Overnight News Digest
by ek hornbeck
Tue Apr 15, 2008 at 08:55:26 PM PDT
| All The News That Fits |
- ek hornbeck's diary :: ::
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1 Bombings kill nearly 60 in Sunni areas of Iraq
By KIM GAMEL, Associated Press Writer
4 minutes ago
| BAGHDAD - Bombings blamed on al-Qaida in Iraq tore through market areas in Baghdad and outside the capital on Tuesday, killing nearly 60 people and shattering weeks of relative calm in Sunni-dominated areas.
The bloodshed — in four cities as far north as Mosul and as far west as Ramadi — struck directly at U.S. claims that the Sunni insurgency is waning and being replaced by Shiite militia violence as a major threat. The deadliest blasts took place in Baqouba and Ramadi, two cities where the U.S. military has claimed varying degrees of success in getting Sunnis to turn against al-Qaida. |
2 State Department warns diplomats of compulsory Iraq duty
By MATTHEW LEE, Associated Press Writer
Tue Apr 15, 5:16 PM ET
| WASHINGTON - The State Department is warning U.S. diplomats they may be forced to serve in Iraq next year and says it will soon start identifying prime candidates for jobs at the Baghdad embassy and outlying provinces, according to a cable obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press.
A similar call-up notice last year caused an uproar among foreign service officers, some of whom objected to compulsory work in a war zone, although in the end the State Department found enough volunteers to fill the jobs. Now, the State Department anticipates another staffing crisis. "We face a growing challenge of supply and demand in the 2009 staffing cycle," the cable said, noting that more than 20 percent of the nearly 12,000 foreign service officers have already worked in the two major hardship posts — Iraq and Afghanistan — and a growing number have done tours in both countries. |
3 Pope lands in US, vows to fight clergy sex abuse
By VICTOR L. SIMPSON, Associated Press Writer
3 minutes ago
| ANDREWS AIR FORCE BASE, Md. - Pope Benedict XVI stepped onto U.S. soil for the time as pontiff Tuesday, arriving to a presidential handshake and wild cheering only hours after he admitted that he is "deeply ashamed" of the clergy sex abuse scandal that has devastated the American church.
Benedict gave hundreds of spectators a two-handed wave as he stepped off a special Alitalia airliner that brought him from Rome. Students from a local Catholic school screamed ecstatically when they saw the pope, who shook hands warmly with President Bush, first lady Laura Bush and their daughter Jenna on the tarmac. Hundreds of onlookers, some from local Roman Catholic parishes, clapped and shouted as they watched the scene from nearby bleachers. |
4 Italy's premier-elect Berlusconi basks in victory
AFP
25 minutes ago
| ROME (AFP) - Italian prime minister-elect Silvio Berlusconi wasted no time on Tuesday in naming key cabinet posts while his emphatic election victory drew a lukewarm response from abroad.
The 71-year-old media tycoon said his full cabinet would take shape within a week, to include EU justice commissioner Franco Frattini as foreign minister and longtime aide Gianni Letta as deputy prime minister. The Milan billionaire, set to take up a third stint as premier, said the crucial economy portfolio would go to Giulio Tremonti, who served in the role under Berlusconi's previous government. |
5 Zimbabwe opposition says open to run-off vote
by Godfrey Marawanyika, AFP
2 hours, 59 minutes ago
| HARARE (AFP) - Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai signalled Tuesday his willingness to participate in a run-off against President Robert Mugabe if international observers were allowed to monitor proceedings.
His apparent warming to the idea of a run-off came as his campaign to force the release of results from last month's presidential election suffered a fresh blow when a call for a general strike went largely unheeded. Despite the stay-away call by the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), most shops and services were open for business as usual and an initial heavy security presence was eased as it became apparent the job boycott had flopped. |
6 Magnificent Cassini mission to Saturn gets two-year extension
AFP
Tue Apr 15, 1:08 PM ET
| PARIS (AFP) - A US-European exploration of Saturn that has already been lauded as one of the shining achievements in space history is to be extended by two years, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Tuesday.
