The report stresses that clear and precise regulations need to be established so "only safe animal dietary supplements are allowed on the market." An improved adverse event reporting system for animal dietary supplements would help, because existing systems have various deficiencies, including limited public access, passive rather than active solicitation of adverse events, and unclear discrimination of minor versus serious adverse events.
Additionally, the "generally recognized as safe" designation used for both human and animal ingredients is helpful in determining safe intake levels, but safety in humans does not guarantee safety in animals, the committee noted. For example, excess garlic intake can cause hemolytic anemia in horses, dogs, and cats, but this adverse effect has not been reported in humans.
Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-FL) owns several car dealerships in Florida. In September 2005, dealership employees were pressured into contributing to Rep. Buchanan’s congressional campaign and some were reimbursed for making contributions. Former employee Carlo Bell was called into a manager’s office and told that if he was part of the “team” he would make a contribution. Fearing for his job, Bell agreed to make the donation and was handed $1,000 in cash. Bell also saw two other employees, Jack Prater and Jason Martin take cash in return for promising to write checks and FEC reports confirm that both men made $1,000 contributions to the Buchanan campaign.Dealership employee D.J. Padilla was told that any employee who donated to the campaign committee would be repaid, but he refused to participate knowing that accepting repayment for a contribution is illegal.
"Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea", about the friendship between a five-year-old boy and a mermaid girl who wishes to live in his world, has become one of the most popular Japanese movies in its home market in its first month of release.Box office sales have surpassed 10 billion yen ($91 million), and the film's theme tune features as a ringtone on thousands of Japanese mobile phones.
The film is also set to be shown at the Venice Film Festival, which starts next week, and then it will be distributed in the United States, said a spokesman for Japanese distributor, Toho Co Ltd, although details have not been set.
I want to meet the lonely schmo who WANTS to receive those calls.The Federal Trade Commission today announced two amendments to the Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR). One will expressly bar telemarketing calls that deliver prerecorded messages, unless a consumer previously has agreed to accept such calls from the seller. The other related technical amendment modifies the TSR's method of calculating the maximum permissible level of "call abandonment."
The amendments will not affect consumers' ability to continue to receive calls that deliver purely "informational" prerecorded messages - notifying recipients, for example, that their flight has been cancelled, that they have a service appointment, or similar messages. Such purely "informational" calls are not covered by the TSR because they do not attempt to sell the called party any goods or services.
"Just like the provisions of the Do Not Call Registry, these changes will protect consumers' privacy," said FTC Chairman William E. Kovacic. "The amendments now directly enable consumers to choose whether they want to receive prerecorded telemarketing calls."
From The Independent:
Ostracised from her family and village, Saliha was convicted of escaping from home and illegal sexual relations. The first carries a maximum penalty of 10 years, the second 20. These are two of the most common accusations facing female prisoners in Afghanistan.
Two-thirds of the women in Lashkar Gah's medieval-looking jail have been convicted of illegal sexual relations, but most are simply rape victims – mirroring the situation nationwide. The system does not distinguish between those who have been attacked and those who have chosen to run off with a man.
[...] Colonel Ghulam Ali, a high-ranking regional security officer, explained sternly that he supported the authorities' right to convict victims of rape. "In Afghanistan whether it is forced or not forced it is a crime because the Islamic rules say that it is," he claimed.
From BBC News:The bug was ultimately named after the scientist, but I like his original plan:A scientist who bought a fossilised insect on the web auction site eBay for £20 has discovered that it belongs to a previously unknown species of aphid.
Dr Richard Harrington, vice-president of the UK's Royal Entomological Society, bought the fossil from an individual in Lithuania.
He then sent it off to an aphid expert in Denmark, who confirmed the insect was a new species, now extinct.
"I had thought it would be rather nice to call it Mindarus ebayi," said Dr Harrington. "Unfortunately using flippant names to describe new species is rather frowned upon these days."
The poll shows McCain taking a 46-41 lead over the Illinois senator, which is a reversal from the 7-point advantage Obama enjoyed when the same poll was conducted in July, according to Reuters.
What is likely most troubling for Democrats is that McCain has taken the lead in that poll -- 49 percent to 40 percent -- on the question of which candidate would be the best manager of the economy.
Apple has admitted that a battery fault had led to a small number of its first generation iPod Nanos overheating.
