News ArticlesExcerpts of Key News Articles in Major Media
Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news articles on dozens of engaging topics. And read excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.
Former Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona told a Congressional panel Tuesday that top Bush administration officials repeatedly tried to weaken or suppress important public health reports because of political considerations. The administration, Dr. Carmona said, would not allow him to speak or issue reports about stem cells, emergency contraception, sex education, or prison, mental and global health issues. Top officials delayed for years and tried to “water down” a landmark report on secondhand smoke, he said. Released last year, the report concluded that even brief exposure to cigarette smoke could cause immediate harm. Dr. Carmona said he was ordered to mention President Bush three times on every page of his speeches. He also said he was asked to make speeches to support Republican political candidates and to attend political briefings. Dr. Carmona is one of a growing list of present and former administration officials to charge that politics often trumped science within what had previously been largely nonpartisan government health and scientific agencies. On issue after issue, Dr. Carmona said, the administration made decisions about important public health issues based solely on political considerations, not scientific ones. “I was told to stay away from those because we’ve already decided which way we want to go,” Dr. Carmona said. He described attending a meeting of top officials in which the subject of global warming was discussed. The officials concluded that global warming was a liberal cause and dismissed it, he said.
An internal FBI audit has found that the bureau potentially violated the law or agency rules more than 1,000 times while collecting data about domestic phone calls, e-mails and financial transactions in recent years, far more than was documented in a Justice Department report in March that ignited bipartisan congressional criticism. The new audit covers just 10 percent of the bureau's national security investigations since 2002. The vast majority of the new violations were instances in which telephone companies and Internet providers gave agents phone and e-mail records the agents did not request and were not authorized to collect. The agents retained the information anyway in their files. Two dozen of the newly-discovered violations involved agents' requests for information that U.S. law did not allow them to have. The results confirmed what ... critics feared, namely that many agents did not ... follow the required legal procedures and paperwork requirements when collecting personal information with one of the most sensitive and powerful intelligence-gathering tools of the post-Sept. 11 era -- the National Security Letter, or NSL. Such letters are uniformly secret and amount to nonnegotiable demands for personal information -- demands that are not reviewed in advance by a judge. After the 2001 terrorist attacks, Congress substantially eased the rules for issuing NSLs, [leading] to an explosive growth in the use of the letters. More than 19,000 such letters were issued in 2005 seeking 47,000 pieces of information, mostly from telecommunications companies.
AAA asked the U.S. Senate Tuesday to investigate why oil companies are making huge profits at a time when glitches at gas refineries have caused pump prices to soar. "We are concerned about the number and frequency of refinery outages this year in light of the large profits the industry has been reporting," AAA Public Affairs Director Geoff Sundstrom told the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. "AAA doesn't know why refiners appear to be failing at this task, but we do think it would be worth the committee's time and trouble to find out." Sundstrom spoke at a Senate hearing at which lawmakers asked energy experts to explain the spell of unplanned refinery shutdowns that have thrown gas supplies into disarray from coast to coast, boosting average pump prices to a record $3.09 per gallon in the United States. California Energy Commission spokesman Bob Aldrich said his agency does not investigate the industry but does track its practices. This year the big story was a series of glitches in the annual switchover from winter gas to a differently formulated summer gas. Tom Kloza, publisher of the Oil Price Information Service ... said the surprise this year was that refineries outside California also had unplanned problems with their normal spring maintenance. "I did not think we'd see the same downtime elsewhere in the country," he said. Sean Comey, spokesman for AAA of Northern California, said the gas refining business is unusual because it seems that even when production goes down, prices and profits go up. "When most industries have production problems, profits suffer as a result," he said.