Quoting sources at NASA, which is the principal funder of the Cassini spacecraft, ESA said the mission's scheduled end of July 2008 had been pushed back by two years. Cassini is one of the most expensive but most successful robot spacecraft ever built. |
7 Big Maoist wins could reshape Nepal's politics
By Bikash Sangraula, The Christian Science Monitor
Tue Apr 15, 4:00 AM ET
| Katmandu, NEPAL - Barely two years after ending an armed insurgency that killed more than 13,000 people, Nepal's former Maoists rebels have stunned themselves, the Nepalese people, and the world with a landslide win in constituent assembly elections that could profoundly change Nepali politics.
The goal of last Thursday's election was to fulfill two Maoist demands: write a new Constitution and end the country's 240-year monarchy. But concerns are growing that Nepal's moderate political parties – which coaxed the Maoists into mainstream politics and forgave past atrocities in the interests of peace – might be sidelined and a more radical agenda prevail. What matters now, analysts say, is how the Maoists themselves interpret the will of Nepalis. "If they take this as an endorsement of their policy of mass annihilation of class enemies, it will be a catastrophe," says Yubaraj Ghimire, editor of Newsfront weekly. "If they take this as people's recognition of them as the key agent of change, it will be easy for Maoists to work and good for the country as well." |
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8 Olympic torch gets friendly welcome from Pakistan government
By SADAQAT JAN, Associated Press Writer
2 hours, 10 minutes ago
| ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - The Olympic torch came to Pakistan early Wednesday for what the pro-China government hoped would be a festive and trouble-free leg of its world tour.
Protests against China's human rights record disrupted the torch's passage through Western cities last week, and Pakistani authorities took pains to avoid any repeat during its short stay en route to Beijing. A jetliner bringing the torch from the Persian Gulf sultanate of Oman arrived at the military section of Islamabad airport shortly after midnight. A Chinese Olympic official carried a lantern containing the flame down the steps to Pakistani sports chiefs and the Chinese ambassador. |
9 Misleading medical research common: journal editor
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor, Reuters
Tue Apr 15, 3:42 PM ET
| WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Misleading research is often published in major medical journals and doctors are lending their names to it, the editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association said on Tuesday.
Doctors, regulators, publishers and others are all taking money, information and small presents from pharmaceutical companies and being influenced in the process, said Dr. Catherine DeAngelis. "It goes for all of us," DeAngelis, whose journal is influential nationally and globally, said in a telephone interview. Her journal, commonly known as JAMA, published a paper accusing Merck and Co. of suppressing data that showed its now-withdrawn pain drug Vioxx was harming patients, and saying that academic researchers had lent credibility to the company's allegedly manipulated research by putting their names on the work. |
10 Many Haitians want exiled Aristide back
By JONATHAN M. KATZ, Associated Press Writer
2 hours, 14 minutes ago
| PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Haiti's president has lowered rice prices and the Senate has sacked the prime minister. But hungry Haitians who rioted over food prices still want more.
"Aristide or death! Aristide or death!" young men in sunglasses and low-slung ballcaps chant outside parliament. That's right, Jean-Bertrand Aristide — the slum priest-turned-president who needed a U.S. intervention to restore him to power in 1994, and who accuses Washington of kidnapping him into exile a decade later as the country descended into political chaos. |
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11 Al-Sadr Tightens the Screws
By MARK KUKIS/BAGHDAD, Time Magazine
2 hours, 13 minutes ago
| Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr threw down yet another challenge to the Iraqi government, demanding that policemen and soldiers Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki fired for refusing to fight al-Sadr's militia be reinstated "after honoring them." On Sunday, Maliki's government announced the dismissal of more than 1,300 security personnel who deserted last month when fighting broke out between Iraqi government forces and the Mahdi Army in Basra. Sadr reacted swiftly to the news by issuing a statement from the Shi'ite holy city of Najaf Monday that said those who refused to take up arms against his militia were only doing their religious duty. |
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12 Some gay couples are having trouble obtaining divorces
By RAY HENRY, Associated Press Writer
18 minutes ago
| PROVIDENCE, R.I. - Gay couples had to struggle mightily to win the right to marry or form civil unions. Now, some are finding that breaking up is hard to do, too.