But it said that the problem was "rare", occurring in 0.001% of devices sold between 2005 and 2006 adding there had been no serious injuries or damage.
The New York Post reports that "a massive swarm of creepy bugs infesting a Queens house sent two cops and the homeowner to the hospital yesterday, authorities said."
Apparently, there were so many bugs that the cops ran out screaming, covered head-to-toe in what has been described as "ticks or fleas." Now, I'm no entomologist, but ticks and fleas don't look very much alike. I wonder what exactly these cops found, and whether New York is safe.Yeah, how dare Columbia University - whose tenured faculty includes only 30% women who probably make 75 cents to the dollar - keep men down?!Anti-feminist lawyer Roy Den Hollander sued Columbia University Monday, accusing it of turning feminism into the school's religion - and teaching that men are "the primary cause for most, if not all, the world's ills."
[...] In a suit filed in Manhattan Federal Court, he complains that the Ivy League school in Morningside Heights uses federal money to fund a "religionist belief system called feminism."The class-action suit argues that Columbia's women's studies program demonizes men and exalts women to justify discrimination against men based on collective guilt.
The civil rights suit is the latest in a Hollander-led campaign attacking the alleged infringement of men's rights.
A funeral home used a special embalming treatment to keep the corpse of 24-year-old Angel Pantoja Medina standing upright for his three-day wake.
Dressed in a Yankees baseball cap and sunglasses, Pantoja was mourned by relatives while propped upright in his mother's living room.
His brother Carlos told the El Nuevo Dia newspaper the victim had long said he wanted to be upright for his own wake: "He wanted to be happy, standing."
And yet I wonder why exactly he wanted to remain standing. Perhaps to better chase down humankind??
A wild dolphin is apparently teaching other members of her group to walk on their tails, a behaviour usually seen only after training in captivity.[...] "This indicates that they do learn from each other, which is not a surprise really, but it does also seem that they exhibit elements of what in humans we would call 'cultural' behaviour," said Dr Bossley.
"These are things that groups develop and are passed between individuals and that come to define those groups, such as language or dancing; and it would seem that among the Port River dolphins we may have an incipient tail-walking culture."
Inspired by Heath Ledger's wicked portrayal of the Joker, who left playing cards at the scenes of his crimes, the two 18-year-olds allegedly wrote threatening messages on cards and left them at a local Wal-Mart and Kmart and under car windshields outside a Dairy Queen and an auto parts store on the weekend of Aug. 9-10, according to local police.
The prank ended up alarming dozens of people who found the cards, landed Dirico and Stafford in jail for a night and led to them being charged with conspiracy to commit an act of terrorism, a felony that carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
Kemerovo prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation into the activities of an opposition activist, following allegations that he made offensive comments about law enforcement officers in a blog.The Coozer Files would stand in solidarity with our oppressed bloggy brethren, but LiveJournal is SO 2002.
The blogger, Dmitry Solovyov, coordinator of the Kemerovo region branch of the Oborona movement, faces up to two years in prison if charged and convicted.
Oborona's Moscow coordinator, Oleg Kozlovsky, said the case was an attempt to intimidate members of the movement, which has regularly participated in rallies staged by The Other Russia opposition coalition. "This is an attempt to put pressure on Oborona, both at the local and federal levels," Kozlovsky said Friday.
Solovyov is suspected of libeling and inciting hatred against police and Federal Security Service officers in his posts on LiveJournal, Kozlovsky said.
No matter what humans do, we screw things up. From New Scientist:Even when they tiptoe discreetly through the undergrowth, nature lovers and ecotourists may be having an unexpectedly damaging impact on wildlife. A study of protected Californian forest has shown that hiking, wildlife-watching and similar low-impact activities are linked to a sharp drop in numbers of carnivores such as bobcats and coyotes.
"We saw dramatic, fivefold reductions in the native species," says Adina Merenlender of the University of California, Berkeley, who ran the study with Sarah Reed of the San Francisco-based Wilderness Society.
Ecotourism is big business. In 2004, it grew three times as fast as the tourist industry as a whole. One in five tourists now go on eco-holidays. It has been shown to have an impact on a range of species, from dolphins and dingoes to penguins and polar bears.
