israeli-Lebanese border.
...

half a dozen of one, 60 of the other

2006-07-30T01:05:00.000-07:00

some nutcase breaks into a Jewish community center, declares his anger at Israel, and opens fire...

Israeli warplanes bomb a town, killing at least 40 civilians...

sure there's a difference of scale, but is there any moral difference?

if it's a hate crime to kill one Jew, then what kind of crime is it to kill 500 Lebanese?

Fatal Seattle Jewish center shooting a "hate crime"
``SEATTLE (Reuters) - A lone gunman burst into a Jewish organization in downtown Seattle on Friday, killing one woman and wounding five others in what authorities were calling a hate crime.''

Israel air strike kills 40 civilians in Lebanon
``QANA, Lebanon (Reuters) - An Israeli air strike killed at least 40 Lebanese civilians, including 21 children, in the southern village of Qana on Sunday, in the bloodiest single attack during Israel's 19-day-old war on Hizbollah. ... The three-storey building where about 60 displaced civilians were sheltering and several other houses were destroyed in the dawn raid, catching many people asleep, a Reuters witness said. ... The witness counted 40 bodies, including those of 21 children. Rescue workers and witnesses said more bodies were still trapped under the rubble.''

goodbye, joe

2006-07-29T17:10:00.000-07:00

and good riddance, you goat-faced chimp-kisser.

Struggling Lieberman faces political abyss

New York Times to endorse Lamont over Lieberman

bush on bush

2006-07-07T15:44:00.000-07:00

seen in a recent article:
[Laura Bush] said that she did not trust the polls at all, because polls that reveal the president's low approval rating "are not what we we when we travel around the country."

if you don't see it, that's because you travel in a bubble, you chimp-marrying twit.

Asked why the U.S. faced so many problems in the world, Bush said, "The reasons there are problems is because we confronted them."

there you have it, right from the chimp's mouth.

and by coincidence, right after i read that article, i ran across another one that helps explain just WHY Mrs. Chimpy doesn't see evidence of hubby's low approval rating.

``...
MEDFORD, Ore. (July 6) - The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit Thursday alleging the U.S. Secret Service and state and local police protecting President Bush during a 2004 campaign appearance discriminated against protesters when they cleared the streets outside where the president was eating dinner.

The class-action lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court contends that police acting on orders from the Secret Service used unreasonable force to move some 200 people peacefully protesting against the Iraq war in Jacksonville while allowing pro-Bush demonstrators to remain standing on sidewalks.

"Our primary motive is to prevent this kind of activity from happening again in the future," said David Fidanque, executive director of the Oregon ACLU.
...''

israel threatens to assassinate palestinian pm

2006-07-01T13:13:00.000-07:00

the thuggish state once again shows its true nature.

Report: Israel threatens Haniyeh

GAZA, July 1 (UPI) -- Israel has threatened to assassinate the Palestinian prime minister if Hamas militants do not release a captured Israeli soldier unharmed, it was reported.

The warning was delivered to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in a letter, as Israeli officials considered an offer by Hamas to free Cpl. Gilad Shalit -- and Israeli military officials prepared an invasion force for a second major offensive into Gaza, The Australian reported.
...

israeli attack kills innocent bystanders

2006-06-21T21:42:00.000-07:00

a state that behaves in this fashion is a criminal terrorist state, and surely does not deserve any kind of guarantees as far as its survival as a state.

Botched Israeli air strike kills 2 in Gaza
By Nidal al-Mughrabi
Wed Jun 21, 5:44 PM ET

GAZA (Reuters) - Two Palestinians were killed and 13 others wounded on Wednesday in the latest of a series of botched Israeli missile strikes against Gaza militants.

Israel, which has faced international criticism over the attacks, said it would continue air strikes to try to stop Palestinian factions from firing rockets into the Jewish state.

The latest strike, which killed a man and a woman, brought to 14 the number of civilians killed in recent air attacks.

Palestinian bystanders said the target appeared to have been a car carrying members of the Islamic Jihad group in the militant stronghold of Khan Younis. But a missile slammed into a house. The gunmen escaped unharmed.

Among those wounded in the strike were a pregnant woman and four children.

A senior air force commander said investigators were trying to find out why the missiles missed their target, and said the possibility of a malfunction could not be discounted. But he emphasized that there would be no change in tactics.
...

supreme court weakens search protections

2006-06-15T12:57:00.000-07:00

chimpy's supreme court appointees waste no time in weakening our constitutional protections against unreasonable search...

``...
WASHINGTON, June 15— The Supreme Court today affirmed the power of police officers backed by a search warrant to enter a home without knocking, and in so doing signaled the more conservative tilt of the tribunal in recent months.

The 5-to-4 ruling in an otherwise mundane drug case from Detroit was sure to please law enforcement officials and prosecutors. The result had been eagerly awaited to see how President Bush's court selections, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., would vote. They were in the majority today.
...

On a summer afternoon in 1998, Booker T. Hudson was sitting in his living room when several Detroit police officers arrived with a warrant. They announced their presence and waited "three to five seconds," according to court records, then entered through the unlocked door without knocking.

The police found guns and cocaine, and Mr. Hudson was eventually found guilty of drug possession and sentenced to 18 months' probation. His lawyers argued unsuccessfully in a state appellate court that the evidence should be excluded, because when the officers barged in without knocking they violated the defendant's Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.

Indeed, it was not disputed that the Detroit officers had violated the Supreme Court's modern interpretation of the Fourth Amendment, which generally holds that officers with a warrant should knock first. The question for the justices was whether the violation was serious enough to throw out Mr. Hudson's conviction.

In concluding that it was not, Justice Scalia noted the difference between a situation in which evidence is seized without a warrant and a situation like Mr. Hudson's when the police came with a warrant. He wrote, too, that other remedies, like civil suits and disciplinary actions within police departments, are in place to counter lapses like those committed by the Detroit officers.

"When the knock-and-announce rule does apply, it is not easy to determine precisely what officers must do," Justice Scalia wrote. "How many seconds' wait are too few?" The court's "reasonable wait time" standard is "necessarily vague," he wrote.
...
...''

link

a warmonger eats crow

2006-06-14T10:11:00.000-07:00

after thousands of dead, tens of thousands crippled for life, and $300 billion wasted; leaving Iraq in ruins, and America no safer; is this the best apology he can muster for cheerleading for Chimpy's disastrous adventure? what we need now is not some lame apology. true contrition should manifest in calls for impeachment of the warmonger-in-chief.

Apologizing for Iraq

``...
Since the Iraq war was obviously a gross blunder, is it time for those of us who cheered on the war to offer some kind of apology? Here we are—we, the United States—in our fourth year of occupying that sinkhole, and it looks pretty much like the third year, or the second. Will the eighth year of our occupation, or our twelfth, look any better? I know people who will say yes, but I no longer know any who will say it with real conviction. It’s a tough thing, to admit you were wrong. It’s way tough if you’re a big-name pundit with a reputation to preserve. For those of us down at the bottom of the pundit pecking order, the stakes aren’t so high. I, at any rate, am willing to eat some crow and say: I wish I had never given any support to this fool war.
...''

hillary booed for ambiguous stance on war

2006-06-13T20:11:00.000-07:00

take a look at the polls, Hillary. if you think your stand on the war in any way shape or form represents "middle America", rather than your own right-wing predilections, then you badly need to get out of your bubble and back in touch with some real people. the majority of America is longing for a way out of this misbegotten war. either lead, follow, or get out of the way. furthermore, the war is a moral issue, not just a political one. if you think it's all about triangulation, then i don't want you anywhere near the white house.

``A liberal crowd both booed and cheered Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton Tuesday after she encouraged Democrats to have a "difficult conversation" about their position on the Iraq war in order to win over middle-of-the-road voters.'' link

whipworms may be prescribed for bowel syndrome

2006-06-10T10:12:00.000-07:00

a big ICK to this idea!!

Researcher: Worms may help bowel disease
Fri Jun 9, 9:17 PM ET

EAST LANSING, Mich. - The upside of Linda Mansfield's research is that it may lead to a new treatment for inflammatory bowel disease. The downside is that it would involve swallowing worm eggs. Mansfield is a professor of microbiology at Michigan State University who specializes in the study of parasites.

She's also one of several researchers around the country looking at the use of threadlike intestinal parasites called whipworms to treat the disease, which can cause diarrhea, painful cramps and even intestinal bleeding.
...

Inflammatory bowel disease, the most common forms of which are Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, is a condition that is virtually unknown in the developing world. But it is becoming increasingly common in industrialized countries.

Researchers have put forward several explanations for that, among them diets high in fat and refined foods. But another possible cause, Mansfield said, is increasing levels of hygiene.

Portions of the immune system actually require periodic infections in order to develop properly. Some exposure to dirt, bacteria and even worms can be beneficial.

"By living in an ultra-clean environment," Mansfield said, "we're removing some of the things that helped to educate our immune system."

Mansfield said it's possible that the human immune system developed in a way that's reliant, to some degree, on the presence of parasitic worms.

She wasn't the first to hit on that idea. A research team at the University of Iowa already has tried treating human patients with a whipworm egg and Gatorade cocktail. Their results were promising.

David Elliott was a member of that team.

"There are probably individuals in the population who, back when worms were prevalent, were the healthiest because their immune systems could fight off all sorts of things," he said. "When worms are removed, their immune systems become unbridled, and they move on to develop disease."
...

libby "forgot" being told about plame/wilson

2006-05-27T16:17:00.000-07:00

and if you believe that, you must also believe that slick willie "forgot" being sucked by monica. i mean, after all, he was a busy man, a lot on his mind being being president. oh yeah, and maybe ken lay just "forgot" about all those people who had warned him about enron's shaky accounting.

Um, I Forgot 7 People Talked of Spy - Libby
Sat, 2006-05-27 22:43
By James Gordon Meek, New York Daily News

Washington - Borrowing a defense used by tax evaders and schoolkids who don't do their homework, Vice President Cheney's indicted former top adviser told a grand jury he forgot that seven people told him about CIA spy Valerie Plame.

Lewis (Scooter) Libby is charged with lying to FBI agents and a federal grand jury about how he first learned of Plame's identity. Cheney, his boss, was among those who told Libby that an Iraq war critic's wife worked at the CIA, prosecutors allege.

But Libby said in his now-unsealed 2004 testimony that "it seemed to me" he heard about Plame "for the first time" from NBC broadcaster Tim Russert in July 2003.
...

what happened to bush's texas swagger?