In Rhode Island, for example, the state's top court ruled in December that gays married in neighboring Massachusetts can't get divorced here because lawmakers have never defined marriage as anything but a union between a man and woman. In Missouri, a judge is deciding whether a lesbian married in Massachusetts can get an annulment. "We all know people who have gone through divorces. At the end of that long and unhappy period, they have been able to breathe a sigh of relief," said Cassandra Ormiston of Rhode Island, who is splitting from her wife, Margaret Chambers. But "I do not see that on my horizon, that sigh of relief that it's over." |
13 As other staples soar, potatoes break new ground
By Terry Wade, Reuters
Tue Apr 15, 11:02 AM ET
| LIMA (Reuters) - As wheat and rice prices surge, the humble potato -- long derided as a boring tuber prone to making you fat -- is being rediscovered as a nutritious crop that could cheaply feed an increasingly hungry world.
Potatoes, which are native to Peru, can be grown at almost any elevation or climate: from the barren, frigid slopes of the Andes Mountains to the tropical flatlands of Asia. They require very little water, mature in as little as 50 days, and can yield between two and four times more food per hectare than wheat or rice. "The shocks to the food supply are very real and that means we could potentially be moving into a reality where there is not enough food to feed the world," said Pamela Anderson, director of the International Potato Center in Lima (CIP), a non-profit scientific group researching the potato family to promote food security. |
14 France may make it illegal to promote extreme thinness
By DEVORAH LAUTER, Associated Press Writer
Tue Apr 15, 12:05 PM ET
| PARIS - The French parliament's lower house adopted a groundbreaking bill Tuesday that would make it illegal for anyone — including fashion magazines, advertisers and Web sites — to publicly incite extreme thinness.
The National Assembly approved the bill in a series of votes Tuesday, after the legislation won unanimous support from the ruling conservative UMP party. It goes to the Senate in the coming weeks. Fashion industry experts said that, if passed, the law would be the strongest of its kind anywhere. Leaders in French couture are opposed to the idea of legal boundaries on beauty standards. |
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15 Busy in Iraq, U.S. also faces surging violence in Afghanistan
By Jonathan S. Landay, McClatchy Newspapers
2 hours, 45 minutes ago
| WASHINGTON — While America's attention remains focused on Iraq , violence is escalating in Afghanistan , worrying senior U.S. defense officials and commanders who're struggling to find some 7,000 more American and European troops to combat resurgent Taliban and al Qaida forces.
There are indications that Islamic militants may have adopted a new strategy of avoiding U.S and NATO forces and staging attacks in provinces that haven't seen major unrest and on easy targets such as aid organizations and poorly trained Afghan police. A roadside bomb reportedly killed two policemen and injured three Tuesday in southern Afghanistan , a day after insurgents killed 11 police officers. |
16 Six months late, new U.S. Embassy in Baghdad is finally ready
By Warren P. Strobel, McClatchy Newspapers
Mon Apr 14, 6:58 PM ET
| WASHINGTON — The State Department on Monday certified the new $740 million U.S. Embassy in Baghdad as ready to open, more than six months behind schedule.
Richard Shinnick , the department's buildings chief, said problems with the mammoth, 27-building complex's fire-safety systems have been fixed, and the embassy compound will now be turned over to U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker . Undersecretary of State Patrick Kennedy signed the formal certificate of occupancy Monday, Shinnick said in an interview. Diplomats will begin moving into the compound next month. |
17 As Olympics protests mount, China blasts its foreign critics
By Tim Johnson, McClatchy Newspapers
Tue Apr 15, 3:41 PM ET
| BEIJING — Bristling at criticism in the run-up to the Summer Olympics, China is lashing back at its foreign critics— by name.
Earlier this week, the state Xinhua news agency called House Speaker Nancy Pelosi "disgusting." And on Tuesday, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu lambasted a CNN commentator, Jack Cafferty , for his "vicious" commentary on China . "We solemnly request that CNN , and Cafferty himself, take back the malicious remarks and apologize to the Chinese people," Jiang said at a news briefing. |
18 Restive Muslims face China's heavy hand
By Tim Johnson, McClatchy Newspapers
Mon Apr 14, 4:41 PM ET
| KHOTAN, China — Almost unnoticed amid the wide-scale protests by Tibetans over the past month is the opportunistic social unrest among the 8 million or so Muslim Uighurs in China's resource-rich far western territory.