Playing video games improves manual dexterity among surgeons, making them faster and less likely to make mistakes, US researchers have said.Presumably, the laparoscopic surgeons also became better at carjacking and killing hookers.
[...] Laparoscopic surgeons who played video games were 27 percent faster at advanced surgical procedures, and made 37 percent fewer errors, compared to their non-gaming colleagues, the study found.
The International Herald Tribune's article "How A Spat Became A Showdown" is a must-read that gets behind the headlines and explains why, how, and what is going on in Georgia.The story of how a 16-year, low-grade conflict over who should rule two small, mountainous regions in the Caucasus erupted into the most serious post-cold-war showdown between the United States and Russia is one of miscalculation, missed signals and overreaching, according to interviews with diplomats and senior officials in the United States, the European Union, Russia and Georgia. In many cases, the officials would speak only on the condition of anonymity.
It is also the story of how both Democrats and Republicans have misread Russia's determination to dominate its traditional sphere of influence.
As with many foreign policy issues, this one highlighted a continuing fight within the administration. Vice President Dick Cheney and his aides and allies, who saw Georgia as a role model for their democracy promotion campaign, pushed to sell Georgia more arms, including Stinger antiaircraft missiles, so that it could defend itself against possible Russian aggression.
On the other side, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley and William Burns, the new under secretary of state for political affairs, argued that such a sale would provoke Russia, which would see it as arrogant meddling in its turf, the officials and diplomats said.
They describe three leaders on a collision course. Bush, rewarding Georgia for its robust troop contribution to Iraq — a per-capita ratio higher than America's own troop contribution — promised NATO membership and its accompanying umbrella of American military support. Putin, angry at what he saw as American infringement right in his backyard, decided that Georgia was the line in the sand that the West would not be allowed to cross.
And Saakashvili, unabashedly pro-American, was determined to show, once and for all, that Georgia was no longer a vassal of Russia.
Fingertips, noses and kidneys may someday be grown to your body's specifications, thanks to a recent Columbia University breakthrough.
Biomedical-engineering Professor Sam Sia and doctoral student Brian Gillette have figured out how to grow cells on a computer-designed latticework of collagen fibers.
"[This discovery] might lead to putting together tissues or whole organs," said Gillette.
I am 100% pro-choice, and I hate being alarmist, but clearly aborted babies are rising up to exact their revenge.A premature baby who was pronounced dead "came back to life" Sunday after five hours in Nahariya Hospital.
The baby girl, who was in a cooler at the hospital, suddenly showed signs of life and was being treated in the premature baby unit.
Doctors estimated that the cooler brought the fetus "back to life."
The mother, 26, from a Western Galilee village, was in the fifth month of her pregnancy when she underwent a series of tests, during which it was discovered that she was suffering from internal bleeding and that the embryo had ceased to show signs of life.
The woman underwent an abortion and the baby, weighing 610 grams, was extracted from her womb without a pulse, hospital officials said.
"Red Spring Woods looks like a backyard," complained Legis. David Denenberg (D-Merrick), referring to the county's first open space purchase of 9 wooded acres in Glen Cove not far from County Executive Thomas Suozzi's home. "I'd hate to think we used $4 million to buy people's backyards that we can't go on."Ah.
[...] At Red Spring Woods, purchased in September 2006, there were no signs identifying the acreage as public property and no obvious paths to enter the parcel, which is ringed by homes.
A collection of pornography belonging to Franz Kafka has been discovered in the British Library in London and the Bodleian in Oxford. It appears that the stash had been concealed by scholars in an attempt to preserve the writer's image.
[...] "These are not naughty post-cards from the beach," Mr. Hawes was quoted as saying in the Times of London, to counter any objections that Kafka would never have gone in for this sort of thing. "They are undoubtedly porn, pure and simple. Some of it is quite dark. It's quite unpleasant."
The future may not smell too rosy – it may lie in sewage. As cities and industries suck up ever more of the world’s scarce water resources, agriculture is destined to rely increasingly on recycling the contents of urban sewers, according to a new international study of “wastewater agriculture”.The good news – for farmers at least – is that the irrigation water from sewers comes with free fertiliser in the form of the nitrates and phosphates bound up in human faeces. The bad news is that this coprological cornucopia is filling vegetables sold in city markets with heavy metals, pathogenic bacteria and worms.
