WASHINGTON — CIA Director Leon Panetta said on Sunday there may be less than 50 al-Qaida fighters in Afghanistan, with ‘no question’ that most of the terrorist network is operating from the western tribal region of Pakistan.

Panetta’s remarks came as President Barack Obama builds up U.S. forces in Afghanistan to prop up the government and, in his words, ‘disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda.’ About U.S. 98,000 troops will be in Afghanistan by fall.

Asked by ABC’s Jake Tapper to estimate the number of al Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistan, Panetta said, ‘I think the estimate on the number of Al Qaeda is actually relatively small. At most, we’re looking at 50 to 100, maybe less. It’s in that vicinity.’

Panetta told ABCs’ ‘This Week’ that the CIA is heavily focused on killing the al Qaida leadership in Pakistan, and he defended CIA drone strikes against ‘dead wrong’ claims that they violate international law. He said Osama bin Laden is hiding amid the region’s rough terrain with ‘tremendous security around him.’

Asked to describe what an American victory would look like in Afghanistan, Panetta said: ‘Our purpose, our whole mission there, is to make sure that Al Qaeda never finds another safehaven from which […]

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Many debates about global warming seem to boil down to appeals to authority, with one side or the other citing some famous scientist, or group of them, to buttress a particular argument. The tone is often, ‘My expert is better than yours!’

Against this backdrop, some analysts have been trying for several years to get a firm handle on where climate researchers come down, as a group, on the central issues in the global-warming debate: Is the earth warming up, and if so, are humans largely responsible?

Now comes another entry in this developing literature. William R.L. Anderegg, a doctoral candidate at Stanford University, and his fellow authors compiled a database of 1,372 climate researchers. They then focused on scientists who had published at least 20 papers on climate, as a way to concentrate on those most active in the field. That produced a list of 908 researchers whose work was subjected to close scrutiny.

The authors then classified those researchers as convinced or unconvinced by the evidence for human-induced climate change, based on such factors as whether they have signed public statements endorsing or dissenting from the big United Nations reports raising alarm about the issue. Then the authors analyzed how often […]

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It is among the top early selling points of the health-care overhaul — a new rule that has particular appeal for middle-class, middle-age voters: Young adults who lack health insurance will soon be able to remain on their parents’ plans until age 26.

But although Obama administration officials note that the provision will help millions, the benefit is proving less immediate than many families expect.

The administration’s success in convincing dozens of insurers to comply with the provision earlier than the law requires has left many parents with the impression that their adult children will be eligible for continuing coverage far sooner than is likely to be the case, experts said.

According to the law, health plans don’t have to comply until their first renewal date after Sept. 23. For some plans, that’s as soon as October. For many, it’s January. For others, the compliance date won’t be until May.

That means many college seniors whose parents’ health plans allowed them to stay on until they graduated this spring may face a gap in coverage until the new requirement kicks in.

Soon after the law was passed, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius called on insurers to close the gap by complying with the […]

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Sacked US General Stanley McChrystal issued a devastatingly critical assessment of the war against a ‘resilient and growing insurgency’ just days before being forced out.

Using confidential military documents, copies of which have been seen by the IoS, the ‘runaway general’ briefed defence ministers from Nato and the International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) earlier this month, and warned them not to expect any progress in the next six months. During his presentation, he raised serious concerns over levels of security, violence, and corruption within the Afghan administration.

Details of General McChrystal’s grim assessment of his own strategy’s current effectiveness emerged as the world’s most powerful leaders set the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, a five-year deadline to improve security and governance in his country.

The G8 summit in Toronto called for ‘concrete progress’ within five years on improving the justice system and for Afghan forces to assume greater responsibility for security. David Cameron said a ‘political surge’ must now complement the military one.

But the ‘campaign overview’ left behind by General McChrystal after he was sacked by President Barack Obama last week warned that only a fraction of the areas key to long-term success are ‘secure’, governed with ‘full authority’, or enjoying ‘sustainable growth’. He […]

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A new study in Nutrition Journal finds vegetarians have lower incidence of depression, anxiety, and other mood problems than their meat-eating neighbors.
June 22, 2010

Yet another reason to adopt a vegetarian diet… Rodale reports that a new study in Nutrition Journal finds vegetarians have lower incidence of depression, anxiety, and other mood problems than their meat-eating neighbors.

I say neighbors specifically because the researchers came to this conclusion after studying Seventh Day Adventists, who were split about 4-5 between vegetarians and meat-eaters. Rodale notes that this group was chosen because the nature of the community is such that it is easier to account for external influences than diet coming into play.

The researchers found the vegetarians reported diets significantly lower in EPA and DHA, the omega-3 fatty acids that we get from eating fish, and which many studies have found are a key factor in improving both physical and mental health. So they expected to find the vegetarians would have higher incidences of issues like depression, anxiety, and mood problems. Instead, they found the opposite result. Vegetarians scored lower on depression tests and had better mood profiles than their fish- and meat-eating peers. ‘While dietary intake […]

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