Recently, hundreds of Muslim women in black veils gathered outside the market in this oasis city in an impromptu protest. Some carried signs demanding an independent state. "I saw the demonstration myself. There were 500 to 700 women in black, waving placards for East Turkestan," said Wu Jiangliang, a hydroelectric company employee. |
19 Strike Fails to Shake Mugabe
By IAN EVANS, Time Magazine
1 hour, 11 minutes ago
| The limited leverage available to Zimbabwe's political opposition was evident on Tuesday, when its call for a general strike went largely unheeded. The action had been called to press for the release of the results of an election more than two weeks ago that the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) claims to have won, but which the authorities have withheld - and have since talked of a recount next weekend. The MDC had asked the population to stay home but remain indoors rather than take to the streets, but stores and offices were open as usual in most towns and cities. MDC officials said the poor support for its strike call was a result of the threat of police violence, and the desperate need to earn money amid the ongoing collapse of Zimbabwe's economy. |
20 Putin's New Role: Soviet Echoes
By YURI ZARAKHOVICH/MOSCOW, Time Magazine
Tue Apr 15, 4:30 PM ET
| Vladimir Putin on Tuesday graciously accepted his nomination as chairman of the United Russia (UR) party that dominates Russia's legislature, a stepping-stone to his expected confirmation as Prime Minister on May 8. And if there was something rather Soviet about the rituals of the congress of the dominant party in Russia's legislature, the new distribution of power between Putin and his successor, President Dimitri Medvedev, is not entirely unfamiliar. Putin has made no secret of the fact that he envisages his new role as that of a head of government, nor do any observers of Russian politics doubt that Putin, rather than Medvedev, will be in charge. |
21 Beijing's Olympic War on Smog
By AUSTIN RAMZY/BEIJING, Time Magazine
Tue Apr 15, 3:45 PM ET
| ...
Thus far the results have been mixed. The difficulty is that Beijing has been trying to control pollution as its economy grows at more than 10% a year, workers flood in from other provinces and more than 1,000 cars are added to the road each day. Environmental officials say they have been able to cut emissions and steadily increase the number of "blue sky days," a target based on air pollution levels. But earlier this year an American environmental consultant accused the city of dropping air monitoring stations from highly polluted areas out of the calculations and adding numbers from new stations in cleaner areas. The consultant, Steven Andrews, also says that the city has had a disproportionate number of days falling just below the cutoff for a blue sky day, which suggests the numbers have been massaged. |
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22 Foreclosures jump 57 percent in last 12 months
By Lynn Adler, Reuters
Tue Apr 15, 5:26 AM ET
| NEW YORK (Reuters) - Home foreclosure filings surged 57 percent in the 12 month-period ended in March and bank repossessions soared 129 percent from a year ago, as homeowners struggled to make mortgage payments, real estate data firm RealtyTrac said on Tuesday.
For the month of March, foreclosure filings, default notices, auction sale notices and bank repossessions rose 5 percent, led by Nevada, California and Florida, RealtyTrac said. The rise in March to filings on a total of 234,685 properties followed a 4 percent decline in February, RealtyTrac reported. |
23 Consumer groups urge "do not track" registry
By Diane Bartz, Reuters
2 hours, 35 minutes ago
| WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two consumer groups asked the Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday to create a "do not track list" that would allow computer users to bar advertisers from collecting information about them.
The Consumer Federation of America and the Consumers Union also urged the FTC to bar collection of health information and other sensitive data by companies that do business on the Internet unless a consumer consents. The call echoed those of other privacy advocates who filed statements with the FTC on Internet companies' use of "behavioral advertising." That is the practice of tracking a computer user's activities online, including Web searches and sites visited, to target advertisements to the individual consumer. |
24 Falling breast cancer rates seen only in whites
By Deena Beasley, Reuter
10 minutes ago
| SAN DIEGO (Reuters) - New research shows a sharp drop in U.S. breast cancer cases in recent years was limited to white women, possibly because they abandoned hormone replacement therapy in greater numbers than minority groups.