An estimated one fifth of the world’s food is growing in urban areas, with perishables like vegetables to the fore. But a 50-city study by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) – a World Bank-backed research agency based in Sri Lanka – finds that often the only source of the essential irrigation water to grow many of those crops is city sewage.
The second paragraph is what amazes me. The foreign ministers are together in a room to discuss NORTH KOREA'S THREATS OF NUCLEAR WAR, and Japan and China are still bickering over crappy frozen dumplings.Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura said Sunday he agreed with a senior Chinese official that the two countries should boost cooperation to solve food poisoning cases involving Chinese-made "gyoza" dumplings.
Komura said that during talks with State Councilor Dai Bingguo, he also urged Beijing to exert its leadership in the six-party process for denuclearizing North Korea, which is facing the question of how to verify nuclear information provided by Pyongyang.
"The dumpling issue is a very important problem from the point of view of the feelings of the two countries," Komura said at a Beijing hotel. "We agreed to speed up cooperation and exchange of opinions between the countries' investigative authorities."
Brian77008 wrote: Perhaps China's actions weren't anti-religious. Perhaps their actions were anti-tackiness.
Eidos Interactive (Tomb Raider, Age of Conan, Lego Star Wars) has just announced a new Batman game for the 360, PS3, and PC that sounds halfway decent. From GameInfoWire:
In Batman: Arkham Asylum, developed by Rocksteady Studios, the player assumes the role of Batman as he delivers The Joker to Arkham Asylum. There, the imprisoned super-villains have set a trap and an immersive combat gaming experience unfolds. With an original script penned by Emmy Award-winning Batman writer Paul Dini, the game brings the universe of DC Comics’ detective to life with stunning graphics.
“In Batman: Arkham Asylum Eidos and Warner Bros. are building a true action adventure game experience worthy of gamers and fans,” said Phil Rogers, CEO of Eidos Interactive. “Players become Batman, like he has never been seen before in a video game, as he fights through intense circumstances in Arkham Asylum utilizing his intuitive detective skills and aggressive melee attacks.”
This could be a cool game if the environment isn't a repetitive dark, sludgy dungeon kind of thing. And if Bookworm is in it. The Batman franchise is nothing without Bookworm.
Mexican archeologists have discovered a maze of stone temples in underground caves, some submerged in water and containing human bones, which ancient Mayans believed was a portal where dead souls entered the underworld.Clad in scuba gear and edging through narrow tunnels, researchers discovered the stone ruins of eleven sacred temples and what could be the remains of human sacrifices at the site in the Yucatan Peninsula.
Archeologists say Mayans believed the underground complex of water-filled caves leading into dry chambers -- including an underground road stretching some 330 feet -- was the path to a mythical underworld, known as Xibalba.
According to an ancient Mayan scripture, the Popol Vuh, the route was filled with obstacles, including rivers filled with scorpions, blood and pus and houses shrouded in darkness or swarming with shrieking bats, Guillermo de Anda, one of the lead investigators at the site, said on Thursday.
The souls of the dead followed a mythical dog who could see at night, de Anda said.
[...] The Mayans built soaring pyramids and elaborate palaces in Central America and southern Mexico before mysteriously abandoning their cities around 900 A.D.
A crowd of people covered in fake blood and guts - many yelling for brains - met at the city's art gallery and did a loop through the busy downtown, acquiring many puzzled looks along the way.Part art project, part meaningless fun, the so-called ZombieWalk has been going on for several years.
Participants are encouraged to act as zombies and to communicate only in a manner consistent with zombie behaviour.
This part is telling:
[One participant] says she came out because she finds that Vancouver doesn't have many fun things to do.Canadians are turning into zombies out of boredom!!
More than half of 26,000 students from 70 colleges and universities who completed a survey on suicidal experiences reported having at least one episode of suicidal thinking during their lives.
Fifteen percent said they seriously considered acting on the thoughts and more than five percent reported making at least one suicide attempt.
They must major in melodrama.
But the quick-thinking mayor suggested these could be the perfect conditions for "ugly ducklings" to flourish into beautiful swans and find true happiness in the Isa.Classy.
"May I suggest if there are five blokes to every girl, we should find out where there are beauty-disadvantaged women and ask them to proceed to Mount Isa," Cr Molony said.
