BAGHDAD — Three U.S. soldiers were killed in an apparent rocket or mortar attack near Nassiriya in southeastern Iraq on Wednesday, the U.S. military said. Another two U.S. soldiers were wounded in what the military said in a statement was an ‘indirect fire attack,’ a term usually used to describe rocket or mortar fire, near Nassiriya, about 375 km (235 miles) southeast of Baghdad. Iraqi police and hospital officials said up to 16 people were killed on a bus near Nassiriya on Tuesday in an apparent roadside bomb attack aimed at a passing U.S. military convoy. The U.S. military has said of that incident that the bus was hit by an explosively formed penetrator, a particularly deadly, armor piercing form of roadside bomb, but that no one was killed. The bus was carrying members of a family returning from funeral observances in the holy Shi’ite city of Najaf, witnesses and police said. An al-Qaeda-linked group in Iraq claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing in central Baghdad that killed five U.S. soldiers on Monday, according to the SITE Institute, a U.S.-based terrorism monitoring service. It said the Islamic State of Iraq had said a bomber […]
In Nashville today, during a speech to the National Religious Broadcasters Convention, President Bush said there’s nothing fair about the so-called ‘Fairness Doctrine’ that once required broadcasters to offer air time for competing ideologies. The FCC got rid of it about 20 years ago. Now, some Democrats in Congress – long the target of popular conservative radio talk-show hosts – think it’s time to bring it back. Perish the thought, Bush told the religious broadcasters in the following passage that ends with a veto promise. ‘This organization has had many important missions, but none more important than ensuring our airways – America’s airways – stay open to those who preach the ‘Good News.’ The very first amendment to our Constitution includes the freedom of speech and the freedom of religion. Founders believed these unalienable rights were endowed to us by our Creator. They are vital to a healthy democracy, and we must never let anyone take those freedoms away.’ ‘ I mention this because there’s an effort afoot that would jeopardize your right to express your views on public airways. Some members of Congress want to reinstate a regulation that was repealed 20 years ago. It […]
The next generation of web technology is likely to be far more powerful than the current crop, Tim Berners-Lee said Google may eventually be displaced as the pre-eminent brand on the internet by a company that harnesses the power of next-generation web technology, the inventor of the World Wide Web has said. The search giant had developed an extremely effective way of searching for pages on the internet, Tim Berners-Lee said, but that ability paled in comparison to what could be achieved on the ‘web of the future’, which he said would allow any piece of information - such as a photo or a bank statement - to be linked to any other. Mr Berners-Lee said that in the same way, the ‘current craze’ for social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace would eventually be superseded by networks that connected all types of things - not just people - thanks to a ground-breaking technology known as the ‘semantic web’. The semantic web is the term used by the computer and internet industry to describe the next phase of the web’s development, and essentially involves building web-based connectivity into any piece of data - not just a […]
Life expectancy in the United States is on the increase, but only among people with more than 12 years of education, a new study finds. In fact, those with more than 12 years of education — more than a high school diploma — can expect to live to 82; for those with 12 or fewer years of education, life expectancy is 75. ‘If you look in recent decades, you will find that life expectancy has been increasing, which is good, but when you split this out by better-educated groups, the life expectancy gained is really occurring much more so in the better-educated groups,’ said lead researcher Ellen R. Meara, an assistant professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School. ‘The puzzle is why we have been successful in extending life span for some groups. Why haven’t we been successful in getting that for less advantaged groups?’ Meara said. The answer may lie with tobacco, the study found. About one-fifth of the difference in mortality between well-educated and less-educated groups can be accounted for by smoking-related diseases such as lung cancer and emphysema, Meara said. But the disparity in life expectancy is not only […]
WASHINGTON — House Democratic leaders unveiled legislation Tuesday to update the nation’s wiretapping program, rejecting a Senate-passed version of the bill that would give telecommunications companies legal immunity for agreeing to participate in the program after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. President Bush and House Republicans have insisted that the House pass the Senate version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) bill. Instead, top Democrats — including House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, House Intelligence Chairman Silvestre Reyes and Judiciary Chairman John Conyers — proposed that lawsuits against the phone companies could move forward through U.S. district courts. The government has effectively frozen all litigation by invoking the ‘state secrets’ doctrine, arguing that documents detailing the phone companies’ activities are classified. Under the proposed legislation, the companies would be able to argue their cases in court and present classified evidence to a judge during a closed proceeding without the presence of the plaintiffs. ‘We are not going to cave in to a retroactive immunity situation,’ Conyers said. He argued that ‘there’s no law school example in our memory that gives retroactive immunity for something you don’t know what you are giving it for. It […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
