(AP) A giant ice shelf has snapped free from an island south of the North Pole, scientists said Thursday, citing climate change as a "major" reason for the event. full text
A Chinese naval guard stands beside a guided missile destroyer at the Ngong Shuen Chau Naval Base in Hong Kong April 30, 2004. Chinese president and commander-in-chief Hu Jintao urged the building of a powerful navy that is prepared "at any time" for military struggle, state media reported on Thursday. REUTERS/Kin Cheung
(AP) Wary of the rising risk of hurricanes, Allstate Corp. has added coastal regions of North and South Carolina, Alabama, Maryland and Virginia to the growing list of areas nationwide where it is cutting back homeowners insurance coverage. The latest move adds to concern by consumer advocates that less competition in those areas will cause rates to jump. The nation's second-largest home and auto insurer (behind State Farm) confirmed Thursday that it is dropping coverage for about 12,000 homeowners in eight counties of South Carolina, 4,000 in 14 counties of North Carolina, and an unspecified number in Alabama. It also will no longer write new homeowners' policies starting in 2007 in 11 coastal counties of Maryland and 19 in Virginia, although existing policies will be renewed. Those decisions continue the company's strategy of minimizing risk in the wake of Katrina and other hurricanes that devastated the Gulf Coast and caused it to lose a record $1.55 billion ...full text "The American Lung Association is one of many leading medical groups citing overwhelming evidence linking microscopic particles to fatal diseases. Tens of thousands of people die every year, from soot-based heart attacks, cancer, strokes" .............Profit versus Life, corporate scientific research funding direction versus Life's evolution and survival requirements, especially in the energy/trouble with physics arena
(CBS) One day last July, a power plant smokestack rained black soot on the farms and homes of Shippingport, Pa., CBS News correspondent Wyatt Andrews reports. The power company, First Energy, said it was a maintenance accident — and, according to local residents, warned them not to eat anything dusted by the soot. The accident, which had the power company power-washing a town, was an unusually severe and visible example of what Americans breathe — in much smaller amounts — every day. And not just from power plants: Trucks, cars and even fires produce microscopic soot particles and chemicals that can damage your lungs. "Particle pollution, soot, kills people," says Janice Nolan with the American Lung Association The American Lung Association is one of many leading medical groups demanding that the Bush administration adopt stricter controls on microscopic soot. These groups cite overwhelming evidence linking microscopic particles to fatal diseases. Tens of thousands of people die "every year, from soot-based heart attacks, cancer, strokes," Nolan says. Despite that evidence, ....full text
(CBS) It takes good lungs to be on a marching band anywhere, but it's a particular challenge in California's San Joaquin Valley, CBS News correspondent John Blackstone reports. "Oh, I would say 20 or 30 kids probably have asthma in the band," says Mike Hipp, Buchanan High's band director. Asthma is common on the football team, too. When the air is particularly bad, coach Mike Vogt takes his players inside to practice. "Football's not a game to be played indoors, but that's a possibility," Vogt says. The air quality has "no doubt" changed the way he coaches. This stretch of farmland and small cities outside Los Angeles has the worst air pollution in the United States. One child in six has asthma — more than three times the national average. "Once in a while, I start to cry because I think I'm going to die," Ryan McVicar says. Both Ryan and his brother Robert have asthma. "It's like something's just punching your throat and you just stop breathing," Ryan explains. "Like you can't get air." Their mother has no doubt the Valley's heavy pollution is to blame. "I know that my kids are having to live in this air and it's only going to get worse if we don't get some help ... full text
Back in April 2002, we began questioning skyrocketing insurance rates, medicine, and drugs, as well as questioning drug advertisement hype: "the gift of life itself, Buy It Now!!!" in small print, "warning - 3000 side effects, some may be lethal, consult your doctor and BUY IT NOW "
The drug maker Eli Lilly has engaged in a decade-long effort to play down the health risks of Zyprexa, its best-selling medication for schizophrenia, according to hundreds of internal Lilly documents and e-mail messages among top company managers. Demise of Democracy, Rise of Corporate Power
began moving last week into Guantánamo’s modern, new detention facility, Camp 6, the military guard commander stood beneath the high, concrete walls of the compound, looking out on a fenced-in athletic yard. also highlighted U.S. concerns -- and the potential gulf between Washington and Asian counterparts -- about subsidized prices and a global race for assets.
(CBS) A bipartisan panel is warning that America's students are falling behind those in even some of the poorest countries, CBS News correspondent Thalia Assuras reports. "I am really worried about where this country is," says ex-Sen. Bill Brock, a former Secretary of Labor. "We've got an information world, we're networked to the rest of the world, it's a global economy and we're not preparing our young people for that world." Students from Asia to Europe outperform Americans on tests. Thirty years ago, the U.S. boasted 30 percent of the world's college students. That figure is now 14 percent. Meanwhile, most other industrialized nations educate their 16-year olds at a college level. Neha Sharma is 16. The daughter of a diplomat from India, she's in an advanced college-level program in Virginia, rare in U.S. public high schools. "I hate to say this, but the education system over here is worse than it is in India," Sharma says. Emerging giants .....full text
Asia's greenhouse gas emissions will treble over the next 25 years, according to a report commissioned by the Asian Development Bank (ADB).
(CBS) Iraq war veteran Chuck Gregg was back home with his family last winter when he got bronchitis. His doctor prescribed Ketek, a relatively new antibiotic, CBS News chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian reports. Five days later, Gregg was in the hospital with liver failure. "They run their battery of tests, and they come back and it's definitely what's called 'drug induced' ....full text
WASHINGTON, Dec. 13, 2006 "permanent members, the world powers, "must accept the special responsibility that comes with their privilege." "The Security Council is not just another stage on which to act out national interests"
OSLO, Dec. 10 — The Bangladeshi banker Muhammad Yunus, who invented the practice of making small, unsecured loans to the poor, warned today that the globalized economy was becoming a dangerous “free-for-all highway.” A complimentory reason why Physics fell to the wayside. A fuller comprehension of the the trouble with physics and why it is not coping with the Survival Requirements of a Civilization is found on the sidebar evolution blog link
awards. One of the most coveted is the Golden Greedy Guts Prize — a banana cream pie in the face — to the year's most ....full text
According to a July poll conducted by Scripps News Service, one-third of Americans think the government either carried out the 9/11 attacks or intentionally allowed them to happen in order to provide a pretext for war in the Middle East. This is at once alarming and unsurprising. ....... full text
FORT GREELY, Alaska, Dec. 4 — Snow fences help keep drifts from piling up on the missile silos. Heat-sensing security devices that monitor the edges of this 800-acre installation are sometimes set off by wayward moose.
BEIJING, Dec. 8 — China’s Communist Party has a new agenda: it is encouraging people to discuss what it means to be a major world power and has largely stopped denying that China intends to become one soon.
(AP) At Jinja pier the rusty red hull of a Lake Victoria freighter sat barely afloat in water just six feet deep — and dropping. .....full text Julia Whitty's phrase 'the truth is, humans can change, and change fast', expresses concisely, through human historical experience, that this period of evolution is now almost entirely under the control of conscious human intent and will, and far less influenced by unconscious instinct, genetic mutation and natural selection as the evolutionary driver.
Dec. 8, 2006 — - A military convoy is making its way through a crowded Baghdad street. Without warning, a blast rings out and the Bradley Fighting Vehicle leading the convoy is destroyed, along with the men and women it contained.
