Disbelieving laughter was the early reaction when a senior official told hundreds of junior U.S. diplomats gathered for an emergency State Department meeting yesterday that their country needed them to spend the summer in New Orleans and Portsmouth, N.H. Smiles quickly faded as Patrick Kennedy, the department’s director of management policy, assured them he was serious. They were all being placed on passport duty, detailed to help reduce a half-million backlog in issuing travel documents that has left many Americans with ruined overseas travel plans this summer, he told them. New passport regulations this year have led to an overwhelming demand for passports, extending the normal six-week turnaround time to many months. ‘We are mobilizing the State Department’ to fulfill a responsibility it has held since 1789, Kennedy said. More specifically, the State Department is mobilizing about 300 junior officials without the clout to say no. They include all the members of the prestigious Presidential Management Fellows program, the department’s main entry portal for top-flight recruits with graduate degrees and leadership potential. Participation in the two-year program almost guarantees a diplomatic career. New hires in a separate career-entry program were also informed that they have been dragooned […]
Hamas attempts to gain control of the Temple Mount and recruit new Israeli-Arab operatives in east Jerusalem have been foiled by the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), a senior security official announced on Monday. According to the Shin Bet, Hamas, over the past few years, has invested millions of shekels in Jerusalem charities and religious institutions, as well as in construction on the Temple Mount, in an effort to bolster its presence and standing in the capital. The official said that Hamas recently paid to enlarge a library and several prayer halls in Solomon’s Stables, as well as for the renovation of a public restroom facility on the disputed holy site. ‘Their goal is to gain full control over the Temple Mount,’ a high-ranking Shin Bet official said Monday. Hamas, he said, has also tried to infiltrate its members into the Temple Mount as part of the maintenance and religious staff who care for the site and preach, give tours and teach Koran classes there. Hamas, the official said, had taken advantage of financial troubles in the Jordanian Wakf, which is responsible for the holy site, to bolster its presence there. The wakf has been suffering […]
ASSALOUYEH, Iran — The presidents of Iran and Venezuela launched construction of a joint petrochemical plant on Monday, strengthening an ‘axis of unity’ between two oil-rich nations staunchly opposed to the United States. Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who both often rail against Washington, also signed a series of other deals to expand economic cooperation, ranging from setting up a dairy factory in Venezuela to forming an oil company. ‘The two countries will united defeat the imperialism of North America,’ a beaming Chavez told a news conference during an official visit to the Islamic Republic, which the United States has labeled part of an ‘axis of evil’. ‘When I come to Iran Washington gets upset,’ he said. The two presidents — whose countries are members of the OPEC oil producing cartel — earlier attended the ceremony to start building a methanol facility with an annual capacity of 1.65 million tons on the Islamic Republic’s Gulf coast. ‘Iran and Venezuela — the axis of unity,’ read one of many official posters at the site near the port town of Assalouyeh, showing the two leaders hugging each other and shaking hands. Ahmadinejad — who […]
technovelgy Do you have a really bad memory, or past heartache, that you would prefer to forget? Researchers at Harvard and McGill University (in Montreal) are working on an amnesia drug that blocks or deletes bad memories. The technique seems to allow psychiatrists to disrupt the biochemical pathways that allow a memory to be recalled. In a new study, published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research, the drug propranolol is used along with therapy to ‘dampen’ memories of trauma victims. They treated 19 accident or rape victims for ten days, during which the patients were asked to describe their memories of the traumatic event that had happened 10 years earlier. Some patients were given the drug, which is also used to treat amnesia, while others were given a placebo. A week later, they found that patients given the drug showed fewer signs of stress when recalling their trauma. Similar research led by Professor Joseph LeDoux has been carried out at New York University on rats; scientists were able to remove a specific memory from the brains of rats while leaving the rest of the animals’ memories intact. An amnesia drug called U0126 was administered. […]
In the latest food scare to hit the United States consumers are being warned not to eat a popular snack food because of contamination from Salmonella. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has warned consumers that the Veggie Booty flavor of snack food, marketed by Robert’s American Gourmet, is possibly contaminated with a Salmonella bacteria that causes gastrointestinal illness, and to throw the product away. Robert’s American Gourmet brand Veggie Booty comes in a flexible plastic foil bag in four ounce, one ounce, and one-half ounce packages; the FDA says no other flavors or varieties of snack food marketed by the company are associated with Salmonella Wandsworth contamination. Veggie Booty is a snack popular with children and the FDA is warning parents to check their children and seek medical care if they observe signs of illness and to report it immediately to state or local health authorities. Those who have recently eaten Veggie Booty and who have experienced any of the following symptoms need to contact a doctor or other health care provider immediately:- diarrhea which may be bloody, accompanied by abdominal cramps and fever. Salmonellosis is a bacterial infection that can cause diarrhea, fever […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
