The latest poll numbers from AP/Ipsos don’t bode well for President Bush. In a poll released Friday, only 36 percent of Americans said they approved of the job Mr. Bush was doing in the White House. This was the lowest level the president’s numbers had reached in an AP/Ipsos poll. Just prior to the 2004 election, Mr. Bush has a 47 percent approval rating. Back in October 2002, his ratings were as high as 64 percent. The war in Iraq seems to be a major problem for the president. Only 35 percent of those polled approved of President Bush’s handling of the war while only 40 percent approved of his handling of foreign policy including the war on terror. Just one year ago, Bush’s foreign policy approval rating was 49 percent. 64 percent of the public approved of his foreign policy rating and his handling of the war on terror in October 2004. Some Republicans are wary since one issue they have used to their advantage in recent elections has been national security. The new poll shows that the public no longer has more faith in Mr. Bush than it does in […]
WASHINGTON — Young Army officers, including growing numbers of captains who leave as soon as their initial commitment is fulfilled, are bailing out of active-duty service at rates that have alarmed senior officers. Last year, more than a third of the West Point Class of 2000 left active duty at the earliest possible moment, after completing the initial five-year obligation. It was the second year in a row of worsening retention numbers, apparently marking the end of a burst of patriotic fervor during which junior officers chose continued military service at unusually high rates. Mirroring the problem among West Pointers, graduates of reserve officer training programs at universities also are increasingly leaving the service at the end of the four-year stint in uniform that follows their commissioning. To entice more to stay, the Army this year is offering new incentives, including a promise of graduate school on Army time and at government expense to newly commissioned officers who agree up front to stay in uniform for three extra years. Other enticements include the choice of an Army job or the pick of a desirable location for a home post in exchange for an extra three years in […]
BAGHDAD — Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has warned that civil war had started in Iraq, where three consecutive days of bombings killed about 100 people, inflaming sectarian tensions. The caution comes as Shi’ite leaders are to meet on Sunday in another attempt to break an impasse over the prime minister, hoping to pave the way for a unity government many see as the only way to avert open civil war. ‘It’s not on the threshold (of civil war). It’s pretty much started. There are Sunnis, Shi’ites, Kurds and those types which come from Asia,’ Mubarak said in an interview aired on Saturday on pan-Arab satellite television channel Al Arabiya. Mubarak said that the large Shi’ite Muslim presence in Arab states were more loyal to Iran than their own countries, echoing accusations made by his fellow Sunnis in Iraq about their country’s Shi’ite leaders. Hours earlier, a car bomb killed at least six Shi’ite pilgrims and wounded 16 in the town of Musayib south of Baghdad, police said, the latest in a wave of attacks that raised fresh fears of full-blown communal conflict. Enraged town residents at the scene of the blast threw stones at U.S. […]
In an experiment that could offer a new pathway to restoring vision in people with inherited retinal degeneration, researchers have engineered cells in the eye to be light sensitive that were not before. Using a harmless virus, they introduced a gene for a light-sensitive protein into ‘inner retinal neurons’ in a strain of mice with photoreceptor deficiency that resembles the defect in such inherited human disorders as retinitis pigmentosa. Unlike the retinal rods and cones that normally function as light-sensing cells in the eye, these retinal neurons are normally not photosensitive. The light-sensitive protein they used, called channelrhodopsin-2 (ChR2), is found in green algae. As reported in the April 6, 2006 issue of Neuron, Zhuo-Hua Pan of Wayne State University School of Medicine and colleagues found that the introduced protein rendered the retinal neurons sensitive to light. What’s more, they found, the protein persisted for long periods in the neurons, and the neurons generated signals that were transmitted to the visual cortex of the animals’ brains. ‘With this strategy, the investigators have made a paradigm shift in the field and opened the possibility of genetically modifying the surviving retinal interneurons to function as a replacement light-sensing receptor,’ wrote […]
The Rev. Charles Morris runs Michigan Interfaith Power and Light, a church-based alternative-energy group. (J. KYLE KEENER/Detroit Free Press) 5 facts about wind generation ¢ Wind machines generate electricity in 30 states. Those with the most wind production are California, Texas, Minnesota, Iowa and Wyoming. ¢ Michigan has three commercial wind turbines that generate 2.6 megawatts of electricity, which is enough to power about 750 homes. Iowa has more than 600 commercial wind turbines, producing enough electricity to power 140,000 homes. ¢ The United States ranks third in the world in wind power capacity behind Germany and Spain. ¢ Wind farms produce enough electricity to meet the needs of more than 600,000 families in the United States. ¢ The largest wind turbine in the world, in Hawaii, stands 20 stories tall and has blades the length of a football field. So you think you know about renewable energy? The Free Press asked Debra Rowe, a professor at Oakland Community College, to come up with questions to see how much we understand about renewable fuels. Rowe, who has an undergraduate degree from Yale University, along with a doctorate in business and a master’s degrees […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