2006-05-27T16:11:00.000-07:00

"What happened to Bush's Texas Swagger?" asks the new york times." my guess is Laura finally talked him into getting an enema.

link

test blast postponed indefinitely

2006-05-27T16:04:00.000-07:00

what's this, another sign of common sense winning out?

'Divine Strake' Blast at Nevada Test Site Delayed Indefinitely
Sat, 2006-05-27 16:36
By Associated Press

The federal government has indefinitely postponed a planned explosion that was expected to generate a mushroom cloud over the Nevada desert.

Officials say the delay will allow more time to answer questions about the blast -- which opponents fear would kick up radioactive fallout left from nuclear weapons tests conducted at the Nevada Test Site (about 85 miles northwest of Las Vegas).

National Nuclear Security Administration spokesman Darwin Morgan says the test will be scheduled at a later date, depending on legal action.

The Winnemucca Indian Colony and several Nevada and Utah "downwinders" have filed suit in US District Court in Las Vegas to block the non-nuclear blast.
...

hs exit exam reinstated

2006-05-25T12:21:00.000-07:00

as a followup to the story on the stay of the injunction against the exit exam, i post this excerpt from an article in the chron. the story of this girl who "speaks almost no english" is more proof that the exit exam is badly needed. what makes people think that someone who speaks almost no english is deserving of a high school diploma? if someone who speaks almost no english can get a diploma, then that document is worthless. the last quoted paragraph below is also very telling. the girl is going to undertake extra studies in hopes of passing. that's exactly what is supposed to happen! good for her, she's doing the right thing. she'll learn more, pass the exam, and when she does, she'll have really earned it. her diploma will be a true accomplishment rather than a meaningless piece of paper.

``...
Iris Padilla, a senior at Richmond High School who speaks almost no English and hasn't passed the exit exam, was in class Wednesday when another student received a phone call with news that the exit exam had been reinstated.

"Several girls started to cry," Iris said, acknowledging she was one of them.

Iris has passed all her classes and otherwise would graduate if not for the exam. Her spirits were high earlier this month after an Alameda County Superior Court judge struck down the exit exam, saying it was unfair to penalize students who attended poorly performing schools and hadn't been given an equal opportunity to learn the materials on the test.

Iris was so happy, she even went to the prom with her friends last weekend -- a rite of passage she had planned to skip when she thought she wouldn't receive a diploma.

Now, though, Iris is planning to attend summer school and take another stab at the test this summer.
...''

lay, skilling convicted

2006-05-25T11:10:00.000-07:00

it looks like Skilling and Lay's last con job fell flat. the jury, quite sensibly, didn't buy it. flat-out denial was a bold but stupid strategy. there could hardly have been a better exhibition of how these conmen operated, how they managed to fool investors and regulators for years.

Lay, Skilling convicted in Enron collapse
By KRISTEN HAYS, AP Business Writer 23 minutes ago

HOUSTON - Former Enron Corp. chiefs Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling were convicted Thursday of conspiracy to commit securities and wire fraud in one of the biggest business scandals in U.S. history.

The verdict put the blame for the 2001 demise of the high-profile energy trader, once the nation's seventh-largest company, squarely on its top two executives. It came in the sixth day of deliberations following a federal criminal trial that lasted nearly four months.

Lay was also convicted of bank fraud and making false statements to banks in a separate, non-jury trial before U.S. District Judge Sim Lake related to Lay's personal banking.
...

Enron founder Lay was convicted Thursday on all six counts against him in the corporate trial. Former Chief Executive Skilling was convicted on 19 of the 28 counts, including one count of insider trading, and acquitted on the remaining nine.
...

mice inherit trait without gene

2006-05-24T20:46:00.000-07:00

more evidence that central dogma is not the whole story.

In surprise, mice get trait without gene
By MALCOLM RITTER, AP Science Writer 1 hour, 41 minutes ago

NEW YORK - In a startling exception to classical genetics, mice in a lab experiment have inherited an effect of an aberrant gene without inheriting the gene itself.

Experts say the result may someday help scientists understand aspects of diabetes, infertility and other problems. They also said that while such an inheritance pattern has been seen before, it's not clear how common or important it is.

DNA is the stuff of genes in mice and men. But the new study indicates DNA's chemical cousin, RNA, produced the odd-sounding result. In this case the result was mice with distinctive white tail tips.

For the study, reported in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature, scientists produced mice that carried one normal copy of a particular gene and one aberrant copy.

When the scientists bred them, each mouse passed along one of its gene copies to each offspring. The offspring, in turn, ended up with two copies, one from each parent.

Under the rules of classical genetics, one would expect that mice that ended up with two normal copies of the gene would show normal coloring. But surprisingly, 24 out of 27 mice with two normal copies still showed the telltale white patches associated with the aberrant copy.

When scientists bred their special mice to others that had only normal copies of the gene, most offspring with only normal gene copies still showed the distinctive coloring. Experiments showed the trait could be inherited through either the mother or father, and it went on for generations in absence of the abnormal gene.

How can this be? Researchers focused on sperm, which is simpler to analyze than an egg, and found evidence that RNA molecules there were carrying the hereditary signal. For example, when RNA from mice bearing the aberrant gene was injected into early embryos, about half the resulting mice showed the distinctive white tail tip.
...

The mouse study is not the first demonstration that a gene's effect can be inherited without the gene itself. That phenomenon, called paramutation, was shown 50 years ago in corn and later in other plants. Similar findings have also been made in animals, but the new work is notable because it presents evidence for how it happens, Soloway said.

court reinstates hs exit exam

2006-05-24T17:23:00.000-07:00

thank goodness sanity has prevailed, at least for the moment... people who think the exit exam is unfair because of deficiencies in the school system, should get to work improving our schools instead of dumbing them down.

California Supreme Court Reinstates H.S. Exit Exam

bush administration, in a nutshell

2006-05-24T11:49:00.000-07:00

how utterly typical: appear before a friendly audience, ignore the hard questions, ignore his failures, try to pretend critics don't exist.

``...
Most were polite and complimentary, although a heckler [sic] tried to put Bush on the hot seat when he first opened the floor for questions.

"Where are the weapons of mass destruction?" a woman yelled.

Bush ignored the outburst and turned instead to a small business owner who praised Bush's tax cuts and asked if they would be made permanent.
...'' link

viguerie: bush betrayed us

2006-05-21T11:41:00.000-07:00

this right-wing jerk backed bush when it counted, so if he's truly repentant he should et down on his knees and beg forgiveness. he needs to accept blame himself instead of just blaming bush for not following their policies. it's too easy to just knock bush now that his policies are demonstrated failures. the policies that viguerie wanted would have been disastrous too. he doesn't name the iraq war itself as one of bush's betrayals --- as a true conservative would have --- but merely the failure to devote enough resources to it.

Bush's base betrayal

bush denies listening to domestic calls

2006-05-16T13:33:00.000-07:00

any bets as to how long it'll be before chimpy's latest claim about the spying program is exposed as a cheap lie?

Bush: We Don't Listen To U.S. Calls
But President Declines To Discuss Reports That Goverment Compiles Phone Data

ATLANTA, May 16, 2006
(CBS/AP) President Bush insisted Tuesday that the United States does not listen in on domestic telephone conversations among ordinary Americans. But he declined to specifically discuss the government's alleged compiling of phone records — or whether it would amount to an invasion of privacy.
...

bush and schwarzenegger stand behind corrupt hud secy

2006-05-12T16:22:00.000-07:00

of course. Bush doesn't have an ethical bone in his body. and Schwarzenegger is a serial sex offender. furthermore, alphonso jackass needs to sit down with a good dictionary and look up the meaning of the word "anecdotal". it's not a synonym for "falsehood".

[image of schwarzenegger standing behind jackson]

Bush housing chief investigated over contract flap
By Caren Bohan 22 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An inspector general is investigating allegations that Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson may have improperly considered politics in withholding a federal contract.

But a White House official said on Friday that President George W. Bush was standing by his Cabinet secretary and longtime friend and would withhold judgment on any investigation "at this point."

Jackson was quoted in the Dallas Business Journal as citing a contractor's dislike of Bush in describing an incident in which that person was denied a contract.

The report said that Jackson had told a real estate forum: "Why should I reward someone who doesn't like the president, so they can use funds to try to campaign against the president? Logic says they don't get the contract. That's the way I believe."
...

HUD spokeswoman Dustee Tucker has said Jackson was speaking anecdotally and offering an example of "how politics works in D.C." She also said Jackson was not involved in contract decisions at HUD.

boy emperor hits the 20s

2006-05-12T15:44:00.000-07:00

despite an unprecedented wall of propaganda erected around Bush by the mainstream media, the truth has dawned on the general public. Bush is the worst president, ever. can we please have an impeachment now?

Bush job approval falls to 29 pct in new poll
Fri May 12, 9:17 AM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush's job approval rating has hit a new low, with 29 percent of the U.S. public saying he is doing an "excellent or pretty good job," down from 35 percent in April, according to a Harris Interactive poll in The Wall Street Journal Online.

The poll of 1,003 U.S. adults said 71 percent of Americans said Bush was doing an "only fair or poor job," up from 63 percent in April. It said the survey was conducted May 5-8 and had a 3 percent margin of error.

chimpy's hud secy admits racketeering

2006-05-09T15:19:00.000-07:00

this has got to be illegal. denying a contract because of someone's political views?? and yet the fool doesn't even realize he's broken the law. worse, he doesn't seem to realize what he did was dead WRONG. he's lecturing about it in a public speech, as if to warn people not to speak out against his boss. chimpy should publicly reprimand and fire this turkey, and take steps to make SURE all his appointees know what this fool did was unacceptable. will chimpy do that? of course not.

HUD secretary's blunt warning
Alphonso Jackson says deal was scuttled after contractor admits not liking Bush
Dallas Business Journal - May 5, 2006
by Christine Perez
Staff Writer

Once the color barrier has been broken, minority contractors seeking government work may need to overcome the Bush barrier.

That's the message U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson seemed to send during an April 28 talk in Dallas.

Jackson, a former president and CEO of the Dallas Housing Authority, was among the featured speakers at a forum sponsored by the Real Estate Executive Council, a national minority real estate consortium.

After discussing the huge strides the agency has made in doing business with minority-owned companies, Jackson closed with a cautionary tale, relaying a conversation he had with a prospective advertising contractor.

"He had made every effort to get a contract with HUD for 10 years," Jackson said of the prospective contractor. "He made a heck of a proposal and was on the (General Services Administration) list, so we selected him. He came to see me and thank me for selecting him. Then he said something ... he said, 'I have a problem with your president.'

