SAN FRANCISCO– On the eighth day of her son’s life, Julia Query welcomed friends and family to celebrate his birth and honor their Jewish heritage. But there was no crying, no scalpel, no blood, no circumcision. Query is among a growing number of American parents refusing circumcision, in which the foreskin is removed from the penis. According to a study by the National Health and Social Life Survey, the U.S. circumcision rate peaked at about 90 percent in the early 1960s but began dropping in the ’70s. By 2004, the most recent year for which government figures were available, about 57 percent of all male newborns delivered in hospitals were circumcised. In some states, the rate is well below 50 percent. Experts say immigration patterns played the biggest role in the decline, which was steepest in Western states with big populations from Asian and Latin American countries where circumcision is uncommon. The trend has also accompanied a change in Americans’ attitudes toward medicine and their bodies. ‘The rates of drug-free labor and breast-feeding all rose during the 1980s, while the initial declines in male circumcision rates began during the 1980s as well,’ said […]
Fairfax County middle school student Hal Beaulieu hopped up from his lunch table one day a few months ago, sat next to his girlfriend and slipped his arm around her shoulder. That landed him a trip to the school office. Among his crimes: hugging. All touching — not only fighting or inappropriate touching — is against the rules at Kilmer Middle School in Vienna. Hand-holding, handshakes and high-fives? Banned. The rule has been conveyed to students this way: ‘NO PHYSICAL CONTACT!!!!!’ School officials say the rule helps keep crowded hallways and lunchrooms safe and orderly, and ensures that all students are comfortable. But Hal, 13, and his parents think the school’s hands-off approach goes too far, and they are lobbying for a change. ‘I think hugging is a good thing,’ said Hal, a seventh-grader, a few days before the end of the school year. ‘I put my arm around her. It was like for 15 seconds. I didn’t think it would be a big deal.’ A Fairfax schools spokesman said there is no countywide ban like the one at Kilmer, but many middle schools and some elementary schools have similar ‘keep your hands to yourself’ […]
A new public opinion poll shows a majority of the American people do not see a danger in China’s economic and military buildup, demonstrating that Beijing’s efforts to influence public opinion in the United States have been successful. The poll, conducted by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and WorldPublicOpinion.org in conjunction with research centers around the world, found that a majority of citizens in eight of 14 countries surveyed (and a plurality in four) expect China to catch up with the United States economically and that they are not worried about it. Less than a third of respondents believe China’s rise will be ‘mostly negative,’ with majorities in most countries anticipating a mixed or positive outcome. However, the poll also shows that a majority or near majority of respondents in most countries do not trust China will act responsibility beyond its borders. Most Asians, for example, favor a continuing U.S. security presence to counter China.
WASHINGTON — Making human-animal embryos for scientific experiments should be allowed because of the benefits to science and medicine, British experts said in a report released for Sunday. Such embryos should never, however, be implanted into either a woman or an animal, said the Academy of Medical Sciences. The combinations would include animal eggs and the nucleus, containing the genetic material, of a human being, or human embryos that carry the genetic material of an animal, the independent advisory body said. A cloning technique called somatic cell nuclear transfer, or SCNT for short, involves removing the nucleus from an egg cell and replacing it with the nucleus of a cell from the animal to be cloned — perhaps a skin cell, for instance. Scientists have tried this using, for example, an egg cell from a cow and a human nucleus. There are no laws against it in either Britain or the United states and the independent Academy said it should remain legal. ‘Provided good laboratory practice is rigorously followed, research involving cytoplasmic hybrids or other inter-species embryos offers no significant safety risks over and above regular cell culture research,’ said Martin Bobrow of Britain’s […]
JERUSALEM — With the two Palestinian territories increasingly isolated from each other by a week of brutal warfare between rival factions, Israel and the United States seem agreed on a policy to treat them as separate entities to support Fatah in the West Bank and squeeze Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The idea is to concentrate Western efforts and money on the occupied West Bank, which Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah faction control, in an effort to make it the shining model of a new Palestine that will somehow bring Gaza, and the radical Islamic group Hamas, to terms. As Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, who arrives in the United States on Sunday to meet with American officials, said, a Fatah government, shorn of Hamas, ‘can be a new opening.’ After the failure of the Palestinian unity government, Mr. Olmert said in an interview with The New York Times, ‘I suggest we look at things in a much more realistic manner and with less self-deceit.’ But like all seemingly elegant solutions in this region, this one has many pitfalls. It is entirely unclear whether Hamas would sit still during such an effort, whether […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