Depleted uranium, which is used in armour-piercing ammunition, causes widespread damage to DNA which could lead to lung cancer, according to a study of the metal's effects on human lung cells. The study adds to growing evidence that DU causes health problems on battlefields long after hostilities have ceased. DU is a byproduct of uranium refinement for nuclear power. It is much less radioactive than other uranium isotopes, and its high density - twice that of lead - makes it useful for armour and armour piercing shells. It has been used in conflicts including Bosnia, Kosovo and Iraq and there have been increasing concerns about the health effects of DU dust left on the battlefield. In November, the Ministry of Defence was forced to counteract claims that apparent increases in cancers and birth defects among Iraqis in southern Iraq were due to DU in weapons. Prof Wise and his team believe that microscopic particles of dust created during the explosion of a DU weapon stay on the battlefield and can be breathed in by soldiers and people returning after the conflict. Once they are lodged in the lung even low levels of radioactivity would damage DNA in cells close by. "The real question is whether the level of exposure is sufficient to cause health effects. The answer to that question is still unclear," he said, adding that there has as yet been little research on the effects of DU on civilians in combat zones. "Funding for DU studies is very sparse and so defining the disadvantages is hard," he added.
Note: We suspect a major cover-up of the dangers of DU, on which the media have reported little. How convenient that this pesky waste product from nuclear power plants which is radioactive for thousands of years could be sold to the military for weapons. For lots more on this vital topic, click here.
Food safety experts have advised parents to eliminate a series of additives from their children's diet while they await the publication of a new study that is understood to link these ingredients to behaviour problems in youngsters. The latest scientific research into the effect of food additives on children's behaviour is thought to raise fresh doubts about the safety of controversial food colourings and a preservative widely used in sweets, drinks and processed foods. It will be several months before the results are published, despite the importance of the findings for children's health. Researchers at Southampton University have tested combinations of synthetic colourings and preservative that an average child might consume in a day to measure what effect they had on behaviour. A source at the university [said] their results supported findings first made seven years ago that linked the additives to behavioural problems, such as temper tantrums, poor concentration and hyperactivity, and to allergic reactions. Independent experts say that consumers should consider removing these additives from their children's diets now. Dr Alex Richardson, the director of Food and Behaviour Research and senior research scientist at Oxford University, said: "There are well-documented potential risks from these additives. In my view the researchers had done an excellent piece of work first time round and there was enough evidence to act. If this new study essentially replicates that, what more evidence do they need to remove these additives from children's food and drink?"
Note: For how drug companies collude with government to suppress this kind of information, click here.
Highly-paid professionals like doctors and lawyers didn't make the cut when researchers set out to find the most satisfied workers. Clergy ranked tops in both job satisfaction and general happiness, according to the National Opinion Research Center [NORC] at the University of Chicago. Physical therapists and firefighters were second- and third-ranked in job satisfaction, with more than three-quarters reporting being "very satisfied." Other occupations in which more than 60 percent said they were very satisfied included teachers, painters and sculptors, psychologists and authors. "The most satisfying jobs are mostly professions, especially those involving caring for, teaching and protecting others and creative pursuits," said Tom W. Smith, director of NORC's General Social Survey. Intrinsic rewards are key, the study suggests. "They're doing work they're very proud of, helping people," Smith said. Clergy ranked by far the most satisfied and the most generally happy of 198 occupations. Eighty-seven percent of clergy said they were "very satisfied" with their work, compared with an average 47 percent for all workers. Others in helping professions describe their work as a calling. "I believe I was probably put on this earth to make someone's life a little easier," said Gina Kolk, [a] physical therapist. "I get rewarded every day by what I do." Occupations with the least satisfied and happy workers tended to be low-skill manual and service jobs. Roofers, waiters and laborers ranked at the bottom ... with as few as one in five reporting they were very satisfied. Bartenders, known for listening to other people's troubles, apparently need sympathetic ears: Only 26 percent said they were very satisfied.