"I said, 'What do you mean?' He said, 'I don't like President Bush.' I thought to myself, 'Brother, you have a disconnect -- the president is elected, I was selected. You wouldn't be getting the contract unless I was sitting here. If you have a problem with the president, don't tell the secretary.'

"He didn't get the contract," Jackson continued. "Why should I reward someone who doesn't like the president, so they can use funds to try to campaign against the president? Logic says they don't get the contract. That's the way I believe."
...

band silenced for wearing anti-bush t-shirts

2006-04-29T10:26:00.000-07:00

what has happened to the "land of the brave, home of the free"? where did it go? aside: wonder if they would have had their power cut off if they'd been wearing pro-Bush t-shirts? or if they'd been wearing anti-Clinton t-shirts? of course not.

Tower City shuts off band for political T-shirts

A band wearing anti-President Bush T-shirts was silenced in mid-performance at Tower City Friday because the mall's management felt the band's attire was inappropriate.

Mifuné, an Afro-beat band, was performing as part of the Tri-C JazzFest when the sound was cut off about 20 minutes into the set on orders from Tower City management.

"They didn't like that all the band members wore a T-shirt with a picture of George Bush with a line through it," said band leader Jacob Fader, 28, of Cleveland Heights. "They said we either remove the shirts, turn them inside out, or get off the stage. I said that doing so would be against our core principles and free speech. We told the audience what happened from the stage after the microphones were cut. The crowd booed."

A spokesman for Tower City confirmed the action.

"We felt the band's attire was distracting and inappropriate," said Lisa Kreiger, Tower City general manager. "We welcome all the musical groups from the festival. The purpose of the show was to provide musical entertainment."
...

the star spanglish banner?

2006-04-28T11:55:00.000-07:00

waving the Mexican flag, messing with the US national anthem... someone is giving these folks some REALLY bad PR advice. unless it's part of some deliberate strategy to piss everyone off. these tactics may be a good way to vent immigrants' anger, but i don't think they're going to win many friends.

Spanish 'Star-Spangled Banner' Draws Ire
...
Bryanna Bevens of Hanford, Calif., who writes for the immigration-focused Web magazine Vdare.com, said the remix particularly upset her.

"It's very whiny. If you want to say all those things, by all means, put them on your poster board, but don't put them on the national anthem," she said.
...

chimpy celebrates earth day

2006-04-23T10:43:00.000-07:00

Bush dodges muddy obstacles in Earth Day bicycle ride
By SCOTT LINDLAW, Associated Press Writer
Saturday, April 22, 2006
(04-22) 14:39 PDT LAS POSADAS STATE FOREST, Calif. (AP) --

President Bush marked Earth Day with a lung-busting mountain bike ride high above Napa County wine country, dodging {and also causing} ruts that sent several partners crashing into the mud.

The president spent Saturday morning with a small pack of riders in this foggy redwood forest about 90 minutes north of San Francisco. He relished the swampy conditions in the remote state-owned tract, returning repeatedly to huge puddles and streams running high after weeks of rain.
...

"We're able to enjoy the beauty without really disrupting the pristine nature of the place," the mud-splattered president said after the 65-minute ride. "It's a classic way for mankind to enjoy God's gift. Plus, we get some exercise."

The ride started at an elevation of about 1,700 feet above sea level and dropped steeply for several miles, prompting a bit of anxiety in the president. He is not accustomed to the sustained drops and climbs of California's mountains, having ridden mostly in the Washington, D.C., area and on his ranch near Crawford, Texas.

Riding Mountain Bike One — a blue and white Trek Fuel bicycle emblazoned with the presidential seal — Bush glided confidently over loose rocks and deep gullies carved by rain runoff. He recovered from a near spill on a fast downhill, but four riders behind him went down in a Tour de France-style pileup, leaving them caked with dirt.
...

The president set the pace throughout the ride, with four Air Force men, a White House legislative aide and Secret Service agents tightly bunched behind him. Rep. Dan Lungren, R-Calif., began the ride with the president, but quickly sensed he was not up for the rugged terrain and fast pace. He peeled off and pedaled solo.

"I'm used to riding in the flats," Lungren said later.

A long convoy of SUVs and off-road vehicles rumbled behind the group, carrying medics and security agents with machine guns.

One of the bicycle-borne agents had mapped out the route, and he alone knew where to turn when the road forked. Bush, however, made plain he was in charge. "Drop back," the commander in chief ordered the agent, with a thumb over his shoulder.

The president explained later that he cherishes both the solitude and the social aspect of mountain biking.

"Generally when I ride it's the one time when I feel alone, even though I know people are behind me," he said. "I ask people a lot of times not to be in my line of vision because all I can see straight ahead is, you know, space."

Often, he said, when he is riding with his usual group near Washington he plugs headphones into his ears and cranks up his iPod, "and it's like I'm alone."
...

chimpy pushes to open nuke waste dump

2006-04-04T15:17:00.000-07:00

proving once again that the public's safety is the last thing on the minds of the nuke proponents. all they care about is getting thru the "regulatory hurdles" as fast as possible. but SAFETY CANNOT BE RUSHED.

W. House to send Congress nuke storage legislation
Tue Apr 4, 1:50 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration will send to Congress on Wednesday a legislative proposal designed to hasten the opening of the
Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage site in Nevada, U.S. Energy Secretary Sam Bodman said.

Bodman said the proposed legislation "will speed the process of opening the Yucca Mountain repository and make it an even more valuable national asset once it is up and running."

The contentious storage site is designed to hold the thousands of tons of spent fuel and other radioactive waste now at nuclear power plants around the country.

"The bill we are sending to Congress represents a serious effort on our part to remove a number of legal and regulatory barriers that we believe stand in the way of making timely progress toward completing and opening the Yucca Mountain repository," Bodman said.

Bodman announced the legislative proposal in a speech to the United States Energy Association's annual meeting.

Talking later with reporters, Bodman provided few details on the legislation. He refused to say for example when, or how much sooner, the legislation calls for opening the storage site.

But he did divulge that the measure did not seek to give the Energy Department the authority to open an interim above-ground storage site for the nuclear waste until the permanent Yucca Mountain site was ready.

The Energy Department was scheduled to hold a briefing with reporters on Tuesday afternoon to discuss the legislation.

repubs nix abramoff inquiry

2006-03-30T12:50:00.000-08:00

of course. we know what they're afraid of.

link

boy emperor alludes to "global war"

2006-03-29T00:43:00.000-08:00

a telling allusion. but congress didn't declare a global war. the country didn't sign up for a global war. we don't have the manpower or the money to fight a global war. the boy emperor seems determined to steer the ship of state straight onto the rocks.

link White House chief of staff Andy Card has resigned and will be replaced by budget director Joshua Bolten, President Bush announced today amid growing calls for a White House shakeup and Republican concern about Bush's tumbling poll ratings.

Mr. Bush announced the changes in a nationally broadcast appearance in the Oval Office.

"I have relied on Andy's wise counsel, his calm in crisis, his absolute integrity and his tireless commitment to public service," Mr. Bush said. "The next three years will demand much of those who serve our country. We have a global war to fight and win."
...

scalia gives "the finger" to reporter

2006-03-28T01:10:00.000-08:00

scalia once again shows the caliber of his intellect... time for this right-wing prick to resign. he's an embarrassment to the court.

Scalia has hand gesture for critics

BOSTON, March 27 (UPI) -- U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia startled reporters in Boston just minutes after attending a mass, by making a hand gesture some consider obscene.

A Boston Herald reporter asked the 70-year-old conservative Roman Catholic if he faces much questioning over impartiality when it comes to issues separating church and state.

"You know what I say to those people?" Scalia replied, making the gesture and explaining "That's Sicilian."
...

poll: bin laden capture would be useless

2006-03-26T12:51:00.000-08:00

that's right. so why did Bush waste billions of dollars and thousands of lives to invade afghanistan?? it was stupid.

Bin Laden Capture Would Do Little, Say Americans
March 26, 2006

(Angus Reid Global Scan) – Few adults in the United States believe the eventual detention of the leader of al-Qaeda would not be particularly beneficial, according to a poll by Rasmussen Reports. Only 37 per cent of respondents think the U.S. would be safer if Osama bin Laden is captured or killed.

Al-Qaeda operatives hijacked and crashed four airplanes in the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001, killing nearly 3,000 people. In July 2004, the federal commission that investigated the events of 9/11 concluded that "none of the measures adopted by the U.S. government from 1998 to 2001 disturbed or even delayed the progress of the al-Qaeda plot" and pointed out government failures of "imagination, policy, capabilities, and management."
...

Polling Data

Do you think the U.S. would be safer if Osama bin Laden is captured or killed?

Yes 37%
No 47%

Do you think Osama bin Laden is alive?

Yes 80%
No 7%

Source: Rasmussen Reports
Methodology: Telephone interviews with 1,000 American adults, conducted on Mar. 17 and Mar. 18, 2006. Margin of error is 3 per cent.

scalia trash talks detainee rights

2006-03-26T11:05:00.000-08:00

he hasn't even heard the case yet, but he's already mouthing off. and the strongest argument he can come up with is ``Give me a break.'' how in the world did this fool get on the supreme court?! he deserves a break, all right - like permanently, as in retirement.

Supreme Court: Detainees' Rights—Scalia Speaks His Mind

April 3, 2006 issue - The Supreme Court this week will hear arguments in a big case: whether to allow the Bush administration to try Guantánamo detainees in special military tribunals with limited rights for the accused. But Justice Antonin Scalia has already spoken his mind about some of the issues in the matter. During an unpublicized March 8 talk at the University of Freiburg in Switzerland, Scalia dismissed the idea that the detainees have rights under the U.S. Constitution or international conventions, adding he was "astounded" at the "hypocritical" reaction in Europe to Gitmo. "War is war, and it has never been the case that when you captured a combatant you have to give them a jury trial in your civil courts," he says on a tape of the talk reviewed by NEWSWEEK. "Give me a break."

Challenged by one audience member about whether the Gitmo detainees don't have protections under the Geneva or human-rights conventions, Scalia shot back: "If he was captured by my army on a battlefield, that is where he belongs. I had a son on that battlefield and they were shooting at my son and I'm not about to give this man who was captured in a war a full jury trial. I mean it's crazy." Scalia was apparently referring to his son Matthew, who served with the U.S. Army in Iraq. Scalia did say, though, that he was concerned "there may be no end to this war."