"Quite often you will see walking down the street a lass who is not so attractive with a wide smile on her face. Whether it is recollection of something previous or anticipation for the next evening, there is a degree of happiness.
"Often those who are beauty-disadvantaged are uphappy with their lot. Some, in other places in Australia, need to proceed to Mount Isa where happiness awaits. And, really, beauty is only skin deep. Isn't there a fairy tale about an ugly duckling that evolves into a beautiful swan?"
Armed guards ordered 274 stranded passengers out of the Punta Cana airport with no place to go after bad weather forced U.S. Airways to cancel its flight from the Dominican Republic to Philadelphia. Several passengers ended up sleeping in a bus after the airline responded to Tropical Storm Fay by asking passengers to pick up their luggage and get lost.
"When the federal government started making schools gun-free zones, that's when all of these shootings started," [the school superintendent] wrote on the Fort Worth Star-Telegram's web site.
Britain's honeybees have suffered catastrophic losses this year, according to a survey of the nation's beekeepers, contributing to a shortage of honey and putting at risk the pollination of fruits and vegetables.The survey by the British Beekeepers' Association (BBKA) revealed that nearly one in three of the UK's 240,000 honeybee hives did not survive this winter and spring.
God have mercy on our souls.
U.S. observers have noticed birds singing long after dark this summer.In England, researchers found that the British robin was forced to sing at night because daytime traffic was drowning out his mating serenades.
The study measured noise levels and singing at 67 sites. Scientists found that birds sang only during the day at 49 sites, and day and night at 18 sites. Daytime noise levels at those 18 sites were significantly higher.
Bobby Guffey usually plays the same combination of numbers representing the birthdays of his five children. But he left his glasses at home when he bought the winning ticket Aug. 6, accidentally entering the last number as 48 instead of 46.The Hoosier Lotto ticket ended up being worth $3 million.
The knighthood ceremony began Friday morning with speeches and a fanfare before Nils arrived, under escort with the King's Guard Color Detachment. Nils then reviewed the troops lined up outside the penguin enclosure at the zoo, waddling down the row of uniformed soldiers, occasionally stopping to crane his neck and peer inquisitively at their crisp uniforms before being guided forward by his handler.More on Sir Waddle Butt here.
We’re sorry to report that since Tuesday we’ve been experiencing issues with our shipping system, so many of you have not received DVDs in a timely manner and many of you have not received emails letting you know we got a DVD back from you.
We pride ourselves in delighting you, and we’ve let you down. We apologize and are working around the clock to restore normal operations. To all of you whose shipments have been delayed, we’ll be automatically applying a credit to your next billing statement. Or, if you are new to Netflix and your first shipments have been delayed, we recognize that this is not a good way to begin your Netflix membership and we’ll automatically extend your free trial.
Our goal is to ship DVDs as soon as possible and to keep you updated. Again, we are sorry for the inconvenience we’ve caused you and thank you for your patience.
The Netflix Team
A man living in South Wales, United Kingdom was ordered to destroy his entire music collection after creating a ruckus by listening to the music at an extremely high volume. Police seized his stereo equipment in a raid.
The next time you hear someone blaming "beer goggles" for their behaviour, you may have to believe them. People really do appear more attractive when our perceptions are changed by drinking alcohol.
[...] Both men and women who had consumed alcohol rated the faces as being more attractive than did the controls. Surprisingly, the effect was not limited to the opposite sex - volunteers who had drunk alcholol also rated people from their own sex as more attractive.
The study involved about 100 women, aged 18 to 35, who chose which of six male body-odor samples they preferred. They were tested at the start of the study when none of the participants were taking contraceptive pills and three months later after 40 of the women had started taking the pill more than two months prior.I like this article because it provides scientific explanation for why loose women hang out with jerks, and it also infers that jerks smell like girls.For the non-pill users, results didn't show a significant preference for similar or dissimilar MHC odors. When women started taking birth control, their odor preferences changed. These women were much more likely than non-pill users to prefer MHC-similar odors.
"The results showed that the preferences of women who began using the contraceptive pill shifted towards men with genetically similar odors," Roberts said.