When Nigeria's education minister faced an audience of 1,000 schoolchildren, she expected to hear complaints of crowded classrooms and lack of equipment. Instead, girl after girl spoke up about being pressured for sex by teachers in exchange for better grades. One girl was just 11 years old. "I was shocked," said the minister, Obiageli Ezekwesili. "I asked, was it that prevalent? And they all chorused 'yes.'" For years, sexual harassment has been rampant in Nigeria's universities, but until recently very little was done about it. From Associated Press interviews with officials and 12 female college students, a pattern emerges of women being held back and denied passing grades for rebuffing teachers' advances, and of being advised by other teachers to give in quietly. Most victims are college students such as Chioma, a slim, quiet 22-year-old with a B average, who repeatedly failed political science after refusing her teacher's explicit demands for sex. She said he was a pastor and old enough to be her grandfather. In a recent survey ... 80 percent of over 300 women questioned at four universities said sexual harassment was their no. 1 concern. But with a strong African tradition of respecting one's elders, families or teachers, harassed students can rarely expect support, even when repeated complaints are made against one individual. Yet attitudes are slowly changing. Ezekwesili, the education minister, says she wants to set up complaints programs and join forces with women's organizations. "We are going to take punitive measures against these teachers and give a voice to students," she promised.
A controversial new film about 9/11 is raising eyebrows, not only for its content, but also for the people involved in the project: Rosie O'Donnell and Charlie Sheen. The sitcom actor and talk show hostess have both become spokespeople for the 9/11 conspiracy movement. The video "Loose Change" ... has been floating around the Internet for years, but now Sheen is in talks with Magnolia Pictures to narrate a new version of the video and redistribute it. Sheen believes the government may have been behind the attacks. O'Donnell has been using her Web site to reprint excerpts from the 9/11 conspiracy site, Whatreallyhappened.com. Magnolia Films founder Mark Cuban, who also owns the Dallas Mavericks, said they're also looking for a film telling the other side of the story, saying "we like controversial subjects."
Note: To view this film which has awoken tens of millions to the 9/11 cover-up, click here.
It's a two-hour ferry ride to the Danish island of Samso. To visit Samso is to see the future. Samso is an area about 40 square miles long with a permanent population of about 4,000 — all of them living a green dream. Take farmer Erik Andersen. His tractor runs on oil from rape seed, which he grows. His hot water and power come from his solar panels or wind turbines. There's not a fossil fuel in sight. "It's a very good feeling because the island is a renewable energy island," Anderson says. Ten years ago, Andersen and the people of Samso accepted a challenge from Denmark's government: Could they run their farms; could they power their businesses; could they lead their lives in an entirely energy self-sufficient and carbon-neutral way? Now they have the answer. They can. "Because it's a good idea for the environment," Andersen explains. To harness the wind, of which they have plenty, they built wind turbines. To provide heat, they burn locally grown straw in central plants that produce super hot water and pump it through underground pipes into peoples' homes. It's not only more efficient than running individual furnaces, it's carbon neutral. The net greenhouse gas emissions from these plants? Zero. It's a system that just recycles itself, says Jens Peter Nielson with the Samso Energy Authority. Even after a freezing cold night, the days short and cloudy, the solar-heated hot water is still hot. The Samso scheme has become so successful that the island has installed a string of turbines offshore to make surplus power to sell to the mainland.
Note: For further inspiring examples of developments in new energy technologies, click here.
A Florida man with no medical training has invented a machine that he believes may lead to a cure for cancer. John Kanzius ... wondered if his background in physics and radio could come in handy in treating the disease from which he suffers himself. After 24 rounds of chemotherapy, the former broadcaster decided that he did not want to see others suffer trying to cure the disease. Kanzius said it was watching kids being treated that affected him the most. "Particularly, young children walk in with smiles, and then you'd see them three weeks later and their smiles had disappeared. I said to myself, 'We're in a barbaric type of medicine." Kanzius said his machine basically makes cells act like antennae to pick up a signal and self-destruct. Unlike current cancer treatment, Kanzius' machine does not use radiation, and unlike today's radio-frequency treatments, it's noninvasive. Now, some of the nation's most prominent doctors and scientists are using Kanzius' machines in their research. In January, researchers said they performed a breakthrough at the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. "The complete killing of pancreatic cells in laboratory conditions is encouraging," Dr. Steve Curley said. Kanzius explained that his machine uses a solution filled with nanoparticles, which measure no more than one-billionth of a meter. A test subject would be injected with either gold or carbon nanoparticles, which would make their way through the body and attach to the cancerous cells. The test subject would then enter the machine and receive a dose of radio frequency waves, theoretically heating and killing the cancerous cells in moments and leaving nearby cells untouched.