The comments provoked "quite an uproar," said Samantha Besson, a member of the Freiburg law faculty who had invited Scalia to give his talk, which was mostly about his "originalist" interpretation of the Constitution. This isn't the first time Scalia has commented on matters before the court: two years ago he recused himself from a Pledge of Allegiance case after making public comments about the matter. "This is clearly grounds for recusal," said Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a human-rights group that has filed a brief in behalf of the Gitmo detainees. "I can't recall an instance where I've heard a judge speak so openly about a case that's in front of him—without hearing the arguments." Other experts said it was a closer call. Scalia didn't refer directly to this week's case, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, though issues at stake hinge in part on whether the detainees deserve legal protections that make the military tribunals unfair. "As these things mount, a legitimate question could be asked about whether he is compromising the credibility of the court," said Stephen Gillers, a legal-ethics expert.
...

child poisoned by reebok bracelet

2006-03-23T14:25:00.000-08:00

Reebok recalls bracelets over lead poisoning
Thu Mar 23, 11:14 AM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Reebok International is recalling about 300,000 promotional bracelets after a child reportedly died of lead poisoning after swallowing one, U.S. authorities said on Thursday.

The eight-inch-long metal bracelets, with a heart-shaped charm with the name "Reebok" engraved on one side, were distributed as gifts with the purchase of various styles of children's footwear.

Reebok International was acquired by German sporting goods maker Adidas (ADSG.DE) earlier this year.

us war spending skyrockets

2006-03-19T01:49:00.000-08:00

the war machine is insatiable, and with the chimp in charge, there's no restraint.

U.S. War Spending to Rise 44% to $9.8 Bn a Month, Report Says
Published on Friday, March 17, 2006 by Bloomberg.com
by Jeff Bliss

U.S. military spending in Iraq and Afghanistan will average 44 percent more in the current fiscal year than in fiscal 2005, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service said.

Spending will rise to $9.8 billion a month from the $6.8 billion a month the Pentagon said it spent last year, the research service said. The group's March 10 report cites "substantial'' expenses to replace or repair damaged weapons, aircraft, vehicles, radios and spare parts.

It also figures in costs for health care, fuel, national intelligence and the training of Iraqi and Afghan security forces -- "now a substantial expense,'' it said.

The research service said it considers "all war and occupation costs,'' while the Pentagon counts just the cost of personnel, maintenance and operations.

The House approved emergency funding that includes the military spending last night by a vote of 348-71. The measure authorizes $72 billion for war costs and almost $20 billion for hurricane relief. The Senate is expected to pass it next month.

Congress already has approved $50 billion in supplemental war funding for the current fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, after spending $100 billion last year. To date, Congress has approved about $337 billion for the wars since Sept. 11, 2001.

2007 Funding

The administration has said it also will seek $50 billion in war funding for fiscal 2007 to serve as a bridge fund until needs are assessed. That will be on top of the $439.3 billion defense budget the president submitted.

The request the House approved last night includes $67.6 billion for war operations, much of it in costs for personnel and repair and replacement of equipment; about $4.9 billion to train and equip Afghan and Iraqi security forces; and about $2 billion for defenses against roadside bombs, which have been a leading cause of death for U.S. servicemen in Iraq.
...

corp's stiff govt on fines

2006-03-19T01:36:00.000-08:00

note the sharp increase in unpaid fines under the chimp administration.

Corporations Stiffing Government on Fines
By MARTHA MENDOZA and CHRISTOPHER SULLIVAN, Associated Press Writers
1 hour, 6 minutes ago

When a gasoline spill and fiery explosion killed three young people in Washington state, officials announced a record penalty against a gas pipeline company: $3 million to send the message that such tragedies "must never happen again."

When nuclear labs around the country were found exposing workers to radiation and breaking other safety rules, assessments totaling $2.5 million were quickly ordered.

When coal firms' violations were blamed for deaths, injuries and risks to miners from Alabama to West Virginia, they were slapped with more than $1.3 million in penalties.

What happened next with these no-nonsense enforcement efforts? Not much. The pipeline tab was eventually reduced by 92 percent, the labs' assessments were waived as soon as they were issued, and the mine penalties largely went unpaid.

The amount of unpaid federal fines has risen sharply in the last decade. Individuals and corporations regularly avoid large, highly publicized penalties for wrongdoing — sometimes through negotiations, sometimes because companies go bankrupt, sometimes due to officials' failure to keep close track of who owes what under a decentralized collection system.

These are conclusions of an Associated Press examination of federal financial penalty enforcement across the nation, which also found:

_The government is currently owed more than $35 billion in fines and other payments from criminals and in civil cases, according to Justice Department figures. This is almost five times the amount uncollected 10 years ago — and enough to cover the annual budget of the Department of
Homeland Security. A decade ago, Congress mandated that fines be imposed regardless of defendants' ability to pay, which has added tremendously to outstanding debt.

_In 2004, federal authorities ordered $7.8 billion in 98,985 fines, penalties and restitution demands in criminal and civil cases, but collected less than half of that.

_White-collar crime cases account for the largest amount of uncollected debt. In a study,
Government Accountability Office investigators found that just 7 percent of restitution in such cases is paid.
...

terror risks of nuke fuel

2006-03-16T16:03:00.000-08:00

another myth from the nuclear industry, exploded.

Terror risks of nuclear fuel

By Mark Clayton, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
Thu Mar 16, 3:00 AM ET

The Bush administration's plan to deploy a high-tech fuel to power a new generation of nuclear reactors worldwide has a potentially explosive problem:

It is too easy for terrorists to grab and turn it into a nuclear bomb.

That's the criticism expressed by nuclear scientists and in several little-known federal studies about the technology underlying the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, unveiled last month. Administration officials tout GNEP for technological breakthroughs that dramatically reduce the nuclear waste from civilian reactors and, at the same time, greatly reduce the risk of nuclear proliferation.

Using GNEP's new fuel technology, called UREX-Plus, the United States could safely end its three-decade moratorium on reprocessing spent nuclear fuel intended to keep plutonium from spreading, officials say. "The goal of GNEP is recovery of the energy in a way that doesn't promote weapons," Energy Secretary
Samuel Bodman told a US Senate committee last month.

Knowledgeable critics have said from the outset that the new reactor fuel envisioned in GNEP is not so very hard to turn into bombs. But what has not been widely known is that their views are echoed by the US Department of Energy's own studies. According to a 2004 study conducted for an Energy Department blue-ribbon commission, for instance, the UREX-plus technology was only slightly more "proliferation resistant" - difficult to turn into bombs - than the PUREX process used by other nations. The US has often criticized PUREX for its vulnerability.

"The bottom line is that UREX-plus is not much more proliferation resistant - by their own estimates," says Henry Sokolski, former deputy for nonproliferation policy at the Defense Department in the first Bush administration.
...

senate votes to raise debt limit

2006-03-16T11:13:00.000-08:00

guess what, all that "shock and awe" stuff isn't free. every single one of us --- not just every taxpayer, but every man, woman, and child --- has in effect gone into debt to the tune of $30,000... and for what? and how can that chimp still be braying about tax cuts and fighting more preemptive wars?

Senate Votes to Raise Debt Limit
By ANDREW TAYLOR, Associated Press Writer
44 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - Congress agreed to let the government borrow another $781 billion Thursday, allowing lawmakers and President Bush to pay for the war in Iraq and combat terrorism without raising taxes or cutting popular domestic programs.

The Senate, on a 52-48 vote, sent to President Bush a bill raising the ceiling on the national debt to nearly $9 trillion and preventing a first-ever default on U.S. Treasury notes. When the government reaches the new ceiling, expected sometime next year, the debt will represent $30,000 for every man, woman and child in the United States.
...

bush, in a word: incompetent

2006-03-16T10:29:00.000-08:00

let's see how long it takes for "liar" to become #1.

Bush battered by US pessimism, leadership doubts
...

A majority of Americans, 56 percent, believe Bush is "out of touch," the poll found. When asked for a one-word description of Bush, the most frequent response was "incompetent," followed by "good," "idiot" and "liar." In February 2005, the most frequent reply was "honest."
...

A recent CBS poll found 66 percent of the public believed the country was headed down the wrong track, while a Harris Interactive poll put the number at 60 percent.
...

Independent pollster Dick Bennett of American Research Group said Bush's failure to acknowledge public anxieties added to his troubles.

"The biggest problem the White House faces is reconnecting with people. People simply aren't buying it anymore," Bennett said. "People can see for themselves that things actually are not fine."
...

mad cow: don't look, don't find

2006-03-15T15:46:00.000-08:00

uh oh, we found another case of mad cow disease! i guess we're being too thorough!

U.S. plans to reduce mad cow testing
Wed, March 15, 2006
By AP

WASHINGTON -- Despite the confirmation of a third case of mad cow disease in the U.S., the American government intends to scale back testing for the brain-wasting disorder blamed for the deaths of more than 150 people in Europe.

The U.S. Agriculture Department boosted its surveillance after finding the first case of mad cow disease in the U.S. in 2003.

About 1,000 tests are run daily, up from about 55 daily in 2003.

The testing program detected an infected cow in Alabama last week and further analysis confirmed Monday the animal had mad cow disease.

Still, a reduction in testing has been in the works for months. The department's chief veterinarian, John Clifford, mentioned it when he announced the new case of mad cow disease.
...

Higher testing levels were intended to be temporary when they were announced two years ago.

Yet consumer groups argue more animals should be tested, not fewer.

Officials haven't finalized new levels but the department's budget proposal calls for 40,000 tests annually, or about 110 daily.

"This would be a tenth of a percent of all animals slaughtered," Jean Halloran, director of food policy initiatives at Consumers Union, said yesterday. "This starts to be so small that in our opinion, it approaches a policy of don't look, don't find."

Iowa Senator Tom Harkin said the confidence of U.S. consumers and foreign customers is at risk if testing is reduced.

largest ak pipeline leak

2006-03-11T23:59:00.000-08:00

Oil spill estimate increased for pipeline leak in Alaska
North Slope mishap among worst in system's three-decade history
Sam Howe Verhovek, Los Angeles Times
Saturday, March 11, 2006

Seattle -- Officials raised their estimate of the amount of oil leaked from a corroded pipeline at the northern tip of Alaska to at least 265,000 gallons Friday, making it the largest spill on record in the oil-rich North Slope field -- and one of the worst in the 29-year history of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline system.

The report by Alaska's Department of Environmental Conservation added grist to the debate over President Bush's push to drill for oil in the nearby Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; industry advocates say the drilling can be done with minimal ecological impact, but environmentalists contend it would threaten the fragile ecosystem.
...