Many women stopped using hormone replacement therapy after a large study suggested in 2002 that the combination of estrogen and progestin used to treat menopause symptoms raised the risk of breast cancer and heart disease. White women had been more likely to use hormone therapy, and were also the most likely to abandon the drugs after U.S. regulators warned about the cancer link in 2003, according to Dr. Dezheng Huo of the University of Chicago and the study's lead investigator. |
25 Dalai Lama wraps up Seattle visit, prepares for US talks
AFP
2 hours, 55 minutes ago
| SEATTLE, Washington (AFP) - The Dalai Lama wrapped up a five-day visit to Seattle here Tuesday ahead of talks with a US envoy next week on the situation in the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader's homeland.
The saffron-robed leader completed his involvement in the "Seeds of Compassion" conference with a talk at the University of Washington, where he appeared with fellow Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Archbishop Desmond Tutu. During the appearance, the Dalai Lama made no mention of Tibet, which has been the subject of a crackdown by China following violent protests in mid-March, the worst to rock the Himalayan territory for years. |
26 School coach violated religion ban in prayer ritual: US court
AFP
11 minutes ago
| WASHINGTON (AFP) - A football coach violated a ban on teaching religion in public schools when he joined his players in kneeling and head-bowing rituals before games, a US appeals court ruled Tuesday.
The decision could have national implications and may ultimately affect thousands of schools throughout the United States, many of which are believed to employ coaches who engage in prayer with their teams. Marcus Borden, a Spanish teacher and coach since 1983 at East Brunswick High School in the eastern state of New Jersey, routinely joined in prayers at team meals and invited his players to drop to one knee in a silent locker-room prayer before kick-off. |
27 The Pope's Sex Abuse Challenge
By JEFF ISRAELY/ROME AND DAVID VAN BIEMA/NEW YORK, Time Magazine
1 hour, 21 minutes ago
| ...
The American visit, however, poses an unprecedented pastoral challenge for the 80-year-old pontiff. Benedict's is the first papal trip to the United States since the priest sex abuse crisis erupted in 2001. It is a controversy that has left much of the American laity bitterly disillusioned with their Church's leadership. For many of the 67 million American Catholics, how the Pope confronts the lingering fallout from the pedophilia scandal may largely determine the success of this visit. |
28 A New Bomber with No Pilot?
By MARK THOMPSON/WASHINGTON, Time Magazine
Mon Apr 14, 7:30 PM ET
| ...
Now that the Air Force has indicated that it needs a new bomber flying by 2018 - not that long in weapons-development terms - some in the Pentagon are asking whether the time has come to build a bomber that can fly itself. "While some might not take exception to an unmanned strike aircraft capable of carrying a small number of weapons," a new report from the Congressional Research Service says, "the debate could be quite different about an unmanned nuclear-capable bomber aircraft able to carry close to 30,000 pounds of advanced weapons." |
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29 Airline combos could mean higher prices, fewer choices
By CHRIS KAHN, AP Business Writer
1 hour, 14 minutes ago
| PHOENIX - Getting hitched may be the right move for Delta and Northwest. But for beleaguered air travelers, it could usher in an era of higher fares, fewer flights, more confusion at the airport and even more crowded planes.
The merger could kick off a wave of airline consolidation. And while the effects would not be immediate because the combinations could take months to get regulatory approval, industry observers say get ready anyway for fewer carriers in the sky. "It's not an industry that works," said Mark Cooper, director of research for the Consumer Federation of America, who lobbied Congress against a bid by US Airways for Delta last year. |
30 Crude oil at new high just above $114; gas also at a record
By ADAM SCHRECK, AP Business Writer
2 hours, 19 minutes ago
| NEW YORK - Energy traders rewrote the record books again Tuesday, pushing oil futures past $114 a barrel as gasoline and diesel prices struck new highs of their own at the pump.
