Each spring, Erdman Palmore celebrates his birthday by completing his own special version of a triathlon. He bicycles his age in miles – this year, that means 76 – then does just as many push-ups and sit-ups. “It is to counteract the assumption,” says the professor emeritus at Duke University, “that growing older means inevitably going downhill” – unless it is on his bicycle. Seniors like Dr. Palmore are helping redefine notions of “getting older.” Forgotten by the media, passed over for promotions, and teased by birthday cards, they have long struggled for dignity in a youth-obsessed society. But increasingly active and independent seniors, and the baby boomers who will follow, are helping to chip away at the ageism that spans Hollywood to Hallmark. Seniors today are healthier, wealthier, and more educated than their predecessors – and their population will double in the next 25 years. Those are the highlights from a US Census Bureau report released Thursday on Americans 65 and older. Among its findings: ¢ Poverty is declining. The proportion of those living in poverty decreased from 35 percent in 1959 to 10 percent in 2003. ¢ Disability is decreasing. The disability […]
DUBLIN, Ireland — The Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, rocked for a decade by sex scandals, on Wednesday made its biggest admission yet: 102 of its Dublin priests past and present, or 3.6 percent of the total, are suspected of abusing children. The disclosure comes a week before the government convenes a probe into how church and state authorities conspired, by negligence and design, to cover up decades of child abuse within the Dublin priesthood. “It’s very frightening for me to see that in some of these cases, so many children were abused. It’s very hard to weigh that up against anything,” said Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, a Vatican diplomat assigned to Dublin in 2003 to address the problem in Ireland’s largest Catholic congregation. Since his appointment, the archdiocese — home to more than 1 million Catholics — has been going over the personnel records of more than 2,800 priests who have worked in Dublin since 1940. The conclusion: 102 are suspected of abusing children, 32 have been sued, and eight have been convicted of criminal offenses. The archdiocese already has paid $7 million, including $2 million in both sides’ legal bills. Martin says the […]
The Treasury Department has started drawing from the civil service pension fund to avoid hitting the $8.2 trillion national debt limit. The move to tap the pension fund follows last month’s decision to suspend investments in a retirement savings plan held by government employees. In a letter to Congress this week, Treasury Secretary John W. Snow said he would rely on the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund to avoid bumping up against the statutory debt limit. He said the Treasury is suspending investments and will redeem a portion of the money credited to the fund. Once Congress raises the debt limit, the Treasury will “restore all due interest and principal” to the pension fund as soon as possible, Snow said. He made a similar promise when the Treasury announced that reinvestment of some assets in the Thrift Savings Plan’s government securities fund, or G Fund, had been suspended. The civil service trust fund will provide the Treasury with several billion dollars for extra borrowing. The fund had an estimated balance of about $655 billion at the start of the year, but only a small portion of that is available to the Treasury because of the statutes […]
GENEVA — The lethal strain of bird flu poses a greater challenge to the world than any infectious disease, including AIDS, and has cost 300 million farmers over $10 billion in its spread through poultry around the world, the World Health Organisation said yesterday. Scientists also are increasingly worried that the H5N1 strain could mutate into a form easily passed between humans, triggering a global pandemic. It already is unprecedented as an animal illness in its rapid expansion. Since February, the virus has spread to birds in 17 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East, said the WHO’s Dr Margaret Chan, citing UN Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates of the toll on farmers. “Concern has mounted progressively, and events in recent weeks justify that concern,” Dr Chan, who is leading WHO’s efforts against bird flu, told a meeting in Geneva on global efforts to prepare for the possibility of the flu mutating into a form easily transmitted among humans. In Austria, state authorities said Monday that three cats have tested positive for the deadly strain of bird flu in the country’s first reported case of the disease spreading to an animal other […]
A nuclear scientist at Purdue said yesterday that he would cooperate with the university’s review of his fusion research. “From a technical point, we stand by our data,” said the scientist, Rusi P. Taleyarkhan, a professor of nuclear engineering. In 2002, scientists led by Dr. Taleyarkhan, who was then at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, announced that they had achieved fusion, the melding of hydrogen atoms to produce light and energy, in a small tabletop device by blasting a jar of solvent with strong ultrasound vibrations. Scientists who have tried to reproduce the experiment say they have not seen any signs of fusion. The journal Nature reported on its Web site yesterday that several faculty members at Purdue, including Lefteri H. Tsoukalas, the head of the School of Nuclear Engineering who hired Dr. Taleyarkhan in 2003, now doubt the finding. According to the article, Dr. Taleyarkhan had not shared raw data from experimental runs that he said had successfully produced fusion, had argued against the publication of negative results by other professors who had conducted similar experiments and had removed equipment from a shared laboratory, impeding colleagues’ work. Dr. Taleyarkhan said that he saw […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