For people who dislike needles, medical tests that require a drop of saliva instead of a vial of blood will one day make a trip to a doctor or dentist much easier. But as scientists now construct the first of these saliva tests for early signs of cancer and other diseases, they continue to push the technological envelope in interesting ways.As published in the August issue of the journal Biosensors and Bioelectronics, a team of researchers supported by the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR), part of the National Institutes of Health, report they have developed an ultra-sensitive optical protein sensor, a first for a salivary diagnostic test. The sensor can be integrated into a specially designed lab-on-a-chip, or microchip assay, and preprogrammed to bind a specific protein of interest, generating a sustained fluorescent signal as the molecules attach. A microscope then reads the intensity of the fluorescent light — a measure of the protein’s cumulative concentration in the saliva sample — and scientists gauge whether it corresponds with levels linked to developing disease.
I admit I'm no George Clooney, or even George Wendt, but Sarah Jessica Parker's face gives me the willies. SarahJessicaParkerLooksLikeAHorse.com has allowed me to laugh at my fears, though now I feel bad for the horses.
Two-thirds of U.S. corporations paid no federal income taxes between 1998 and 2005, according to a new report from Congress.The study by the Government Accountability Office released Tuesday said about 68 percent of foreign companies doing business in the U.S. avoided corporate taxes over the same period.
Collectively, the companies reported trillions of dollars in sales, according to GAO's estimate.
"It's shameful that so many corporations make big profits and pay nothing to support our country," said Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., who asked for the GAO study with Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich.
According to the NHS Direct website, "sexercise" can lower the risk of heart attacks and helps people live longer.Endorphins released during orgasm stimulate immune system cells, which also helps target illnesses like cancer, as well as wrinkles, it states.
Sexual health experts said such claims could not be scientifically proven.
Stealing from the dead is a recurrent theme in death investigations that pops up periodically, according to Dr. Randy Hanzlick, a leading forensic pathology professor and a chief medical examiner in Georgia.Why the uptick in robbing remains?"There have been cases around the country," Hanzlick told ABC News. Accusations include stealing prescription drugs, cash, personal valuables and, in one case, a handgun from the dead.
In June, a coroner's office investigator in West Virginia was accused of stealing a credit card from a body and using it to charge more than $400 at a strip club.
These incidents highlight weaknesses in the system that Hanzlick says must be examined. [...] Experts say that people who are untrained and inexperienced often qualify to hold the position of coroner in many states and counties throughout the U.S. and that the risks and consequences are great.
In Georgia, for example, anyone who is a registered voter, at least 25 years-old, has no felony conviction and has a high school diploma or equivalent is eligible to be a coroner, bearing the responsibility of leading death investigations, signing death certificates, and holding inquests.
"The coroner may be a local garage mechanic who uses a local hospital pathologist who has not had any training in forensic pathology," said Hanzlick. "The training requirements have to be stiffened up."
A giant inflatable dog turd by American artist Paul McCarthy blew away from an exhibition in the garden of a Swiss museum, bringing down a power line and breaking a greenhouse window before it landed again, the museum said Monday.The art work, titled "Complex S(expletive..)", is the size of a house. The wind carried it 200 metres (yards) from the Paul Klee Centre in Berne before it fell back to Earth in the grounds of a children's home, said museum director Juri Steiner.
The inflatable turd broke the window at the children's home when it blew away on the night of July 31, Steiner said. The art work has a safety system which normally makes it deflate when there is a storm, but this did not work when it blew away.
Steiner said McCarthy had not yet been contacted and the museum was not sure if the piece would be put back on display.
By the way, what's a "children's home"? Are they saying this gigantic mound of flying shit landed on an orphanage? Because that's hilarious.
The reason? Why do all men lose their heads? Women. The Daily Mail explains.The businessman tied one end of the rope to a tree, then climbed into his Aston Martin and wrapped the other end around his neck.
He then drove the £90,000 car into a busy main road, forcing other drivers to watch his horrific death.
According to this Forbes article, 1 in 5 Texans in Austin confess to binge drinking. And if you count the people too drunk to answer the poll, it's probably more like 1 in 4. From the article:Austin ranks high for its drinking habits across the board. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC's) 2007 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System Survey, 61.5% of adult residents say they have had at least one drink of alcohol within the past 30 days, and a staggering 20.6% of respondents confess to binge drinking, or having five or more drinks on one occasion. [...]
