WASHINGTON — Vice President Dick Cheney on Friday vigorously defended a secret program that examines banking records of Americans and others in a vast international database, and harshly criticized the news media for disclosing an operation he said was legal and ‘absolutely essential’ to fighting terrorism. ‘What I find most disturbing about these stories is the fact that some of the news media take it upon themselves to disclose vital national security programs, thereby making it more difficult for us to prevent future attacks against the American people,’ Mr. Cheney said, in impromptu remarks at a fund-raising luncheon for a Republican Congressional candidate in Chicago. ‘That offends me.’ The financial tracking program was disclosed Thursday by The New York Times and other news organizations. American officials had expressed concerns that the Brussels banking consortium that provides access to the database might withdraw from the program if its role were disclosed, particularly in light of anti-American sentiment in some parts of Europe. But the consortium, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or Swift, published a statement on its Web site on Friday, saying its executives ‘have done their utmost to get the right balance in fulfilling their […]
The recent family cluster of H5N1 avian influenza cases in Indonesia marks the first time laboratory tests confirmed human-to-human transmission, the World Health Organization (WHO) told reporters today. According to news reports, WHO officials said the virus mutated slightly when it infected a 10-year-old boy, and he passed the altered virus on to his father. Detection of the altered strain in both the boy and his father was evidence of direct transmission. The mutation did not make the virus more transmissible, and the boy’s father, who died of the illness, did not pass it on to anyone else, WHO officials were quoted as saying. ‘We’ve never really had a fingerprint to confirm human-to-human transmission like we had here,’ said WHO spokesman Dick Thompson, as reported by Agence France-Presse (AFP) today. Human-to-human transmission has been suspected in a number of previous family case clusters but has never been confirmed by lab tests. Previously, either there were no samples available to test, or the virus in the patients was the same as in local poultry, according to an International Herald Tribune report today. The family cluster last month in North Sumatra involved seven confirmed cases, six of […]
The vanishing rate is scarcely believable. Well over 200 British insect species have become extinct in the past 50 years, while some counties are seeing a species of wildflower disappear nearly every year. Yet the astonishing scale of decline in Britain’s insects and plants, now becoming clear to specialists, is not yet remotely appreciated by the British public or the British Government. It is a decline that is unrelenting. Only yesterday came news that the stunning and very rare scarlet malachite beetle pictured on our front page – a priority species for conservation action- has suffered a massive fall in numbers at its main site in Essex, and may be heading for oblivion. For unknown reasons, in the past three years its population has shrunk by more than 75 per cent in the wildflower meadows where it lives – which are themselves gravely threatened. Today The Independent highlights the massive plunge in numbers of British insects and plants – two sectors which between them account for more than 95 per cent of our wildlife, yet which have lagged far behind birds and mammals, the so-called ‘charismatic megafauna’, in public support. While creatures such as golden eagles […]
An influential and controversial paper asserting that recent warming in the Northern Hemisphere was probably unrivaled for 1,000 years was endorsed on Thursday by a panel convened by the nation’s pre-eminent scientific body. The panel said that a statistical method used in the 1999 study was not the best and that some uncertainties in the work ‘have been underestimated,’ and particularly challenged the authors’ conclusion that the 1990s were the warmest decade in a millennium. But in a 155-page report, the 12-member panel convened by the National Academies said ‘an array of evidence’ supported the main thrust of the paper. Disputes over details, it said, reflected the normal intellectual clash that takes place as science tests new approaches to old questions. The study, led by Michael Mann, a climatologist at Pennsylvania State University, was the first to estimate widespread climate trends by stitching together a grab bag of evidence, including variations in ancient tree rings and temperatures measured in deep holes in the earth. It has been repeatedly attacked by Republican lawmakers and some industry-financed groups as built on cherry-picked data meant to create an alarming view of recent warming and play down past natural warm […]
Global warming accounted for around half of the extra hurricane-fueling warmth in the waters of the tropical North Atlantic in 2005, while natural cycles were only a minor factor, according to a new analysis by Kevin Trenberth and Dennis Shea of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). The study will appear in the June 27 issue of Geophysical Research Letters, published by the American Geophysical Union. ‘The global warming influence provides a new background level that increases the risk of future enhancements in hurricane activity,’ Trenberth says. The research was supported by the National Science Foundation, NCAR’s primary sponsor. The study contradicts recent claims that natural cycles are responsible for the upturn in Atlantic hurricane activity since 1995. It also adds support to the premise that hurricane seasons will become more active as global temperatures rise. Last year produced a record 28 tropical storms and hurricanes in the Atlantic. Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma all reached Category 5 strength. Trenberth and Shea’s research focuses on an increase in ocean temperatures. During much of last year’s hurricane season, sea-surface temperatures across the tropical Atlantic between 10 and 20 degrees north, which is where many Atlantic hurricanes originate, […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