RIP tom fox

2006-03-11T11:57:00.000-08:00

a true Christian martyr

RIP

immigration bill would restore h1b visas

2006-03-10T06:46:00.000-08:00

so McNealy warns of a "great sucking" of innovation out of the country... but just how much credibility does his warning have, when McNealy and Sun have been "blowing" jobs out of the USA as fast as they could --- both during the tech boom and after; both before 9/11 and after; and regardless of whether the h1b quotas were high or low? McNealy and his ilk have been exporting the jobs out of the USA as fast as they can, and now they're crying crocodile tears that they can't simultaneously import more cheap labor to fill the few remaining jobs here. meanwhile, bemoaning the supposed lack of qualified applicants among US citizens. what a crock.

Immigration bill would add visas for tech workers
Carolyn Lochhead, Chronicle Washington Bureau
Friday, March 10, 2006

Buried in the Senate's giant immigration bill -- hardly noticed amid a fierce debate over a guest-worker program for unskilled laborers -- are provisions that would open the country's doors to highly skilled immigrants for science, math, technology and engineering jobs.

The provisions were sought by Silicon Valley tech companies and enjoy significant bipartisan support amid concern that the United States might lose its lead in technology. They would broaden avenues to legal immigration for foreign tech workers and would put those with advanced degrees on an automatic path to permanent residence should they want it.

The measures include nearly doubling the number of H-1B skilled-worker temporary visas to 115,000 -- with an option of raising the cap 20 percent more each year. H-1B visas were highly controversial in the Bay Area when their numbers reached a peak of 195,000 in 2003.
...

The provisions for highly skilled workers enjoy support in both parties in the Senate and in the Bush administration after a raft of high-profile studies have warned that the United States is not producing enough math and science students and is in danger of losing its global edge in innovation to India and China.

Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy echoed many in the tech industry at a conference in Washington on Wednesday when he warned that if skilled immigration is not expanded, "There will be a great sucking sound of innovation out of the U.S.''

Silicon Valley venture capitalist John Doerr suggested at a technology summit last fall that the United States "should staple a green card to every kid, every foreign national that graduates with a degree in engineering and science, so that they stay here. Imagine innovation in America without Andy Grove, without Jerry Yang, without Sergey Brin -- Hungarian, Chinese, Russian. These immigrants have contributed enormously to innovation and our well-being."

But House Republicans are cool toward any increase in legal immigration, including skilled workers, and are at sharp odds with the White House. They passed a bill in December to crack down on border enforcement, calling for construction of a 700-mile fence on the border with Mexico.

House Republicans omitted skilled immigration from their "Innovation and Competitiveness Act," released with much pomp last week, prompting House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, to blast the proposal as doing nothing "to ensure that the best and brightest from around the world are able to contribute to innovation in the United States."

Nor has Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, shown much enthusiasm for more skilled workers, preferring her own plan for a guest-worker program limited to agriculture. Feinstein questioned the tech proposals in an interview last week.

Her stance has angered California's high-tech business community. Industry officials said CEOs from California and across the country have pleaded with Feinstein to no avail. They complain that she is ignoring the technology industry, which they contend is vital to the state's economy, but is willing to provide amnesty to 900,000 Mexican farmworkers, most of whom work in California.

Opponents of broadening immigration for skilled workers said doing so would defeat efforts to get more Americans interested in science, math, engineering and other technological fields.

"It sends the message to students in those fields now, why bother if you're going to have a hard time getting a job in the U.S. because we're importing workers in those fields who are working for less than it would take to hire an American worker," said Caroline Espinosa, spokeswoman for NumbersUSA, a group opposed to expanding immigration.
...

carter: israeli colonization an obstacle to peace

2006-03-10T05:59:00.000-08:00

Colonization of Palestine Precludes Peace
Jimmy Carter
March 09, 2006

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter led The Carter Center/National Democratic Institute observation of the Palestinian elections in January.

For more than a quarter century, Israeli policy has been in conflict with that of the United States and the international community. Israel’s occupation of Palestine has obstructed a comprehensive peace agreement in the Holy Land, regardless of whether Palestinians had no formalized government, one headed by Yasir Arafat or Mahmoud Abbas, or with Abbas as president and Hamas controlling the parliament and cabinet.
...

warmer climate 'profoundly altering' arctic food chain

2006-03-10T05:42:00.000-08:00

Warmer climate alters Arctic food chain
Researchers assess long-term impact
Robert Lee Hotz, Los Angeles Times
Friday, March 10, 2006

Whales, walruses, seabirds and fish are struggling to survive the changing climate of the Bering Sea, their northern feeding grounds perhaps permanently disrupted by higher temperatures and melting ice, scientists reported Thursday in the journal Science.

By pulling together a broad range of observations and surveys, an international research team concluded that they are witnessing the transformation of an entire ecosystem in a region home to almost half of all U.S. commercial fish production.

All in all, the researchers said, the Arctic climate of the northern Bering Sea is in full retreat, yielding to the sub-Arctic system of the south.

The changes are "profound" and perhaps irreversible, even if cold weather eventually returns, the researchers said.
...

... the local sea ice now melts three weeks earlier than in 1997, records of recent years show. Last year, Arctic ice retreated further than in 25 years of satellite monitoring.

"Here we put all the pieces of the puzzle together," Grebmeier said.

The researchers found that by 2002, Pacific gray whales were fleeing northward to feed in cooler currents, while pink salmon by the millions swarmed into warmer waters the whales had abandoned. Bottom-dwelling species, unable to adapt, were decimated.

As sea ice diminished, breeding grounds for seals were disrupted and populations plummeted. Polar bears started to drown. Walruses, accustomed to diving in the shallows to feed along the sea bottom, found themselves adrift on broken ice floes in waters 6,500 feet deep. The animals starved.

israel to draw west bank borders by 2010

2006-03-09T17:26:00.000-08:00

again, i ask: since when are nations allowed to "draw their own borders"??? there's something drastically wrong with this picture.

Israel to Draw West Bank Borders by 2010
By MARK LAVIE, Associated Press Writer
Thu Mar 9, 5:04 PM ET

JERUSALEM - Israel will draw its final borders by 2010, acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in an interview published Thursday, for the first time setting a deadline for what is expected to be a unilateral large-scale West Bank pullback. (sic)

fema critic's t-shirt triggers ticket

2006-03-09T14:28:00.000-08:00

meanwhile, Dick Cheney gets off scot free after shooting a man in the face... Bush violates the wiretapping laws with impunity... but at least, America is safe from the dire threat of subversive t-shirts.

FEMA critic's shirt gets him tangled up in ticket
By Laura Parker, USA TODAY
Fri Mar 3, 7:57 AM ET

Ridiculing the Federal Emergency Management Agency is high art in the Gulf Coast areas where Hurricane Katrina hit last year.

Many parade floats in New Orleans' Mardi Gras were decorated in themes that skewered the relief agency.

George Barisich, president of the United Commercial Fisherman's Association, has been selling anti-FEMA T-shirts since last fall, a reflection of his frustration with the federal government's response to the storm that left him homeless and unemployed.

But on Feb. 1, when he handed a shirt to a fellow Katrina victim as he was picking up canned goods at a charity's relief tent, Barisich found himself in trouble with the government.

He was cited by a group of
Homeland Security officials for selling a T-shirt on federal property - in this case, near a FEMA center in the parking lot of a Wal-Mart in Chalmette, La.

Barisich, 49, says he didn't sell the shirt, which said: "Flooded by Katrina! Forgotten by FEMA! What's Next, Mr. Bush?" He says he gave it away.

The government is sticking to its guns. "If we ignored this violation, you could have potentially 20 to 30 people standing out in front of the (FEMA) center, obstructing things," says Dean Boyd, a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesman. "We've got a duty and a job under the law."
...

four vt towns vote to impeach bush

2006-03-08T01:22:00.000-08:00

good for them!

link

another suspicious election

2006-03-08T01:19:00.000-08:00

link

``...
With about 69 percent of precincts reporting, Cuellar had 16,705 votes, or 49 percent, compared with Rodriguez, who had 15,408 votes, or 45 percent.

It was unclear when the race would be decided. The tabulation of early votes in a key county was delayed because of voting-machine software problems, election officials said.
...''

israel: no one is safe

2006-03-07T10:00:00.000-08:00

an arrogant criminal government makes a disgraceful criminal boast. have they forgotten that "what goes around, comes around"?

Israel: 'No One Is Immune' From Strikes
By AMY TEIBEL, Associated Press Writer
21 minutes ago

JERUSALEM - Israel's defense minister advised the incoming Palestinian prime minister Tuesday to fear for his life if Hamas militants start attacking Israel again.
...

Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz's warning to Hamas, recently elected to rule the
Palestinian Authority, was the first to identify Hamas' prime minister-designate, Ismail Haniyeh, as a potential target for an Israeli pinpoint (sic) attack.

"No one is immune," Mofaz told Army Radio, a day after an Israeli airstrike on an ice cream truck killed two Islamic Jihad militants and three bystanders in Gaza City. Two of those killed were aged 8 and 14.
...

tide turns against war

2006-03-02T16:10:00.000-08:00

Iraq War Not Worth Fighting for 63% in U.S.

72% of Troops Say End War in 2006

the latter poll result is especially significant. the troops are getting restless. the warmongers can no longer use "support the troops" as a sneaky emotional argument for "supporting the war".

bush insists outsourcing good for us

2006-02-23T20:57:00.000-08:00

with this speech, Bush wins the gold medal for stupidity.

Bush insists outsourcing to India has its benefits
By Jim Puzzanghera
Mercury News Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON - To people in Silicon Valley and around the country concerned about the outsourcing of jobs to India, President Bush on Wednesday offered something to make the practice more palatable.

Pizza.

It's just one of the U.S. products that India's rapidly growing middle class is developing an appetite for, Bush said in a speech to the Asia Society as he prepares for a trip to India and Pakistan next month. While acknowledging the individual trauma of Americans who lose jobs when companies move operations abroad, Bush said India's economic growth is an overall plus for the U.S. economy.
...

radiation spike blamed on DU shells

2006-02-19T12:11:00.000-08:00

it's a small planet, and what goes around comes around.

The Sunday Times February 19, 2006
UK radiation jump blamed on Iraq shells
Mark Gould and Jon Ungoed-Thomas

RADIATION detectors in Britain recorded a fourfold increase in uranium levels in the atmosphere after the “shock and awe” bombing campaign against Iraq, according to a report.

Environmental scientists who uncovered the figures through freedom of information laws say it is evidence that depleted uranium from the shells was carried by wind currents to Britain.

Government officials, however, say the sharp rise in uranium detected by radiation monitors in Berkshire was a coincidence and probably came from local sources.

The results from testing stations at the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) in Aldermaston and four other stations within a 10-mile radius were obtained by Chris Busby, of Liverpool University’s department of human anatomy and cell biology.

