America has told Britain that it can ‘kidnap’ British citizens if they are wanted for crimes in the United States. A senior lawyer for the American government has told the Court of Appeal in London that kidnapping foreign citizens is permissible under American law because the US Supreme Court has sanctioned it. The admission will alarm the British business community after the case of the so-called NatWest Three, bankers who were extradited to America on fraud charges. More than a dozen other British executives, including senior managers at British Airways and BAE Systems, are under investigation by the US authorities and could face criminal charges in America. Until now it was commonly assumed that US law permitted kidnapping only in the ‘extraordinary rendition’ of terrorist suspects. The American government has for the first time made it clear in a British court that the law applies to anyone, British or otherwise, suspected of a crime by Washington. Legal experts confirmed this weekend that America viewed extradition as just one way of getting foreign suspects back to face trial. Rendition, or kidnapping, dates back to 19th-century bounty hunting and Washington believes it is still legitimate. The […]
The United States is at war in the Middle East and Central Asia, the economy is writhing like a snake with a broken back, oil prices are relentlessly climbing toward $100 a barrel and an increasing number of Americans just can’t afford to be sick with anything that won’t be treated with aspirin and bed rest. So, when CNN brought the Republican presidential candidates together this week for what is loosely termed a ‘debate,’ what did the country get but a discussion of immigration, Biblical inerrancy and the propriety of flying the Confederate flag? In fact, this most recent debacle masquerading as a presidential debate raises serious questions about whether CNN is ethically or professionally suitable to play the political role the Democratic and Republican parties recently have conceded it. Selecting a president is, more than ever, a life and death business, and a news organization that consciously injects itself into the process, as CNN did by hosting Wednesday’s debate, incurs a special responsibility to conduct itself in a dispassionate and, most of all, disinterested fashion. When one considers CNN’s performance, however, the adjectives that leap to mind are corrupt and incompetent. Corruption is a strong […]
Japanese researchers who devised a method for turning human skin cells into cells that closely resemble embryonic stem cells have modified their formula so that it no longer involves the cancer-causing gene c-Myc. The new method is less efficient, but it does produce induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells, Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University and colleagues reported Friday in Nature Biotechnology. Researchers injected the cells into 26 mice; none of the animals died of tumors. By contrast, six of the 37 mice injected with iPS cells derived with c-Myc succumbed to tumors during the study. ‘Teen galaxies’ are discovered Young galaxies, so faint that scientists struggled to prove they were there, have been discovered by aiming two of the world’s most powerful telescopes at a single patch of sky for nearly 100 hours. An international research team has identified 27 pre-galactic fragments, ‘teenager galaxies,’ which they hope will help astronomers understand how our own Milky Way reached adulthood. The telescopes allowed scientists to see back 11 billion years or more, to 2 billion years after the Big Bang. The clusters make a compelling case for the theory that galaxies formed bit by bit instead […]
Global warming is happening at a far faster rate than the authoritative Stern Review on climate change suggested, its author, Sir Nicholas Stern said last night. He set out an action plan for the world’s politicians who meet at a climate summit in Bali next week. The Stern Review of the economics of global warming was, Sir Nicholas said, excessively conservative about factoring in a number of scientific hypotheses which growing evidence now suggests are serious factors in speeding global warming. ‘The evidence on the seriousness of the risks from inaction or delayed action is now overwhelming. We risk damages on a scale larger than the two world wars of the last century,’ he said. ‘If I was doing it again I’d portray the risks as bigger,’ he said, taking questions at Manchester University after giving the Royal Economic Society lecture. He said his review may have under-estimated the costs involved in combating climate change. He set out six points for Bali. Politicians must approve: * 80 per cent reductions in global emissions by 2050; * Better carbon-trading system; * Major reform of Kyoto’s Clean Development Mechanism; * Anti-deforestation campaign; * Rapid […]
No one is happier than I am about the latest development in stem-cell research. Scientists in Japan and Wisconsin have independently figured out how to turn ordinary human-skin cells into something like pluripotent stem cells. These are the cells that have caused so much excitement in recent years because they are like a biological gift certificate that can be turned into other kinds of cells as needed. These cells have also produced much controversy because they are derived from human embryos. I have the disease–Parkinson’s–for which stem cells hold the most immediate promise. The hope is that they can be turned into the type of brain cells that produce dopamine, the missing ingredient in Parkinson’s patients. The stem-cell announcement also brought happiness to many politicians, especially Republicans. It filled them with the hope that the whole messy issue could go away. If stem cells, or something like them, can be obtained without the use of embryos, that eliminates the supposed ethical problem that led President George W. Bush to ban almost all federal financing of embryonic-stem-cell research in 2001. The result has been a severe reduction in embryonic-stem-cell research. The issue has been agony for many Republicans, torn between […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