Note: For more on this exciting machine and the man behind it, click here. For other major media articles relating potential cancer cures, click here.
Federal prosecutors counted immigration violations, marriage fraud and drug trafficking among anti-terror cases in the four years after 9/11 even though no evidence linked them to terror activity, a Justice Department audit said Tuesday. Overall, nearly all of the terrorism-related statistics on investigations, referrals and cases examined by department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine were either diminished or inflated. Only two of 26 sets of department data reported between 2001 and 2005 were accurate, the audit found. It found that data from the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys were the most severely flawed. Auditors said the office, which compiles statistics from the 94 federal prosecutors' districts nationwide, both under- and over-counted the number of terror-related cases during a four-year period. The numbers, used to monitor the department's progress in battling terrorists, are reported to Congress and the public and help, in part, shape the department's budget. Other examples, according to the audit, included: charges against a marriage-broker for being paid to arrange six fraudulent marriages between Tunisians and U.S. citizens, prosecution of a Mexican citizen who falsely identified himself as another person in a passport application, [and] charges against a suspect for dealing firearms without a license.
Note: To read the report by the Justice Department, click here.
What could be greener than a hydrogen car in your driveway? Try a solar-powered hydrogen fueling station in your garage. Australian scientists have developed a prototype of such a device. It's about the size of a filing cabinet and runs on electricity generated by rooftop solar panels. The first version is expected to produce enough hydrogen to give your runabout a range of some 100 miles without emitting a molecule of planet-warming greenhouse gas. Road trips are out of the question, but it's enough juice for running errands or powering fleets of delivery trucks. Tests of the home fueling system began early this year with commercial trials two years off.
Vows of celibacy weren't always required [for Catholic] priests. The church's absolute celibacy dogma is relatively recent, a mere half-millennium old in the grand span of Catholic history. So why has the church maintained this curious anachronism that disallows priests from marriage and a family? Ask St. Paul. "The unmarried man is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to please the Lord; but the married man is anxious about worldly affairs, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided," he wrote. On the other hand, St. Peter, the first pope, that revered rock upon which the church was built, was a husband. Close Bible readers know this because St. Mark's gospel makes elliptical reference to the apostle's mother-in-law. For 1,700 years, priests often married. The 43rd decree of the Council of Elvira in the fourth century, for instance, stated that any priest who slept with his wife the night before celebrating mass would lose his job. By the sixth century, the vow of celibacy had actually loosened further. Pope Pelagius II instituted a policy in 580 of allowing priests to marry as long as they did not transfer property to wives or children. Not until the Council of Trent in 1563 ... did the Vatican gavel fall resoundingly in favor of absolute celibacy.
Data supplied by tobacco companies strongly suggest that in recent years manufacturers deliberately boosted nicotine levels in cigarettes to more effectively hook smokers, Harvard researchers conclude in a study being released today. The companies increasingly used tobacco richer in nicotine and made design changes to give smokers more puffs per cigarette, according to the analysis from the Harvard School of Public Health. The report expands on a landmark Massachusetts Department of Public Health study issued last August showing that the amount of nicotine that could be inhaled from cigarettes increased an average of 10 percent from 1998 through 2004. A 1996 state law required cigarette makers to test the nicotine that could be inhaled from their products, and the state ordered the use of machines that simulate a typical smoker's puffing. The Harvard researchers, who corroborated the basic findings of the state study, wanted to determine why cigarettes were delivering more nicotine. "Industry says it's changed," said Greg Connolly, an author of the Harvard study. "They've changed -- maybe for the worse." The Harvard study relies on information supplied by the industry. "It was systematic, it was pervasive, it involved all the manufacturers, and it was by design," said Dr. Howard Koh, an associate dean at the Harvard School of Public Health and an author of the study. Another author said that the likelihood that the nicotine increase happened by chance was less than 1 in 1,000.
