As a senator, Barack Obama denounced the Bush administration for holding ‘secret energy meetings’ with oil executives at the White House. But last week public-interest groups were dismayed when his own administration rejected a Freedom of Information Act request for Secret Service logs showing the identities of coal executives who had visited the White House to discuss Obama’s ‘clean coal’ policies. One reason: the disclosure of such records might impinge on privileged ‘presidential communications.’ The refusal, approved by White House counsel Greg Craig’s office, is the latest in a series of cases in which Obama officials have opted against public disclosure. Since Obama pledged on his first day in office to usher in a ‘new era’ of openness, ‘nothing has changed,’ says David -Sobel, a lawyer who litigates FOIA cases. ‘For a president who said he was going to bring unprecedented transparency to government, you would certainly expect more than the recycling of old Bush secrecy policies.’ The hard line appears to be no accident. After Obama’s much-publicized Jan. 21 ‘transparency’ memo, administration lawyers crafted a key directive implementing the new policy that contained a major loophole, according to FOIA experts. The directive, signed by Attorney General Eric Holder, […]
World governments spent a record $1.46 trillion on upgrading their armed forces last year despite the economic downturn, with China climbing to second place behind top military spender the United States, a Swedish research group said Monday. Global military spending was 4 percent higher than in 2007 and up 45 percent from a decade ago, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, or SIPRI, said in its annual report. ‘So far the global arms industry, booming from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and from spending increases by many developing countries, has shown few signs of suffering from the crisis,’ SIPRI said. However, the report added that arms companies may face reduced demand if governments cut future military spending in response to rising budget deficits. It also noted U.S. arms purchases – by far the highest in the world – were expected to rise less rapidly under President Barack Obama after sharp growth during the Bush administration. U.S. military spending increased nearly 10 percent in 2008 to $607 billion and accounted for about 42 percent of global arms spending, SIPRI said. The U.S. was followed for the first time by China, which increased its military spending […]
WASHINGTON — Americans strongly support fundamental changes to the healthcare system and a move to create a government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll published on Saturday. The poll came amid mounting opposition to plans by the Obama administration and its allies in the Democratic-controlled Congress to push through the most sweeping restructuring of the U.S. healthcare system since the end of World War Two. Republicans and some centrist Democrats oppose increasing the government’s role in healthcare — it already runs the Medicare and Medicaid systems for the elderly and indigent — fearing it would require vast public funds and reduce the quality of care. But the Times/CBS poll found 85 percent of respondents wanted major healthcare reforms and most would be willing to pay higher taxes to ensure everyone had health insurance. An estimated 46 million Americans currently have no coverage. Seventy-two percent of those questioned said they backed a government-administered insurance plan similar to Medicare for those under 65 that would compete for customers with the private sector. Twenty percent said they were opposed. President Barack Obama and many Democrats in Congress have argued […]
The number of chronically hungry people has passed 1bn for the first time – about one in six people – as the economic crisis compounds the impact of still high food prices, the United Nations said on Friday. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation said that its latest estimates put the number of hungry people at 1.02bn, up from a revised 915m in 2008. The estimate confirms data advanced by the Financial Times earlier this year. The new UN assessment signals that the food and economic crisis of the last two years have reversed the past quarter-century’s slow but constant decline in the proportion of undernourished people as a percentage of the world’s population. Before the food crisis started in mid-2007, there were fewer than 850m chronically hungry people in the world, a level that has been roughly constant since the early 1980s owing to the global fight against poverty and countries such as China, India or Brazil lifting their economic growth over the last two decades. The most recent increase in hunger is not the consequence of poor global harvests but is caused by the world economic crisis that has resulted in lower incomes and […]
NEW YORK — Sewage treatment plants fail to remove artificial sweeteners completely from waste water. What’s more, these pollutants contaminate waters downstream and may still be present in our drinking water. Thanks to their new robust analytical method, which simultaneously extracts and analyses seven commonly used artificial sweeteners, Marco Scheurer, Heinz-Jürgen Brauch and Frank Thomas Lange from the Water Technology Center in Karlsruhe, Germany, were able to demonstrate the presence of several artificial sweeteners in waste water. Their findings1 are published online this week in Springer’s journal Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry. A range of artificial sweeteners are commonly used in food and drinks, as well as drugs and sanitary products. The potential health risks of artificial sweeteners have been debated for some time. Until now, only sucralose has been detected in aquatic environments. Through the use of a new analytical method, the researchers were able to look for seven different artificial sweeteners (cyclamate, acesulfame, saccharin, aspartame, neotame, neohesperidin dihydrochalcone and sucralose) simultaneously, and show, for the first time, that a number of commonly used artificial sweeteners are present in German waste and surface water. Scheurer and colleagues collected water samples from two sewage treatment plants in Germany – […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