Each detector recorded a significant rise in uranium levels during the Gulf war bombing campaign in March 2003. The reading from a park in Reading was high enough for the Environment Agency to be alerted.

Busby, who has advised the government on radiation and is a founder of Green Audit, the environmental consultancy, believes “uranium aerosols” from Iraq were widely dispersed in the atmosphere and blown across Europe.

“This research shows that rather than remaining near the target as claimed by the military, depleted uranium weapons contaminate both locals and whole populations hundreds to thousands of miles away,” he said.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) countered that it was “unfeasible” depleted uranium could have travelled so far. Radiation experts also said that other environmental sources were more likely to blame.

The “shock and awe” campaign was one of the most devastating assaults in modern warfare. In the first 24-hour period more than 1,500 bombs and missiles were dropped on Baghdad.

During the conflict A10 “tankbuster” planes — which use munitions containing depleted uranium — fired 300,000 rounds. The substance — dubbed a “silver bullet” because of its ability to pierce heavy tank armour — is controversial because of its potential effect on human health. Critics say it is chemically toxic and can cause cancer, and Iraqi doctors reported a marked rise in cancer cases after it was used in the first Gulf conflict.

The American and British governments say depleted uranium is relatively harmless, however. The Royal Society, the UK’s academy of science, has also said the risk from depleted uranium is “very low” for soldiers and people in a conflict zone.

Busby’s report shows that within nine days of the start of the Iraq war on March 19, 2003, higher levels of uranium were picked up on five sites in Berkshire. On two occasions, levels exceeded the threshold at which the Environment Agency must be informed, though within safety limits. The report says weather conditions over the war period showed a consistent flow of air from Iraq northwards.

Brian Spratt, who chaired the Royal Society’s report, cast doubt on depleted uranium as a source but said it could have come from natural uranium in the massive amounts of soil kicked up by shock and awe.
...

drunk driver given one more chance

2006-02-05T17:48:00.000-08:00

another chance to kill someone. he doesn't deserve any more chances like that. he needs to do some serious jail time. AND we need to adopt technology to PREVENT people from driving without a license.

Notorious Bad Driver Gets Year in Prison
Friday, February 3, 2006
(02-03) 19:23 PST Mandan, N.D. (AP) --

A man convicted more than 40 times of drunken driving or driving without a valid license has been sentenced to a year in jail, a day after his arrest on yet another driving charge.

Craig Irwin, 45, of Mandan, was sentenced Friday for a driving under revocation offense last year. He was arrested Thursday on charges of driving under revocation and having no liability insurance.
...

Irwin is not scheduled to get his driver's license back for at least 35 years. State records show that he has had more than 100 citations for driving infractions in the last 22 years, and has not been allowed to drive legally for 20 years.

Irwin told Jorgensen on Friday that he has a drinking problem.

Jorgensen's sentence allows Irwin to knock one day off his jail time for every day he spends in treatment.

"I'm going to grant you a chance," the judge said.
...

two ejected for "protest" t-shirts at SOTU speech

2006-02-01T09:56:00.000-08:00

the world must have gone mad. a war criminal has the microphone, and spreads his deadly lies unmolested, applauded, and fawned-over; while silent truth-tellers are hauled off lest they disturb the emperor's "beautiful" mind. these arrests say more about the real "state" of our union, than anything the chimp might have uttered.

Police remove two from State of the Union address
By LAURIE KELLMAN
Associated Press Writer
February 01. 2006 11:00AM

[AP Photo/The Washington Times, Allison Shelley
Security escorts Peace activist Cindy Sheehan from the U.S. House of Representatives before President Bush's State of the Union address on Capitol Hill, Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2006, in Washington. Sheehan, the mother of a fallen U.S. soldier in Iraq who reinvigorated the anti-war movement, was arrested and removed from the gallery, a police spokeswoman said.]

Cindy Sheehan, mother of a fallen soldier in Iraq, wasn't the only one ejected from the House gallery during the State of the Union address for wearing a T-shirt with a war-related slogan that violated the rules. The wife of a powerful Republican congressman was also asked to leave.

Beverly Young, wife of Rep. C.W. Bill Young of Florida - chairman of the House Defense Appropriations subcommittee - was removed from the gallery because she was wearing a T-shirt that read, "Support the Troops - Defending Our Freedom."

"Because she had on a shirt that someone didn't like that said support our troops, she was kicked out of this gallery," Young said on the House floor Wednesday morning, holding up the gray shirt.

"Shame, shame," he scolded.
...

"They said I was protesting," she told the St. Petersburg Times. "I said, "Read my shirt, it is not a protest.' They said, 'We consider that a protest.' I said, 'Then you are an idiot.'"

They told her she was being treated the same as Sheehan, a protester ejected before the speech Tuesday night for wearing a T-shirt with an antiwar slogan. Sheehan wrote in her blog Wednesday that she intends to file a First Amendment lawsuit.
...

Capitol Police took Sheehan, invited as a guest of Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif., away in handcuffs and charged her with unlawful conduct, a misdemeanor. She later was released on her own recognizance.

Capitol Police Sgt. Kimberly Schneider said police warned her that such displays were not allowed in the House chamber, but Sheehan did not respond.
...

In her blog, Sheehan wrote that her T-shirt said, "2245 Dead. How many more?" - a reference to the number of soldiers killed in Iraq.
...

She said she had one arm out of her coat when an officer yelled, "Protestor."

"He then ran over to me, hauled me out of my seat and roughly (with my hands behind my back) shoved me up the stairs," she wrote. She was then cuffed and driven to police headquarters a few blocks away.

"I was never told that I couldn't wear that shirt into the Congress," Sheehan wrote. "I was never asked to take it off or zip my jacket back up. If I had been asked to do any of those things...I would have, and written about the suppression of my freedom of speech later."

Sheehan was arrested in September with about 300 other anti-war activists in front of the White House after a weekend of protests against the war in Iraq. In August, she spent 26 days camped near Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, where he was spending a working vacation.

army seized wives as hostages in iraq

2006-01-28T12:12:00.000-08:00

so tell me again, why we invited iraq? to fight terrorism? now tell me who's the terrorist?

Documents Show Army Seized Wives as Tactic
By CHARLES J. HANLEY
The Associated Press
Saturday, January 28, 2006; 2:50 AM

-- The U.S. Army in Iraq has at least twice seized and jailed the wives of suspected insurgents in hopes of "leveraging" their husbands into surrender, U.S. military documents show.

In one case, a secretive task force locked up the young mother of a nursing baby, a U.S. intelligence officer reported. In the case of a second detainee, one American colonel suggested to another that they catch her husband by tacking a note to the family's door telling him "to come get his wife. ...

scientists caught photoshopping

2006-01-24T20:39:00.000-08:00

January 24, 2006
It May Look Authentic; Here's How to Tell It Isn't
By NICHOLAS WADE

Among the many temptations of the digital age, photo-manipulation has proved particularly troublesome for science, and scientific journals are beginning to respond.

Some journal editors are considering adopting a test, in use at The Journal of Cell Biology, that could have caught the concocted images of the human embryonic stem cells made by Dr. Hwang Woo Suk.

At The Journal of Cell Biology, the test has revealed extensive manipulation of photos. Since 2002, when the test was put in place, 25 percent of all accepted manuscripts have had one or more illustrations that were manipulated in ways that violate the journal's guidelines, said Michael Rossner of Rockefeller University, the executive editor. The editor of the journal, Ira Mellman of Yale, said that most cases were resolved when the authors provided originals. "In 1 percent of the cases we find authors have engaged in fraud," he said.

The two editors recognized the likelihood that images were being improperly manipulated when the journal required all illustrations to be submitted in digital form. While reformatting illustrations submitted in the wrong format, Dr. Rossner realized that some authors had yielded to the temptation of Photoshop's image-changing tools to misrepresent the original data.

In some instances, he found, authors would remove bands from a gel, a test for showing what proteins are present in an experiment. Sometimes a row of bands would be duplicated and presented as the controls for a second experiment. Sometimes the background would be cleaned up, with Photoshop's rubber stamp or clone stamp tool, to make it prettier.

Some authors would change the contrast in an image to eliminate traces of a diagnostic stain that showed up in places where there shouldn't be one. Others would take images of cells from different experiments and assemble them as if all were growing on the same plate.

To prohibit such manipulations, Dr. Rossner and Dr. Mellman published guidelines saying, in effect, that nothing should be done to any part of an illustration that did not affect all other parts equally. In other words, it is all right to adjust the brightness or color balance of the whole photo, but not to obscure, move or introduce an element.

They started checking illustrations in accepted manuscripts by running them through Photoshop and adjusting the controls to see if new features appeared. This is the check that has shown a quarter of accepted manuscripts violate the journal's guidelines.

In the 1 percent of cases in which the manipulation is deemed fraudulent - a total of 14 papers so far - the paper is rejected. Revoking an accepted manuscript requires the agreement of four of the journal's officials. "In some cases we will even contact the author's institution and say, 'You should look into this because it was not kosher,' " Dr. Mellman said.

He and Dr. Rossner plan to add software tests being developed by Hani Farid, an applied mathematician at Dartmouth. With a grant from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is interested in ways of authenticating digital images presented in court, Dr. Farid is devising algorithms to detect alterations.
...

For the latter, Dr. Farid is developing a package of algorithms designed to spot specific types of image manipulation. When researchers seek to remove an object from an image, such as a band from a gel, they often hide it with a patch of nearby background. This involves a duplication of material, which may be invisible to the naked eye but can be detected by mathematical analysis.

If an object is enlarged beyond the proper resolution, Photoshop may generate extra pixels. If the object is rotated, another set of pixels is generated in a characteristic pattern.

An object introduced from another photo may have a different angle of illumination. The human eye is largely indifferent to changes in lighting, Dr. Farid said, but conflicting sources of illumination in a single image can be detected by computer analysis and are a sign of manipulation.

"At the end of the day you need math," Dr. Farid said. He hopes to have a set of tools available soon for beta-testing by Dr. Rossner.
...

feds after google data

2006-01-20T10:30:00.000-08:00

another overreach by a power-mad administration. big props to google for fighting the fascists. and a big thumbs down to yahoo and MSN search for silently betraying the secrecy of their customers.

Feds after Google data
By Howard Mintz
Mercury News

The Bush administration on Wednesday asked a federal judge to order Google to turn over a broad range of material from its closely guarded databases.

The move is part of a government effort to revive an Internet child protection law struck down two years ago by the U.S. Supreme Court. The law was meant to punish online pornography sites that make their content accessible to minors. The government contends it needs the Google data to determine how often pornography shows up in online searches.