Families earning more than $1 million a year saw their federal tax rates drop more sharply than any group in the country as a result of President Bush’s tax cuts, according to a new Congressional study. The study, by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, also shows that tax rates for middle-income earners edged up in 2004 ... while rates for people at the very top continued to decline. While Mr. Bush’s tax cuts reduced rates for people at every income level, they offered the biggest benefits by far to people at the very top — especially the top 1 percent of income earners. Two of his signature measures, tax cuts on investment income and a steady reduction of estate taxes, overwhelmingly benefit the wealthiest households. Households in the top 1 percent of earnings, which had an average income of $1.25 million, saw their effective individual tax rates drop to 19.6 percent in 2004 from 24.2 percent in 2000. The rate cut was twice as deep as for middle-income families. Those rates could decline even more as the estate tax on inherited wealth is gradually phased out by the start of 2010. Mr. Bush and his Republican allies in Congress want to permanently extend that tax cut and almost all of the others. The cost of doing that would be more than $1 trillion over the next decade. Families in the bottom 40 percent of income earners, those with incomes below $36,300, typically paid no federal income tax and received money back from the government.
A 3-year-old boy was caught by a passerby after falling from the fourth-floor window of an apartment in New York City Thursday, police said. The boy was caught by a 39-year-old man passing under the window. The boy was taken to hospital with just minor cuts and abrasions to his head and face. Brothers Julio Gonzalez and Pedro Navarez described to New York television news ... how they caught the child after spotting it hanging from a fire escape. "He was coming down pretty hard, so hard that when he landed in my arms my sneaker just flew right off and I fell down to the ground," Navarez told CBS 2 News. The brothers said the baby then bounced off Navarez's chest and into the arms of Gonzalez, who then also fell down. "We caught him and the boy's all right, thank God," Gonzalez said. "When I (initially) saw that baby I just ran. I wasn't thinking about anything, I was just thinking about catching that baby." When reporters asked New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly about the incident he said: "This is the week of heroes in New York." On Tuesday, New York construction worker Wesley Autrey jumped onto subway tracks to pin down a stricken stranger just in time to allow an oncoming train to pass over them.
"Primetime" wanted to know if ordinary people today would still follow orders, even if they believed their actions were causing someone else pain. Would as many follow the seemingly dangerous and painful orders as in the original experiment [conducted by Stanley Milgram at Yale in 1963]? After contacting respected psychologist Jerry Burger at Santa Clara University in California, ABC News was able to replicate Milgram's study in a modified way. Burger said, "People have often asked the question, 'Would we find these kinds of results today?' and some people try to dismiss the Milgram findings by saying, 'That's something that happened back in the '60s. People aren't like that anymore.'" In ABC News' version of the Milgram experiment, we tested 18 men, and found that 65 percent of them agreed to administer increasingly painful electric shocks when ordered by an authority figure. 22 women signed up for our experiment. Even though most people said that women would be less likely to inflict pain on the learner, a surprising 73 percent yielded to the orders of the experimenter. Out of the 30 people we tested with an additional accomplice acting as a moral guide, 63 percent still inflicted electric shocks, even though the accomplice refused to go on. Our subjects had an unusually high level of education. 22.9 percent had some college, 40 percent had bachelor's degrees and 20 percent had master's degrees.
Note: For more on the famous Milgram experiment, click here. For powerfully inspiring information on how we can change this and build a better world, click here.
