WASHINGTON — The world’s population will reach 7 billion in 2012, even as the global community struggles to satisfy its appetite for natural resources, according to a new government projection. There are 6.7 billion people in the world today. The United States ranks third, with 304 million, behind China and India, according to projections released Thursday by the Census Bureau. The world’s population surpassed 6 billion in 1999, meaning it will take only 13 years to add a billion people. By comparison, the number of people didn’t reach 1 billion until 1800, said Carl Haub, a demographer at the Population Reference Bureau. It didn’t reach 2 billion until 130 years later. ‘You can easily see the effect of rapid population growth in developing countries,’ Haub said. Haub said that medical and nutritional advances in developing countries led to a population explosion following World War II. Cultural changes are slowly catching up, with more women in developing countries going to school and joining the work force. That is slowing the growth rate, though it is still high in many countries. The global population is growing by about 1.2 percent per year. The Census Bureau […]
Researchers used 5 billion copies of a single immune cell from a man to wipe out signs of his advanced melanoma for more than two years, according to a report in the New England Journal of Medicine. Copies of an infection-fighting CD4 T cell were grown in a laboratory, and then used to attack the 52-year-old patient’s tumor, the report said. Previously, scientists had difficulty isolating and copying immune system cells, the researchers wrote in the report. The man had recurrent melanoma that failed to respond to therapy or surgery when he enrolled in a clinical trial at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. The disease had spread to his lungs and a lymph node before he received the two-hour infusion of the lab-grown immune system cells. Sixty days later, all signs of the disease were gone. He remained in remission for the following two years, researchers said. “We were surprised by the anti-tumor effect of these CD4 T cells and its duration of response,” said Cassian Yee, the senior author of the paper and an associate member of the clinical research division, in a statement. “For this patient we were successful, but we would […]
WASHINGTON – The framework under which detainees were imprisoned for years without charges at Guantanamo and in many cases abused in Afghanistan wasn’t the product of American military policy or the fault of a few rogue soldiers. It was largely the work of five White House, Pentagon and Justice Department lawyers who, following the orders of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, reinterpreted or tossed out the U.S. and international laws that govern the treatment of prisoners in wartime, according to former U.S. defense and Bush administration officials. The Supreme Court now has struck down many of their legal interpretations. It ruled last Thursday that preventing detainees from challenging their detention in federal courts was unconstitutional. The quintet of lawyers, who called themselves the ‘War Council,’ drafted legal opinions that circumvented the military’s code of justice, the federal court system and America’s international treaties in order to prevent anyone – from soldiers on the ground to the president – from being held accountable for activities that at other times have been considered war crimes. Sen. Carl Levin, who’s leading an investigation into the origins of the harsh interrogation techniques, said at a hearing Tuesday that […]
The two-star general who led an Army investigation into the horrific detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib has accused the Bush administration of war crimes and is calling for accountability. In his 2004 report on Abu Ghraib, then-Major General Anthony Taguba concluded that ‘numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees.’ He called the abuse ‘systemic and illegal.’ And, as Seymour M. Hersh reported in the New Yorker, he was rewarded for his honesty by being forced into retirement. Now, in a preface to a Physicians for Human Rights report based on medical examinations of former detainees, Taguba adds an epilogue to his own investigation. The new report, he writes, ‘tells the largely untold human story of what happened to detainees in our custody when the Commander-in-Chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture. This story is not only written in words: It is scrawled for the rest of these individual’s lives on their bodies and minds. Our national honor is stained by the indignity and inhumane treatment these men received from their captors. ‘The profiles of these eleven former detainees, none of whom were ever charged with […]
The Royal Bank of Scotland has advised clients to brace for a full-fledged crash in global stock and credit markets over the next three months as inflation paralyses the major central banks. ‘A very nasty period is soon to be upon us – be prepared,’ said Bob Janjuah, the bank’s credit strategist. A report by the bank’s research team warns that the S&P 500 index of Wall Street equities is likely to fall by more than 300 points to around 1050 by September as ‘all the chickens come home to roost’ from the excesses of the global boom, with contagion spreading across Europe and emerging markets. Such a slide on world bourses would amount to one of the worst bear markets over the last century. RBS said the iTraxx index of high-grade corporate bonds could soar to 130/150 while the ‘Crossover’ index of lower grade corporate bonds could reach 650/700 in a renewed bout of panic on the debt markets. ‘I do not think I can be much blunter. If you have to be in credit, focus on quality, short durations, non-cyclical defensive names. ‘Cash is the key safe haven. This is about […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
