The scenes almost seem lifted from a different war: On a scorching afternoon in Ur, a neighborhood in northeast Baghdad, members of the Army’s 172nd Stryker Brigade are on a charm offensive. The soldiers spent 12 months in the restive city of Mosul, before having their tour in Iraq extended to help in the U.S.’s campaign to pacify Baghdad. The unit’s experience shows. They are alert but relaxed, carrying themselves with a gentle posture, weapons down, waving to the locals, talking with them. Kids hold hands with the Americans; an Iraqi mother hands a soldier her baby to hold. Locals invite U.S. officers in to sit and have glasses upon glasses of tea, orange Fanta, Pepsi and Arabic coffee. They don’t go into a house without a few Iraqi soldiers who can better gauge if someone looks suspicious. Walking out of one Iraqi home, Lieut. Colonel John Norris, commander of the Stryker 4th Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment Tomahawks, enjoys a moment of guarded optimism. ‘Days like this you think, wow, they can really do it. If they can just stop the killing.’ It’s the glimmers of hope that make the realities in Iraq so heartbreaking. Residents of Ur say […]
The young woman went to doctors to have them probe her brain, to root out where her seizures came from. But unexpectedly, their investigations and the procedure they performed led her to experience the creepy illusion of a person standing behind her, where nobody was actually present. The patient described the illusory person as young and of indeterminate sex, a ‘shadow’ who did not speak or move. ‘He is behind me, almost at my body, but I do not feel it,’ she reported. When the patient sat and embraced her knees with her arms, she noted the ‘man’ was now also sitting and clasping her in his arms, which she described as unpleasant. When asked to read a card in her right hand, she noted the shadow tried to interfere, saying, ‘he wants to take the card’ and ‘he doesn’t want me to read.’ Researchers said today that what they learned from this woman, who is not named in their scientific paper, could help shed light on psychiatric effects, such as feelings of alien control, paranoia and persecution. Cognitive neuroscientist Olaf Blanke at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne in Switzerland and his colleagues […]
WASHINGTON — A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks. The classified National Intelligence Estimate attributes a more direct role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee, according to several officials in Washington involved in preparing the assessment or who have read the final document. The intelligence estimate, completed in April, is the first formal appraisal of global terrorism by United States intelligence agencies since the Iraq war began, and represents a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside government. Titled ‘Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States,” it asserts that Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has metastasized and spread across the globe. An opening section of the report, ‘Indicators of the Spread of the Global Jihadist Movement,’ cites the Iraq war as a reason for the diffusion of jihad ideology. The report ‘says that the […]
SAN FRANCISCO — The worst forms of the killer tuberculosis bug have been gaining ground in the United States, alarming public health officials over imported drug-resistant strains of a disease that is mostly under control in this country. Although the number of drug-resistant TB cases in the U.S. is small compared to developing nations, health officials here warn that visitors from other countries who are unaware of their infections are bringing over the deadliest mutations. Often those with drug-resistant strains stop taking their medicine when they feel better but aren’t cured. That’s what happened with Pich Chhieng, 61, a teacher who was infected in his native Cambodia and carried it with him to this country. He took medication for eight months but abruptly stopped because he ran out of money and was feeling much better. He didn’t know until he was hospitalized while visiting family in Los Angeles that by neglecting his treatment he had allowed the disease to mutate, and the drug-resistant bacteria had overwhelmed his lungs. ‘I knew it wasn’t cured yet, but I thought it wasn’t that strong,” said Chhieng, who has been forced to stay in California until he is cured. […]
Is checking nutrition information on food labels like reading Japanese or Greek? Several surveys now show that most people claim to check nutrition labels when shopping, but may not use that information in making food purchases. Many shoppers don’t know how to interpret the data on labels, or how to use it to create an overall healthy diet. In a 2003 survey by the International Food Information Council Foundation (IFIC), 83 percent of people reported that they always or sometimes looked at ingredient or nutrition information. According to a 2004 survey by the Food Marketing Institute, a similar 83 percent said that they always or sometimes checked the Nutrition Facts panel when buying a food item for the first time. In a 2006 Associated Press poll, nearly 80 percent claimed to check food labels. In the IFIC survey, people most often noted considering calorie and total fat content, followed by sodium, saturated fat, sugar, cholesterol and carbohydrates. Many consumers reported they were ‘aware’ of the information on specific nutrients yet a far smaller percentage stated they used that information to decide about a purchase. Likewise, in the AP poll, 44 percent said that after reading the label they […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
