A series of polls taken over the last few weeks of August show that support for the war in Iraq among Americans is at an all-time low. Almost two-thirds of Americans in each of three major polls say that they oppose the war, the highest totals since pollsters starting asking Americans the question three years ago. Many of the polls were conducted in advance of the fifth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks on Washington and New York. A new Associated Press/Ipsos poll that surveyed the country, and more specifically residents of Washington and New York, shows that many feel the cost in blood and money in Iraq may already be too high and that Osama bin Laden will never be found. The poll also showed that 60 percent of Americans believe that the war in Iraq has increased the chances of a terrorist attack in the US. ‘I think there’s a fatigue about the price of doing these activities,’ said Robert Blendon, a specialist in public opinion at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. ‘There’s also a concern about the competency of how well we’re doing them.’ Some of the divisions are from political differences. For […]
SULAIMANIYA, Iraq – Along with a Ferris wheel and ice cream stands, the park at the heart of this Kurdish city has a monument listing the names of dozens of Kurds killed in a torture compound here by Saddam Hussein’s intelligence officers. Yet, there was Sabah Abdul Rahman, a former intelligence officer, strolling just yards from the monument with his family on a recent evening. Driven from Tikrit, Mr. Hussein’s hometown, by violence and their resentment of the American military, the family had arrived here that very day and found a $30-a-night apartment. ‘This is the only safe place in all of Iraq,’ said Mr. Abdul Rahman, himself a Sunni Arab, as children scampered around him. ‘There’s terrorism elsewhere and the presence of the Americans.’ With sectarian violence boiling over in much of Iraq, tens of thousands of Arab families are on the move, searching for a safe place to live. Surprisingly, given the decades of brutal Sunni Arab rule over the Kurdish minority and the continuing ethnic tensions, many like Mr. Abdul Rahman are settling in the secure provinces of Iraqi Kurdistan, run virtually as a separate country by the regional government. The influx […]
The world’s top climate scientists have cut their worst-case forecast for global warming over the next 100 years. A draft report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, obtained exclusively by The Weekend Australian, offers a more certain projection of climate change than the body’s forecasts five years ago. For the first time, scientists are confident enough to project a 3C rise on the average global daily temperature by the end of this century if no action is taken to cut greenhouse gas emissions. The Draft Fourth Assessment Report says the temperature increase could be contained to 2C by 2100 if greenhouse gas emissions are held at current levels. In 2001, the scientists predicted temperature rises of between 1.4C and 5.8C on current levels by 2100, but better science has led them to adjust this to a narrower band of between 2C and 4.5C. The new projections put paid to some of the more alarmist scenarios raised by previous modelling, which have suggested that sea levels could rise by almost 1m over the same period. The report projects a rise in sea levels by century’s end of between 14cm and 43cm, with further rises […]
Last year, the number of personal bankruptcies ballooned to two million as people rushed to beat last deadline for a new law that made it harder and more expensive for consumers to declare themselves broke. The increase was followed by a slump, with the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts reporting this week that personal bankruptcies for the year ending June 30 fell to 1.45 million-the lowest level in five years. Does that mean Americans are in better financial shape? Not quite, according to bankruptcy expert Elizabeth Warren, a professor of law at Harvard University and co-author (with her daughter) of ‘The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke’ (Basic Books; September 2003) and ‘All Your Worth: The Ultimate Lifetime Money Plan’ (Free Press; March 2005.) NEWSWEEK’s Karen Springen spoke with Warren about why she thinks the current legislation helps lenders at the expense of ordinary Americans and how the nation can get out of a debilitating cycle of debt. Excerpts: NEWSWEEK: In 2005, you testified in Congress against the new bankruptcy law. Why do you think it passed anyway? Elizabeth Warren: This is one of those times when the imbalance in lobbying […]
The risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease was dramatically reduced for older people who drank fruit or vegetable juices regularly in a 10-year study, researchers report. The incidence of Alzheimer’s was 76 percent lower for those who drank juice three or more times a week than for those who drank juice less than once a week. It was 16 percent lower for those drinking juice once or twice a week, according to the report. It’s not the general kind of antioxidants in fruit juices that produce the benefit, said Dr. Qi Dai, assistant professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and lead author of the report. Rather, he attributed the effect to polyphenols, a particularly strong antioxidant. ‘That is why we chose to look at fruit and vegetable juice,’ Dai said. ‘They [polyphenols] are found in the outer sections of fruits and vegetables, only in the peel or skin. When you process the whole fruit, they go into the juice.’ Studies of the biochemistry of Alzheimer’s disease have focused on deposits of beta-amyloid proteins that form in the brain and the potential for antioxidants in the diet to prevent those deposits, Dai said. But studies […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
