WASHINGTON — President Bush has transferred 14 key terrorist leaders from secret CIA custody to the U.S. military-run prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to be prepared for eventual trials, a senior administration official said Wednesday. The high-value suspected terrorists include Khalid Sheik Mohammed, believed to be the No. 3 al-Qaida leader before he was captured in Pakistan in 2003; Ramzi Binalshibh, an alleged would-be Sept. 11, hijacker; and Abu Zubaydah, who was believed to be a link between Osama bin Laden and many al-Qaida cells before he was also captured in Pakistan, in March 2002. Bush revealed the move in a speech from the White House, with families of those killed in the 2001 attacks making up part of the audience. The announcement, which the White House touted beforehand, comes as Bush has sought with a series of speeches to sharpen the focus on national security two months before high-stakes congressional elections. Speaking at the White House, the president said that the country was still under threat from terrorists. ‘They’re still trying to strike America and still trying to kill our people,’ Bush said. The U.S. must be able to ‘detain, question and, when appropriate, prosecute […]
Scientists say a gut hormone could explain why high protein diets can aid weight loss. PYY is released when a person eats protein-rich foods and sends signals to the brain indicating fullness. The Medical Research Council team at University College London believe their findings could help tackle obesity. But dieticians said much more work was needed before people could be advised to make long-term changes to their eating habits. It’s not a diet that you would go on for a few months. You would go on it for life Lead researcher Dr Rachel Batterham Many popular diets, including the Atkins, employ high protein foods. Although there has been evidence to suggest high protein diets are effective in achieving and maintaining weight loss, the reasons for this have been unclear. Although PYY was discovered more than 20 years ago, its role is still debated. Dr Rachel Batterham and colleagues have shown that low levels of PYY can result in obesity. Dietary control High protein diets lead to highest PYY levels in the body and the greatest curb in hunger in both obese and normal weight people. Overall, however, the PYY […]
BARCELONA, Spain — It’s been five years since drug-eluting stents — tiny, drug-coated coils that prevent unwanted cell growth in the heart’s arteries — became the darlings of interventional cardiologists with the use of the $3,000 devices implanted into 800,000 chests a year in the United States. But, now, a stunning series of reports at the World Congress of Cardiology in Barcelona, Spain, appears to have turned those little darlings into the ‘black sheep’ of the family. Controversial reports indicate that compared to bare metal stents, patients implanted with the newer, drug-eluting stents have up to a 38-percent greater risk of death three years following their procedures. ‘This is madness,’ said Salim Yusuf, professor of medicine at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, a longtime critic of overuse of the angioplasty and stenting. ‘We have been chasing our tails trying to fix one problem after another. We have lost our clinical judgment. We have let the cowboys decide who gets these devices.’ When angioplasty was first developed 30 years ago, doctors were enraptured by the technique that allowed for relief of angina — chest pain — without requiring open-heart surgery. In angioplasty, an incision is made […]
CHICAGO — Lactose-intolerant children should not avoid dairy products but consume as much as they can tolerate, according to a report issued today by the American Academy of Pediatrics. It is better for children to suffer the intestinal symptoms of lactose intolerance from time to time than to not get enough dietary calcium, said Melvin B. Heyman, M.D., M.P.H, of the University of California San Francisco, the report’s principal author who wrote for the academy’s committee on nutrition. The report strengthened previous academy recommendations on lactose intolerance and dairy consumption, which had said that milk products should ‘not be discouraged.’ The new recommendations go much further by saying that milk products should be ‘pushed to the point of tolerance,’ Dr. Heyman said in an interview. Although the academy has never recommended that lactose-intolerant kids should avoid milk products, there is a perception among pediatricians that this is a correct course of action, Dr. Heyman said. Doctors often suggest milk avoidance to control intestinal symptoms, he added. ‘Treatment of lactose intolerance by elimination of milk and other dairy products is not usually necessary given newer approaches to lactose intolerance, including the use of partially digested products (such […]
FUKUOKA, Japan-Once outside of Tokyo, a raucous anomaly within Japan, one quickly gains the sense that the Land of the Rising Sun is also the land of the small, local farm. Here in Fukuoka, Japan’s seventh largest city, acres upon acres of tranquil rice fields and farms are tucked between houses and temples in the shadows of skyscrapers no more than ten miles away. In a climate roughly similar to coastal Virginia’s, family farms grow fruit and vegetables nearly year-round to feed this hungry city of 1.3 million. In the suburbs, where the local farms are more abundant, consumers often will have vegetables with dinner that were picked that morning. In supermarkets in the heart of Fukuoka City, it is not uncommon to have vegetables harvested the day before. Fresh fetish Bite into a tomato or strawberry here, and the impact of this freshness is readily apparent. Food is so flavorful that it hardly needs preparation. Even children eat their vegetables, including notoriously nasty ones like spinach, okra, peas and beans. Bad Medicine Bad Medicine appears each Tuesday on LiveScience. Other naturally bad ideas: The Japanese have a term […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