Wesley Autrey faced a harrowing choice as he tried to rescue a teenager who fell off a platform onto a subway track in front of an approaching train: Struggle to hoist him back up to the platform in time, or take a chance on finding safety under the train. At first, he tried to pull the young man up, but he was afraid he wouldn’t make it in time and they would both be killed. “So I just chose to dive on top of him and pin him down,” he said. Autrey and the teen landed in the drainage trough between the rails Tuesday as a southbound No. 1 train entered the 137th Street/City College station. Two cars passed over the men — with about 2 inches to spare, Autrey said. The troughs are typically about 12 inches deep but can be as shallow as 8 or as deep as 24, New York City Transit officials said. Relatives identified the teen as Cameron Hollopeter of Littleton, Mass., a student at the New York Film Academy. Autrey had been waiting for a train with his two young daughters. After the train stopped, he heard bystanders scream and yelled out: “We’re OK down here, but I’ve got two daughters up there. Let them know their father’s OK,” The New York Times reported. While spectators cheered Autrey, hugged him and hailed him as a hero, he didn’t see it that way. “I don’t feel like I did something spectacular; I just saw someone who needed help,” he told the Times. “I did what I felt was right.”
Note: Don't miss the inspiring two-minute video clip of this incident at the link above. And for lots more highly inspiring stories and resources, click here.
Consumer advocates and others have complained bitterly in recent years that the Food and Drug Administration has veered from its scientific roots. Later this week, the agency is expected to release a formal recommendation that milk and meat from cloned animals should be allowed on grocery store shelves. The long-awaited decision comes as polling data to be released this week show that the public continues to have little appetite for such food, with many people saying the FDA should keep it off the market. That raises the issue: Should decisions such as this one be based solely on science, or should officials take into account public sensitivities, which may be unscientific but are undeniably real? "There is more to this issue than just food safety," said Susan Ruland of the International Dairy Foods Association, which represents such major companies as Kraft Foods and Dannon. The organization's member companies are concerned that sales of U.S. dairy products could drop by 15 percent or more if the FDA allows the sale of meat and milk from clones. Relatively few cloned farm animals exist; there are an estimated 150 clones out of the nation's 9 million dairy cows. But biotechnology companies are gearing up to clone farmers' tastiest cattle and pigs and most productive dairy cows. In the University of Maryland survey, nearly half of those polled asserted that it was not yet possible to clone farm animals for food. For the most part, people don't know this is a reality yet.
A Toronto-led team of researchers has discovered a trigger for Type 1 diabetes, a breakthrough that has long evaded scientists and could lead the way to preventing the disease. The team found that abnormal nerve endings in the insulin-producing cells of the pancreas initiated a chain of events that caused Type 1 diabetes in mice. When they removed the nerve cells, the mice did not develop the disorder. That means diabetes may be a disease of the nervous system, not just an autoimmune disease, said Dr. Hans Michael Dosch, a senior scientist at the Hospital for Sick Children and the study's main investigator. In a reversal of what they expected, the researchers also found injecting substance P — a chemical secreted by nerve cells — into mice whose islet cells were inflamed and on the way to being destroyed not only eliminated the inflammation but reversed it. "The blood glucose normalizes overnight and it stays low for weeks to months — this is with a single shot," Dosch said. "We now have 4-month-old mice that are non-diabetic that used to be diabetic" — a period equivalent to six to eight years in humans. Experts say the findings, reported yesterday in the journal Cell, will change the way scientists think about diabetes. "It really is a breakthrough for the diabetes community," said Pam Ohashi, a professor of immunology at the University of Toronto. Dosch has immediate plans to move his research from mice to humans. He is launching a clinical trial in January to figure out if patients who have a high risk of Type 1 diabetes have the same sensory nerve abnormalities. "If they do, then we have fantastic new therapeutic strategies," said Dosch, who is also a professor of pediatrics and immunology at U of T.
Note: The pharmaceutical industry makes huge profits from diabetics. Big profits have been known to prevent cures from making it to market. Click here for more. Let's hope this important research moves forward.
Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news articles on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.