Light, sweet crude for May delivery jumped as high as $114.08 a barrel shortly after regular trading ended on the New York Mercantile Exchange. That is nearly $2 above an intraday high set last week. Concerns about insufficient global supply, stoked by a high-profile report by the International Energy Agency that said Russian oil production dropped this year for the first time in a decade, was largely responsible for the surge. Oil prices rose as high as $113.99 a barrel during the regular session before settling at $113.79, up $2.03 from Monday's record close of $111.76 a barrel. |
31 Washington Mutual swings to 1Q loss on $3.5B provision
By DONNA GORDON BLANKINSHIP, Associated Press Writer
12 minutes ago
| SEATTLE - Washington Mutual, the nation's largest savings and loan, said Tuesday it lost more than $1.1 billion in the first quarter as the struggling economy and flagging real estate values pummeled the bank's borrowers.
The Seattle-based thrift lost $1.40 per share, compared with a profit of $784 million, or 86 cents per share, in the first quarter a year earlier. It was the bank's second consecutive quarterly loss, but Chairman and CEO Kerry Killinger promised shareholders that Washington Mutual will turn around within a year. |
32 WaMu urged to name independent chair after big loss
By Jonathan Stempel, Reuters
1 hour, 5 minutes ago
| NEW YORK (Reuters) - Washington Mutual Inc (WM.N) shareholders voted on Tuesday to ask Chief Executive Kerry Killinger to give up his role as chairman, after the largest U.S. savings and loan was throttled by losses tied to the nation's sinking housing market.
The Seattle-based thrift also announced the resignation of director Mary Pugh, who chaired its finance committee and had been fiercely criticized for failing to protect Washington Mutual from exposure to subprime and other risky mortgages. Washington Mutual also bowed to pressure from investors and governance experts in reversing a decision to ignore mortgage losses in awarding performance bonuses to top executives, such as Killinger and Chief Operating Officer Stephen Rotella. |
33 Researchers charge Merck misrepresented Vioxx data
By Julie Steenhuysen, Reuters
2 hours, 5 minutes ago
| CHICAGO (Reuters) - Merck & Co Inc suppressed evidence that its withdrawn arthritis pill Vioxx could harm patients, U.S. researchers charged on Tuesday.
An analysis of court documents suggests Merck knew about the problems years before it acted, the researchers report in the Journal of the American Medical Association. They charge that Merck failed to disclose an internal analysis that found Alzheimer's patients taking Vioxx had a three times greater risk of death than patients taking a placebo. |
34 Brazil's oil giant Petrobras set to grow bigger with new find
AFP
Tue Apr 15, 3:07 PM ET
| RIO DE JANEIRO (AFP) - The unconfirmed announcement that Petrobras could be sitting on the fossil fuel find of the century has more than doubled the expectations riding on the state-run Brazilian oil company.
Even though the group refuses to back a claim by the head of Brazil's National Petroleum Agency, Haroldo Lima, that a newly discovered field it controls could contain a massive amount of oil -- 33 billion barrels' worth -- it is now firmly in focus as a possible world champion in the sector. Petrobras shares were Tuesday trading around 122 dollars in New York after heavy buying on Lima's comments the day before pushed them 7.67 percent higher. |
35 Surging energy, food prices stoke US inflation fears
by Justin Cole, AFP
Tue Apr 15, 4:09 PM ET
| WASHINGTON (AFP) - Surging energy and food costs stoked US wholesale prices by much more than expected in March, according to a government report Tuesday that renewed fears about accelerating inflation.
The Labor Department released its latest inflation snapshot as concern mounts about rocketing global commodity prices which have pushed food prices higher. "Wholesale costs are rising and the consumer should expect more shocks at the supermarket and the gas station," said Joel Naroff, the president of Naroff Economic Advisors. |
36 Intel reports profit dip despite record revenues
AFP
15 minutes ago
| SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) - Intel Corporation announced Tuesday a dip in profit despite record-high revenues of 9.7 billion dollars in the first three months of 2008.
The world's biggest chip maker reported net income of 1.44 billion dollars, or 25 cents per share, in the first quarter compared with profit of 1.64 billion dollars, or 28 cents per share, in the same period last year. The California company said restructuring and asset costs trimmed profit by four cents per share. |
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37 Male sex hormone may affect stock trades
By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, AP Science Writer
2 hours, 23 minutes ago
| WASHINGTON - The hormone that drives male aggression and sexual interest also seems able to boost short term success at finance. But what seems to start out well can turn bad, with elevated testosterone levels over several days possibly leading to irrational risk-taking, according to researchers at the University of Cambridge in England.
