GREEN BAY, Wis. — On one of the scariest days yet in the five-year battle with terrorists, President Bush prepared to make a speech to reassure the American people. But the White House press corps was 1,000 miles away in Texas. Bush had left his ranch vacation and jetted north for a scheduled closed-door fundraiser. No press plane accompanied him. And so when news broke that Britain had broken up a major terrorist plot, the only ones there to convey the president’s reaction were a handful of local reporters and a few pool journalists who ride in the back of Air Force One. The idea that Bush could travel across the country without a full contingent of reporters, especially in the middle of a war, highlights a major cultural shift in the presidency and the news media. In the four decades since the assassination of John F. Kennedy, presidents traditionally have taken journalists with them wherever they traveled on the theory that when it comes to the most powerful leader on the planet, anything can happen at any time. But increasingly in recent months, Bush has left town without a chartered press plane, often to receptions where […]
Increasing temperatures will transform California, threatening some of its most valuable resources in coming decades. That’s the primary message of a new state publication that summarizes 17 scientific studies examining how global warming is expected to play out in California. ‘The potential impacts of global warming are unmistakable, adding more days of deadly heat, more intense and frequent wildfires, shorter supplies of drinking water and serious public-health risks,’ Linda Adams, the state’s secretary for environmental protection, said yesterday during a news conference at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla. By publishing the report, titled ‘Our Changing Climate: Assessing the Risks to California,’ state officials hope to engage citizens who haven’t followed the steady stream of reports ordered last year by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger when he called for statewide reductions in the emission of greenhouse gases. Worldwide, scientists agree that Earth’s atmosphere and oceans are warming and that human use of fossil fuels for energy is driving the trend. Levels of carbon dioxide – a byproduct of burning gas, oil and coal – are now higher than they’ve been for at least 650,000 years, scientists have reported. One global change that will affect California’s […]
BOSTON — There are a lot more chubby babies than there used to be. That goes for chubby preschoolers, too. During a 22-year observational study, the ranks of overweight children grew by almost 60%, with more than a 70% increase for overweight infants, according to a study published online in Obesity. ‘Rates of overweight are increasing in very young children, even infants, from primarily middle-class families,’ wrote Matthew Gillman, M.D., of Harvard Medical School, and colleagues. This increase may be a particular problem since early childhood sets the stage for later weight problems and their related sequelae, the investigators said. ‘Our observation of a trend of increasing weight among young infants may portend continued increase in childhood and adult obesity,’ they wrote. The study found an overall unadjusted prevalence of overweight rising from 6.3% in 1980 to 10.0% in 2001 for children under the age of six. Currently, as many as 65% of adults in America are overweight and 16% of young people ages six to 19 years old are considered overweight. Dr. Gillman and colleagues looked at height, weight and demographic data from more than 120,000 children under the age of six seen by […]
SAN DIEGO — A report issued Thursday said a number of San Diego County businesses help prove the idea that solving global warming can be good for the bottom line. Officials from the nonprofit Environment California Research & Policy Center, along with San Diego Association of Government representatives, held a news conference at the agency’s San Diego offices to announce the findings of the research group’s six-month study. The report said a study of a dozen of businesses, agencies and institutions across the state showed that companies could help stop global warming and still earn a profit —- mostly by cutting energy use. Some business interests howled and said that it could jeopardize the economy when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said in April that he backed a goal of cutting ‘greenhouse’ gases —- created by the burning of fossil fuels —- by 25 percent by 2020. Global warming refers to the idea that the Earth’s oceans and atmosphere are being harmfully heated up by greenhouse gases emitted naturally and by mankind —- leading to climate change that could have devastating effects such as increased killer storms and rising sea levels. The report cited two examples of […]
WASHINGTON — Despite knowing for years that liquid explosives posed a threat to airline safety, security agencies have made little progress in deploying technology that could help defend against such attacks, security experts say. Since September 2001, the federal government has hired tens of thousands of government screeners and upgraded its metal detectors and X-ray machines. But most of the equipment is still oriented toward preventing a metallic gun or other easily identifiable weapon from being carried aboard; it cannot distinguish shampoo from an explosive. Cathleen A. Berrick, director of the Government Accountability Office’s homeland security and justice division, told a Senate committee in February 2005 that the Transportation Security Administration, part of the Department of Homeland Security, redirected more than half of the $110 million it had for research and development in 2003 to pay for personnel costs of screeners, delaying research in areas including detecting liquid explosives. It has continued to redirect some research and development money, she said Thursday. ‘They’d identified it as a vulnerability, they knew it was there, and they’d taken some steps to address it,” Ms. Berrick said. In 1995, a plot to bomb 12 American jumbo jets over the […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
