The Senate yesterday approved a sweeping measure that would expand the government’s clandestine surveillance powers, delivering a key victory to the White House by approving immunity from lawsuits for telecommunications companies that cooperated with intelligence agencies in domestic spying after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. On a 68 to 29 vote, the Senate approved the reauthorization of a law that would give the government greater powers to eavesdrop in terrorism and intelligence cases without obtaining warrants from a secret court. The Senate’s action, days before a temporary surveillance law expires Friday, sets up a clash with House Democrats, who have previously approved legislation that does not contain immunity for the telecommunications industry. The chambers have been locked in a standoff over the immunity provision since the House vote Nov. 15, with President Bush demanding the protection for the industry. White House spokesman Tony Fratto said the president ‘will not sign another extension’ of the temporary law, a decision that could force congressional leaders to reconcile their differences this week. ‘The House is risking national security by delaying action,’ Fratto said. ‘It’s increasingly clear Congress will not act until it has to, and a second extension will […]
Americans are spending more money than ever to treat spine problems, but their backs are not getting any better. Those are the findings of a report in The Journal of the American Medical Association, which found that spending on spine treatments in the United States totaled nearly $86 billion in 2005, a rise of 65 percent from 1997, after adjusting for inflation. Even so, the proportion of people with impaired function because of spine problems increased during the period, even after controlling for an aging population. ‘You’d think if you’re putting a lot of money into a problem, you’d see some improvements in health status,’ said Brook I. Martin, research scientist at the Department of Orthopedics and Sports Medicine at the University of Washington and lead author on the study, published Wednesday. ‘We’re putting a lot of money into this problem, and it’s a big investment in health care expenditures, but we’re not seeing health status commensurate with those investments.’ The report is the latest to suggest that the nation is losing its battle against back pain, and that many popular treatments may be ineffective or overused. Researchers have produced conflicting data about the effectiveness of spinal […]
Government promises to rid the nation’s food supply of brain-damaging pesticides aren’t doing the job, according to the results of a yearlong study that carefully monitored the diets of a group of local children. The peer-reviewed study found that the urine and saliva of children eating a variety of conventional foods from area groceries contained biological markers of organophosphates, the family of pesticides spawned by the creation of nerve gas agents in World War II. When the same children ate organic fruits, vegetables and juices, signs of pesticides were not found. ‘The transformation is extremely rapid,’ said Chensheng Lu, the principal author of the study published online in the current issue of Environmental Health Perspectives. ‘Once you switch from conventional food to organic, the pesticides (malathion and chlorpyrifos) that we can measure in the urine disappears. The level returns immediately when you go back to the conventional diets,’ said Lu, a professor at Emory University’s School of Public Health and a leading authority on pesticides and children. Within eight to 36 hours of the children switching to organic food, the pesticides were no longer detected in the testing. The subjects for his testing were […]
There’s a classic scene in The Matrix, where Morpheus (the Laurence Fishburne character) offers Neo (played by Keanu Reeves), a fateful choice. He holds out two pills. Take the blue pill, he says, and you go back to a life of clock-punching drudgery where your every move is monitored. Take the red one, and you get spaceships, kung-fu and a leather-clad Carrie-Anne Moss. Take away the martial arts, and Morpheus could just as well be describing the monumental choice Americans are facing today over the future of the internet. Only it’s not science fiction. Over the next few years, Congress, the Federal Communications Commission and the next president will shape the internet for a generation. Down one path is a closed internet experience tightly controlled by a small handful of giant corporations. Down the other is the open internet, with all its possibilities. Who wants you to swallow the blue pill? Meet the nation’s biggest telecom and cable companies, a cartel that dominates 99% of the US residential market for high-speed internet access. These firms – led by AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and Time Warner – want to exploit their gatekeeper power to decide what you can […]
NEW YORK — Already feeling the effects of a cold snap in the Midwest and Northeast and strains with key oil supplier Venezuela, American energy consumers are about to encounter a new complication: rising prices of a key gasoline additive – nicknamed liquid gold by some. As a result of this cost increase, some analysts are predicting that the price at the pump could reach as high as $3.50 a gallon this spring, compared with $2.93 a gallon currently. Behind the predicted price spike are problems with obtaining alkylates – the additive. But even before that had time to kick in, prices surged 23 cents a gallon between Sunday and Monday in seven states, reports GasPriceWatch.com. In Dayton, Ohio, for example, gasoline prices rose overnight from $2.82 a gallon to $3.05 a gallon, says Brad Proctor, CEO of the website. ‘The national price is probably going to rise 3 cents a gallon overnight,’ he says, blaming rising tensions with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, who threatened Sunday to cut off oil supplies to the United States. ‘They represent 12 percent of our oil supply,’ says Mr. Proctor. Yet the rising gasoline prices in the Midwest have not […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