In court papers filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose, Justice Department lawyers revealed that Google has refused to comply with a subpoena issued last year for the records, which include a request for 1 million random Web addresses and records of all Google searches from any one-week period.

The Mountain View-based search and advertising giant opposes releasing the information on a variety of grounds, saying it would violate the privacy rights of its users and reveal company trade secrets, according to court documents.

three indicted in nuke plant coverup

2006-01-19T20:56:00.000-08:00

great, some indictments. wonder what took so long?

Three Indicted in Ohio Nuclear Plant Case

By CONNIE MABIN, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 10 minutes ago

CLEVELAND - A federal grand jury indicted two former nuclear power plant employees and a contractor Thursday on charges of hiding information about serious damage to a reactor from regulators.

The indictment accuses the trio of misleading regulators in the fall of 2001 into believing that the Davis-Besse plant was safe so federal inspectors would delay visits until the spring of 2002, during a scheduled shutdown for refueling.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspectors found an acid leak in 2002 that nearly ate through a 6-inch steel cap on the reactor vessel at the plant, which sits along the Lake Erie shore about 30 miles east of Toledo.

Officials said it was the most extensive corrosion ever seen at a U.S. nuclear reactor.

The plant was closed for two years but returned to full power in 2004. Akron-based FirstEnergy Corp., which owns the plant, spent $600 million making repairs and buying replacement power because of the shutdown.

Company and NRC investigations concluded that the rust hole had been growing for at least four years and that Davis-Besse's managers had ignored the evidence because they were focused on profits rather than safety.

Indicted were former engineering design manager David Geisen, former engineer Andrew Siemaszko and Rodney Cook, a consultant who was working for Davis-Besse.
...

gov groper was riding illegally

2006-01-10T18:21:00.000-08:00

when he crashed his motorcycle.

Police: Schwarzenegger Riding Illegally
By STEVE LAWRENCE, Associated Press Writer
34 minutes ago

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was riding his motorcycle illegally over the weekend when he collided with a car in his Los Angeles neighborhood, police said Tuesday.

Los Angles Police Lt. Paul Vernon said Schwarzenegger does not have the proper endorsement on his California driver's license to operate a motorcycle.

Vernon said police did not ticket the governor for a violation because they arrived after the accident, which caused Schwarzenegger to suffer a cut on his upper lip that required 15 stitches.

Instead, officers referred their findings to the Los Angeles city attorney's office, which will determine whether the governor should be cited for an infraction. Driving a motorcycle without the proper license can result in fines ranging from $100 to $250 or more.
...

Earlier Tuesday, Schwarzenegger acknowledged that he never bothered to obtain a motorcycle license because he "never thought about it."

"I just never really applied for it," he told reporters during a state budget briefing. "It was just one of those things that I never really did."

Schwarzenegger, a Harley Davidson owner who rides regularly along the California coast, said he had a motorcycle license when he lived in Europe, but never thought about getting another one after he arrived in the United States in 1968.
...

microsoft scrambles to patch hole in windows

2006-01-01T11:59:00.000-08:00

again.

Microsoft scrambles to find major Windows flaw
By David Sheets
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
12/30/2005

Engineers at Microsoft Corp. are trying to find a major flaw in Windows operating systems that threatens users who simply visit certain Web sites.

Most Windows flaws require users to interact with a site, such as when they click on a Web link or open e-mail file attachments. This latest flaw lets attackers insert malicious code into Windows through Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser and Outlook e-mail program without user interaction.
...

The flaw appears in all versions of Windows XP, Windows 2000 and Windows NT, Microsoft said Thursday in a statement.
...

The SANS Internet Storm Center, which monitors threat activity online, says it already has found numerous Web sites that have been developed to take advantage of the Windows flaw.

holiday dui arrests up 69%

2005-12-26T12:06:00.000-08:00

More DUI arrests, fewer traffic deaths this holiday weekend
Bay City News
Sunday, December 25, 2005

The California Highway Patrol is reporting both good news and bad when it comes to DUI totals for the holiday season.

Statewide, the number of people arrested for driving under the influence over the Christmas weekend has increased sharply from the same time period last year, according to preliminary CHP statistics.

Between 6 p.m. Friday and 6 a.m. today, CHP officers have arrested 890 motorists on suspicion of driving under the influence.

Last year, the total number of DUI arrests for the first 36 hours of Christmas weekend was 526.

However, although the CHP's numbers seem to indicate that more motorists are drinking and driving this year, fewer people have died statewide in traffic collisions, according to the preliminary statistics.
...

diesel fumes harm arteries

2005-12-25T23:43:00.000-08:00

diesel needs to be eliminated, yesterday.

Diesel Exhaust Chokes Human Arteries
December 20, 2005 08:41:13 PM PST
By Ed Edelson
HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, Dec. 20 (HealthDay News) -- Fumes belched from 18-wheelers and other diesel-powered vehicles and engines may be especially tough on the human cardiovascular system, new research reveals.

In a carefully controlled study, the arteries of healthy volunteers exposed to diesel exhaust lost part of their ability to expand, while their blood became more likely to clot.

The bad news about the cardiovascular harm that polluted air can inflict doesn't end there.

In a study reported in the Dec. 21 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, New York University researchers found that mice exposed to air as polluted as what floats around New York City showed that the effects can be particularly damaging, especially when coupled with a high-fat diet.
...

A number of real-world studies have linked diesel fume exposure to heart attacks and other cardiovascular problems, Mills noted.

"However, observational studies cannot prove causality," he said. "In human exposure studies, we can control for all potential confounding factors and assess the direct effect of particulates on the cardiovascular system. Our findings provide further support for the observational studies and a plausible mechanism to explain association between particles and acute cardiovascular events."

It's not clear whether the findings apply to gasoline-powered engines, Mills said, because their emissions are very different from those of diesel-powered engines. In particular, diesel exhaust generates 100 times more pollutant particles, he said.
...

lead found in mexican candy

2005-12-23T13:40:00.000-08:00

shameful...

FDA could lower candy lead limit
City health officials say proposal aimed at tainted Mexican sweets lacks enforcement bite
By Kelly Brewington
Sun reporter
Originally published December 23, 2005

In an effort to combat potentially tainted sweets produced in Mexico and sold widely in American groceries, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced a proposal yesterday to reduce the threshold for lead in candy.

But Baltimore health officials - who had planned to push for state legislation to attack the problem after lead-tainted candy was found in the city this fall - said they were concerned the federal rules wouldn't have enough impact.

The federal guideline recommends lowering the limit for lead in candy from 0.5 parts per million to 0.1, a standard pushed by advocates in Baltimore and other places the spicy sweets are sold. The recommendation is a draft guideline and would become final in 2006, after a mandatory 75-day public comment period, said FDA officials.
...

Local health officials said the move is a step in the right direction but criticized it for lacking enforcement powers.

"The FDA is not promising that it will take candy that is higher than the limit off the market," said city Health Commissioner Dr. Joshua M. Sharfstein. "The FDA has broad jurisdiction. It could take things off shelves. They could penalize distributors. They've done it before."
...

The FDA's announcement comes just months after Baltimore health officials and Latino community advocates began encouraging shop owners to stop selling candies that have consistently tested high for lead. Just last week, the Baltimore Health Department said it was working with lawmakers to introduce legislation to toughen regulations to 0.1 parts per million.

Sharfstein said that, in light of the FDA guideline, the agency is still considering a bill that would enforce standards but is rethinking the scope of the legislation.

Health officials decided to take on the issue through legislation after candy sold in Baltimore revealed "levels of concern" after testing. The brands included Lucas Pelucas, a spicy tamarind fruit candy; Baby Lucas, a sweet and sour powder; Super Fresaletas; a strawberry-flavored lollipop; and Super Pinaleta, a lollipop coated with chili powder.
...

bush scores a 10

2005-12-23T13:33:00.000-08:00

... on a scale of 100, that is. imho this story reveals the same Bush mindset that led to the illegal and disastrous war on Iraq... a completely closed-minded, one-sided outlook that inflates evidence that supports their views, while pretending that evidence to the contrary simply doesn't exist.

After tough year, White House cites only successes

body parts stolen and sold

2005-12-23T13:29:00.000-08:00

including that stuffy old dude Alistair Cooke... how bizarre... i guess it just goes to prove that these thieves are no respecters of persons.

NYC Authorities Probe Theft of Body Parts
By TOM HAYS, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 47 minutes ago

NEW YORK - Michael Bruno's life had been uncomplicated: He was an immigrant who worked hard, spoke his mind and succumbed to kidney cancer two years ago at 75.

"Typical Italian cab driver," recalled his son, Vito. "He had an opinion about everything." It's only after death that his story became ghoulish.

Authorities believe his body and those of hundreds of other people ? including famed British broadcaster Alistair Cooke ? were secretly carved up in the back rooms of several funeral parlors citywide to remove human bone, skin and tendons without required permission from their families. Authorities allege the body parts were then sold for a profit.

Worse, health officials fear some of the stolen body parts were diseased, and could infect patients who received them in skin grafts, dental implants or other orthopedic procedures --- a risk concealed by paperwork doctored with forged signatures and false information.

"It's not just disrespectful to my father," said Vito Bruno, who has sued one of the funeral homes. "It's an absolutely hideous crime against other people."

In the Cooke case, authorities confirmed this week that investigators contacted the late broadcaster's family after finding paperwork indicating his bones had been removed and sold by a Fort Lee, N.J., tissue bank, Biomedical Tissue Services, before he was cremated. Cooke, best known as the host of PBS's "Masterpiece Theatre," died from cancer last year at 95 in Manhattan.

The family insists it never signed off on the procedure, and that someone had falsified documents by changing his cause of death to heart attack, and by lowering his age to 85. Harvesting bones from cancer patients violates rules by the
Food and Drug Administration.

A daughter, Susan Cooke Kittredge, said the family was "shocked and saddened" by the news.

"That people in need would have received his body parts, considering his age and the fact he was ill when he died, is appalling to the family, as is that his remains were violated," she said.

The probe ? first reported by the Daily News in October ? has uncovered other gruesome images. In one instance, the corpse of a Queens grandmother that investigators exhumed last month had nearly all the bones removed below the waist and replaced with PVC pipes.

A state grand jury in Brooklyn has been hearing evidence against at least a half dozen funeral homes in the borough and against Biomedical Tissue Services. Authorities allege that they illegally profited by conspiring to sell stolen body parts, and say indictments could be handed up early next year.

The brewing scandal's reach extends far beyond the New York City area.