Coming in second on the list is Milwaukee. This city, known as "the nation's watering hole," has a long reputation as a city built on beer. It was once the nation's top beer-producing city, home to four of the world's largest breweries: Schlitz, Pabst, Miller and Blatz. Legendary sitcom characters Laverne and Shirley fixed bottle caps on one of the city's assembly lines. Even the town's baseball team--the Brewers--reflects its boozy past.Rounding out the top five hardest-drinking cities are San Francisco; Providence, R.I.; and Chicago.
Parts of the Endangered Species Act may soon be extinct. The Bush administration wants federal agencies to decide for themselves whether highways, dams, mines and other construction projects might harm endangered animals and plants.
New regulations, which don't require the approval of Congress, would reduce the mandatory, independent reviews government scientists have been performing for 35 years, according to a draft first obtained by The Associated Press. [...]
If approved, the changes would represent the biggest overhaul of endangered species regulations since 1986. They would accomplish through rules what conservative Republicans have been unable to achieve in Congress: ending some environmental reviews that developers and other federal agencies blame for delays and cost increases on many projects.
In yesterday's emergency session, the American U.N. ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, accused Moscow of attempting to orchestrate a "regime change" in Tbilisi and said Russia's "campaign of terror" in Georgia could have a serious effect on its relations with America and the rest of the world.Georgia, America, the United Nations, and France as the president of the European Union have called for a cease-fire and a return to the situation that existed before the latest hostilities in Georgia's breakaway South Ossetia region were launched on Friday. France is said to be preparing a Security Council resolution along those lines.
But the Russian U.N. ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, said such calls miss the "complex" nature of the situation. The only acceptable solution, he said, is a complete and unilateral withdrawal of Georgian troops. Former Russian "peacekeepers" in South Ossetia, he added, are now on a "peacemaking" operation.
Interesting peacekeeping operation considering a report I heard of at least 2,000 civilians killed. Meanwhile, the Independent has reported a second Russian front, indicating full-fledged invasion.
Russia opened a second front of fighting in Georgia today, sending armoured vehicles beyond two breakaway provinces and seizing a military base in the country's west, officials said.The development indicates that Russian troops have invaded Georgia proper from the separatist province of Abkhazia while most Georgian forces are locked up in fighting around South Ossetia.
And what about from Russia itself? Here's an interesting article from the Moscow Times on its country's media coverups:
Russian television is flush with footage of misery left by the Georgian assault in the separatist district of South Ossetia, but few, if any, reports mention Russia's bombing of Georgia.
William Dunbar, a correspondent in Georgia for English-language state channel Russia Today, mentioned the bombing in a report Saturday, and he has not gone on air for the station since.
"I had a series of live, video satellite links scheduled for later that day, and they were canceled by Russia Today," he said by telephone from Tbilisi on Sunday. "The real news, the real facts of the matter, didn't conform to what they were trying to report, and therefore, they wouldn't let me report it.
"I felt that I had no choice but to resign," he added.
Anyone who has ever tried smoking probably remembers that first cigarette vividly. For some, it brought a wave of nausea or a nasty coughing fit. For others, those first puffs also came with a rush of pleasure or "buzz."By the way, about that journal Addiction -- I can't stop reading it.
Now, a new study links those first experiences with smoking, and the likelihood that a person is currently a smoker, to a particular genetic variation. The finding may help explain the path that leads from that first cigarette to lifelong smoking. [...]
In a paper published online today in the journal Addiction, a multi-university collaborative team of researchers specializing in statistical genetics, gene analysis, and trait analysis reports an association between a variant in the CHRNA5 nicotine receptor gene, initial smoking experiences, and current smoking patterns.
Vice President Dick Cheney called Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili to express U.S. solidarity in the conflict with Russia and told him "Russian aggression must not go unanswered," the vice president's office said on Monday."The vice president expressed the United States' solidarity with the Georgian people and their democratically elected government in the face of this threat to Georgia's sovereignty and territorial integrity," Cheney's office said in a statement.
It said Cheney, in a phone call on Sunday, told Saakashvili that "Russian aggression must not go unanswered, and that its continuation would have serious consequences for its relations with the United States, as well as the broader international community."
Not that I disagree with the Bush admin on this one, but is it just me or do we only hear from Cheney when he's picking a fight?