"If people want to get practical, it would be good for both banks and the financial system as a whole if we had more women and older men in the markets," said John M. Coates, lead author of a study appearing in this week's issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Such a change would produce a much more stable financial system, said Coates, a research fellow in the university's department of physiology, development and neuroscience. |
38 Scientists: Big quake likely in Calif.
By ALICIA CHANG, AP Science Writer
2 hours, 25 minutes ago
| LOS ANGELES - California faces an almost certain risk of being rocked by a strong earthquake by 2037, scientists said in the first statewide temblor forecast.
New calculations reveal there is a 99.7 percent chance a magnitude 6.7 quake or larger will strike in the next 30 years. The odds of such an event are higher in Southern California than Northern California, 97 percent versus 93 percent. "It basically guarantees it's going to happen," said Ned Field, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Pasadena and lead author of the report. |
39 EPA urges Great Lakes residents not to flush old meds
By CAROLYN THOMPSON, Associated Press Writer
39 minutes ago
| BUFFALO, N.Y. - With trace amounts of pharmaceuticals showing up in the drinking water of major cities, authorities are encouraging consumers around the Great Lakes to drop off leftover and expired medicine at collection centers.
The Environmental Protection Agency has set a goal of collecting 1 million pills and 1 million pounds of electronics during an Earth Day initiative aimed at the more than 30 million people who live around the Great Lakes, which are by far the largest source of fresh drinking water on the planet. "We're trying to raise public awareness on disposing of pharmaceuticals properly and we've had a very good response from communities on water districts. This is information that needs to get out there," EPA spokeswoman Phillippa Cannon said Tuesday. |
40 Bush to pitch climate change strategy in Rose Garden speech
By DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 22 minutes ago
| WASHINGTON - President Bush, stepping into the debate over global warming, plans to announce on Wednesday a national goal for stopping the growth of greenhouse gas emissions over the next few decades.
In a speech in the Rose Garden, Bush will lay out a strategy rather than a specific proposal for curbing emissions, White House press secretary Dana Perino said Tuesday. She did not disclose details of his announcement and would not say whether the president would propose any kind of mandatory cap on greenhouse gas emissions. The president wants every major economy, including fast-growing nations like China and India, to establish a national goal for cutting the emissions believed responsible for global warming. |
41 Group finds 6 million pounds of trash on world's beaches
By H. JOSEF HEBERT, Associated Press Writer
39 minutes ago
| WASHINGTON - The world's beaches and shores are anything but pristine. Volunteers scoured 33,000 miles of shoreline worldwide and found 6 million pounds of debris from cigarette butts and food wrappers to abandoned fishing lines and plastic bags that threaten seabirds and marine mammals.
A report by the Ocean Conservancy, to be released Wednesday, catalogues nearly 7.2 million items that were collected by volunteers on a single day last September as they combed beaches and rocky shorelines in 76 countries from Bahrain to Bangladesh and in 45 states from southern California to the rocky coast of Maine. "This is a snapshot of one day, one moment in time, but it serves as a powerful reminder of our carelessness and how our disparate and random actions actually have a collective and global impact," Vikki Spruill, president of the Ocean Conservancy said in an interview. |
42 Space-age suits race into uncharted waters
By Martin Petty, Reuters
Tue Apr 15, 8:29 AM ET
| MANCHESTER (Reuters) - Some have called it a technological breakthrough, others simply an elaborate publicity stunt, but a controversial space-age swimsuit has gripped the swimming world.
A host of world records has been toppled in the last eight weeks -- 36 as of Sunday -- by swimmers wearing the high-tech LZR Racer bodysuit, which manufacturer Speedo claims can carve as much as two percent off race times. But the LZR, developed with the help of U.S. space agency NASA, has plunged the sport into uncharted waters, with swimmers breaching lucrative kit contracts to wear it and rows over the legality of the materials used. |
43 Plastic bottle chemical may be harmful: agency
By Will Dunham, Reuters
2 hours, 45 minutes ago
| WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A chemical in some plastic food and drink packaging including baby bottles may be tied to early puberty and prostate and breast cancer, the U.S. government said on Tuesday.