In the fall, the FDA ordered a recall of products produced by tissue processors in New Jersey, Florida, Georgia and Texas, all customers of Biomedical Tissue Services. Since the announcement, authorities in Canada have determined that about 300 potentially tainted products were imported there, and used for dental surgery on at least two patients.
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pacifist nuns released

2005-12-22T17:10:00.000-08:00

thank you sisters, for your beautiful action.

Nun Who Defaced Silo Released From Prison
BY MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Writer
Thu Dec 22,10:36 AM ET

DANBURY, Conn. - A pacifist nun convicted of defacing a Colorado missile silo in 2002 was released Thursday from federal prison.

Ardeth Platte, 69, was not due to be released until May 31, but a judge gave her credit for time already served, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

Platte, along with sisters Jackie Hudson and Carol Gilbert, were arrested in October 2002 after they allegedly cut a chain link fence surrounding a Minuteman III missile silo in northern Colorado. The nuns then used baby bottles to dispense their own blood in the shape of a cross on the silo.
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bush authorized illegal domestic spying on thousands

2005-12-16T15:03:00.000-08:00

any more proof needed that this administration is dangerously out of control? what will it take before this clown finally gets impeached?

and the final quoted paragraph is a shocker, too. the NYT held the story for "a year". does that mean they could have published it BEFORE the 2004 election, but held back "at the administration's request"? might this story have changed the outcome of the election? and what are they STILL withholding?

Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts
By JAMES RISEN and ERIC LICHTBLAU
Published: December 16, 2005

WASHINGTON, Dec. 15 - Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.

Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible "dirty numbers" linked to Al Qaeda, the officials said. The agency, they said, still seeks warrants to monitor entirely domestic communications.

The previously undisclosed decision to permit some eavesdropping inside the country without court approval was a major shift in American intelligence-gathering practices, particularly for the National Security Agency, whose mission is to spy on communications abroad. As a result, some officials familiar with the continuing operation have questioned whether the surveillance has stretched, if not crossed, constitutional limits on legal searches.

"This is really a sea change," said a former senior official who specializes in national security law. "It's almost a mainstay of this country that the N.S.A. only does foreign searches."

Nearly a dozen current and former officials, who were granted anonymity because of the classified nature of the program, discussed it with reporters for The New York Times because of their concerns about the operation's legality and oversight.

According to those officials and others, reservations about aspects of the program have also been expressed by Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, the West Virginia Democrat who is the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and a judge presiding over a secret court that oversees intelligence matters. Some of the questions about the agency's new powers led the administration to temporarily suspend the operation last year and impose more restrictions, the officials said.

The Bush administration views the operation as necessary so that the agency can move quickly to monitor communications that may disclose threats to the United States, the officials said. Defenders of the program say it has been a critical tool in helping disrupt terrorist plots and prevent attacks inside the United States.

Administration officials are confident that existing safeguards are sufficient to protect the privacy and civil liberties of Americans, the officials say. In some cases, they said, the Justice Department eventually seeks warrants if it wants to expand the eavesdropping to include communications confined within the United States. The officials said the administration had briefed Congressional leaders about the program and notified the judge in charge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the secret Washington court that deals with national security issues.

The White House asked The New York Times not to publish this article, arguing that it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny. After meeting with senior administration officials to hear their concerns, the newspaper delayed publication for a year to conduct additional reporting. Some information that administration officials argued could be useful to terrorists has been omitted.
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DWY on the rise

2005-12-15T14:59:00.000-08:00

Driving While Yakking more pervasive than ever. be very afraid.

More Drivers Than Ever Talk on Cell Phones
By KEN THOMAS, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 6 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - More people than ever are turning their cars into personal phone booths, with a million and a half drivers gabbing on cell phones at any given time. Women and young people are the most common yakkers.

About 10 percent of the people on the road during the day are using cell phones, up from 8 percent in 2004, the government reported Thursday.

Six percent of drivers were holding the phones to their ears, up from 5 percent last year.
...

The NHTSA survey was conducted between June 6 and June 25 at 1,200 road sites across the nation. Trained observers watched vehicles go by and charted what the driver was doing. The ages of drivers are estimates based on their observations.
...

The
National Transportation Safety Board, meanwhile, voted in September to recommend that all states make it illegal for teenagers and new drivers to talk on the phone while driving.

Brian Schaffner, 24, who works for a political consulting firm in Washington, D.C., said his cell phone is "almost a part of me" and admits using it behind the wheel. But he doesn't think it affects his driving.

"I'm probably young and arrogant, thinking that I can't hurt myself, but for the most part I feel perfectly safe using when I drive," Schaffner said.
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stem cell pioneer admitted fraud

2005-12-15T13:50:00.000-08:00

Doc: Stem-Cell Pioneer Admitted Fake Data

By BURT HERMAN, Associated Press Writer
29 minutes ago

SEOUL, South Korea - A doctor who provided human eggs for research by cloning pioneer Hwang Woo-suk said in a broadcast Thursday that the South Korean scientist admitted that most of the stem cells produced for a key research paper were faked.

Roh Sung-il, chairman of the board at Mizmedi Hospital, told KBS television that Hwang had agreed to ask the journal Science to withdraw the paper, published in June to international acclaim. Roh was one of the co-authors of the article that detailed how individual stem cell colonies were created for 11 patients through cloning.

Roh also told MBC television that Hwang had pressured a former scientist at his lab to fake data to make it look like there were 11 stem cell colonies.

Roh said nine of the embryonic stem cell lines Hwang claimed were cloned in the paper were faked, and the authenticity of the other two was unknown.

Roh told MBC he heard from Hwang on Thursday morning that "there were no embryonic stem cells" because all colonies have since died in the lab.

Hwang did not answer his phone and researchers from his lab at Seoul National University could not immediately be reached for comment.
...

University of Pittsburgh researcher Gerald Schatten has already asked that Science remove him as the senior author of the report, citing questions about the paper's accuracy.
...

The work by Hwang, regarded as a world-leading researcher in stem cells, recently has come under a cloud of suspicion. Last month, he publicly apologized after admitting that, despite earlier denials, he used eggs donated by two junior female scientists in his lab ? a violation of international ethics guidelines.
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synthetic bedding linked to infant asthma

2005-12-14T20:15:00.000-08:00

Bedding tied to asthma development in infants

By David Douglas Wed Dec 14, 3:26 PM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - The use of bedding that contains no synthetic materials appears to reduce the risk of developing wheezing in infants, Australian researchers report in the American Journal of Public Health.

"These findings," lead author Dr. Leigh F. Trevillian told Reuters Health, "emphasize the important role of the infant sleeping environment in the development of asthma. They indicate the need for a greater public health effort to ensure optimal infant sleeping environments that will assist in asthma prevention."

Trevillian of Australian National University, Canberra and colleagues came to this conclusion after studying data on 883 children who as infants in 1988 were included in a survey and then took part in an asthma study in 1995.

Based on previous work, the researchers developed a theoretical model of house dust mite exposure according to bedding composition. The least house dust mite hospitable bedding was of natural composition. It contained no synthetic material or -- as is relatively common in Australia -- sheepskin.

The next category was bedding that contained either one type of synthetic material or sheepskin or both. The material associated with the greatest house dust mite exposure was composite bedding containing two or more types of synthetic material with or without sheepskin.
...

At the age of 7, children who had been exposed to composite bedding were more than twice as likely to have recently experience wheezing and night wheezing compared with infants who had natural bedding.
...

SOURCE: American Journal of Public Health, December 2005.

bridge delay cost $81 million

2005-12-08T11:17:00.000-08:00

way to go Arnie, we'll just add this to your $65 million tab for that useless special election. wow, what a cost saver this guy is.

Bay Bridge pause cost $81 million
Foundation project had shut down as design debate raged
Michael Cabanatuan, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, December 8, 2005

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's failed bid to change the design of the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge cost taxpayers and toll-payers $81 million to stop -- and restart -- work on the foundation of the suspension span's single tower, Caltrans announced Wednesday.

A committee overseeing construction of the $6.3 billion project agreed recently to pay the money to joint venture Kiewit-FCI-Manson to cover the costs of the off-and-on project. The anticipated cost of the changes had been built into the total cost of the span when the state Legislature passed a new funding deal for the bridge in July.

Construction, which was halted nearly a year ago, resumed late last month as contractors returned a huge piece of steel equipment to the bay -- the first major step in building the footings for the suspension span.
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iowa phasing out thimerosal

2005-12-07T21:45:00.000-08:00

a move in the right direction, but why wait until 2008?

Vaccine additive banned in Iowa
By Rachelle Treiber
...

Earlier this year, the state became the first in the nation to ban the use of preservatives in childhood vaccines.

In 1999, when it was discovered that immunized children had accidentally been exposed to mercury levels well over federal limits, the American Academy of Pediatrics called for thimerosal to be removed from vaccines as a precaution.

It was eliminated from nearly all vaccines except the one used for the flu.

Since the Iowa ban went in place during January, California has followed suit and more than 30 other states have similar bans under consideration. Illinois is among them.

In August, Gov. Rod Blagojevich approved the Mercury-Free Vaccine Act. As of next year, the percentage of mercury used in vaccines will be limited. As of 2008, no Illinois resident will be vaccinated with a product containing mercury.
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anti-perspirants suspected of causing breast cancer

2005-12-06T00:34:00.000-08:00

maybe so.

The Cancer-Antiperspirant 'Myth'

Dec. 5, 2005

(CBS) If you've checked out the back of your antiperspirant lately, you might have noticed something different: new labels required by the Food and Drug Administration. They point out that antiperspirants are "drugs" containing "aluminum" ingredients ? that's what stops the sweat.

The aluminum is also what concerns some people, including Dr. Kris McGrath.

"I personally feel there is a very strong correlation between the underarm hygiene habits and breast cancer," McGrath tells CBS News correspondent Sharyl Attkisson.

McGrath, an immunologist and instructor at Northwestern University, has been intrigued by a potential breast cancer link since medical school.

It got personal when his wife ? a frequent shaver and antiperspirant user ? got breast cancer.

"She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1987," McGrath says. "She died in 1989."

People who don't believe in a link point to this 2002 study that finds no connection.

But it didn't take into account how often a woman shaved and used antiperspirant, which McGrath considered crucial. So he did his own study of breast cancer patients and found this: The more these women shaved and used antiperspirants, the sooner they got breast cancer.

Is he trying to say all cases of breast cancer could be linked to antiperspirants and shaving?

"Absolutely not," McGrath says. "Breast cancer has existed since Hippocrates. But when you plot the sales of antiperspirant deodorants with the incidence of breast cancer in the United States, they both have grown in almost a parallel fashion."
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