Based on draft findings by the National Toxicology Program, part of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, senior congressional Democrats asked the Food and Drug Administration to reconsider its view that the chemical bisphenol A is safe in products for use by infants and children. The chemical, also called BPA, is used in many baby bottles and the plastic lining of cans of infant formula. |
44 Gibraltar to kill "molesting" monkeys
By Dominique Searle, Reuters
Tue Apr 15, 4:59 PM ET
| GIBRALTAR (Reuters) - A pack of at least 25 of Gibraltar's famous monkeys are being killed because they are threatening human health in one of The Rock's popular tourism areas, a government minister said on Tuesday.
Two of the monkeys -- a national symbol for the British colony at the foot of Spain -- have already been given a lethal injection, said Gibraltar's Tourist Minister Ernest Britto who issued the license for their culling. "The decision was not taken lightly," he said. "It is a last resort." |
45 Illegal cod fishing in Arctic threatening fisheries: WWF
AFP
29 minutes ago
| GENEVA (AFP) - Illegal fishing of cod and pollock in the Arctic is a transnational crime that is putting the health of fisheries at risk, a report published Wednesday by conservation group WWF shows.
The illegal activity is also adding pressure on fish stocks that are already feeling the impact of climate change, said the report. Some 70 percent of the world's white fish supply originates from the Arctic. Among these are the Russian Alaska pollock and Barents Sea cod which account for about a quarter of the world's white fish supply. |
46 Science proves McEnroe wrong
by Richard Ingham, AFP
1 hour, 40 minutes ago
| PARIS (AFP) - "You can NOT be serious," tennis great John McEnroe famously shouted in Wimbledon in 1981 when one of his serves was called out.
McEnroe's words became a catchphrase to bait umpires and line judges around the world -- but more than a quarter-century later, match officials have found an answer in science. A paper published on Wednesday in a British journal, Proceedings of the Royal Society B, has analysed 1,473 challenges to line calls by 246 professional tennis players in 2006 and 2007. |
47 Ancient Outburst of Milky Way's Black Hole Discovered
Clara Moskowitz, Staff Writer SPACE.com
Tue Apr 15, 11:46 AM ET
| There is a slumbering matter-munching monster in the middle of our galaxy, and every once in a while, this black hole flares up and releases plumes of X-rays.
Matter is constantly falling into the Milky Way's central supermassive black hole, but sometimes enough builds up and gets hot enough to release a big flash. For instance, if humans had an X-ray observatory 300 years ago, we would have seen a giant flash caused by a clump of gas heating up as it fell toward the black hole. Although we missed this mighty burst, astronomers have recently spotted echoes of it in a large gas cloud called Sagittarius B2. The X-rays took 300 years to travel from the central black hole to the cloud, and when they arrived, they collided with iron atoms, causing them to emit X-rays. |
48 Ancient Elephants Loved Water
Clara Moskowitz, LivesScience Staff Writer
Mon Apr 14, 5:21 PM ET
| Elephants, those large and lumbering landlubbers, used to live partially in the water, according to new research.
A recent study found that an ancient elephant ancestor called Moeritherium spent most of its time in rivers and swamps. Scientists knew that elephants are related to modern aquatic creatures such as manatees, but they had never identified an ancient elephant relative that lived in water. Now the evolutionary link is there. |
49 Grand Canyon Possibly Old as Dinosaurs
Andrea Thompson, LiveScience Staff Writer
Tue Apr 15, 9:25 AM ET
| Dinosaurs roaming the American Southwest 65 million years ago may have teetered on the edges of an ancient version of the awe-inspiring cliffs and gorges we see today in the Grand Canyon, a new study suggests.
The mile-deep canyon in Arizona was formed as the Colorado River scoured through ancient rock layers millions of years ago. The most widely-posed theory of the canyon's formation is that the Colorado River connected drainages on the western slopes of the Rocky Mountains with the then newly-formed Gulf of California, incising the plateau surface to create a canyon when the plateau was uplifted. A study just last month dated the initial carving of part of the Grand Canyon at 16 to 17 million years ago, farther back in time than had been thought. Now scientists suggest pushing the date much farther back. |