Thursday, Nov 20th
Last update09:56:42 AM GMT
The Maryland State Police classified 53 nonviolent activists as terrorists and entered their names and personal information into state and federal databases that track terrorism suspects, the state police chief acknowledged yesterday.
Police Superintendent Terrence B. Sheridan revealed at a legislative hearing that the surveillance operation, which targeted opponents of the death penalty and the Iraq war, was far more extensive than was known when its existence was disclosed in July.
A month of primary recounts in the election battleground of Palm Beach County, Florida, has twice flipped the winner in a local judicial race and revealed grave problems in the county's election infrastructure, including thousands of misplaced ballots and vote tabulation machines that are literally unable to produce the same results twice.
Experts say the brew of administrative bungling and mysterious technological failures raises new and troubling questions about the county that played a crucial role in the 2000 presidential election debacle, and is one of a handful of counties considered pivotal in the upcoming presidential election. Voting advocates are fearful that problems here -- and perhaps in other election hot spots -- could trigger a replay of the disputed 2000 election.
TVNL Comment: Does anyone alive still believe that George W. Bush was elected? They stole both elections and had hundreds of local elections rigged since 2000.
Far from learning the lessons of past conflict, the country's military seem ever more willing to resort to brute force.
The general promised "disproportionate" force to destroy entire villages identified as sources of Hizbullah rocket fire, the reasoning being that they are "not civilian villages" but rather "military bases" – the kind of reasoning that can land you in a war crimes tribunal.
The Food and Drug Administration has told the Laboratory Corporation of America that it is illegally marketing a blood test to detect ovarian cancer, according to a warning letter posted Wednesday on the F.D.A.’s Web site. The test, introduced in June, has raised hopes among women and their doctors because it promises to detect ovarian cancer at an early stage, when it is still treatable.
But some outside experts, including the Society of Gynecologic Oncologists, have said the test had not been proved accurate and might cause women to have unnecessary surgeries to remove their ovaries. The F.D.A. itself, in a previous letter to LabCorp, said the test “may harm the public health.”
An US federal appeal court has blocked a judge's order that 17 Chinese detainees at the Guantanamo Bay camp should immediately be released.
A district court had said it was wrong for the Bush administration to continue holding the Chinese Muslim Uighurs, as it had no evidence against them.
It also had fewer side effects than many standard drugs used to help those battling despair.
Researchers compared the effects of the plant hypericum perforatum - popularly known as St John's Wort - with placebos or a wide range of old and new anti-depressants, including those from the new generation of SSRI drugs, such as Prozac and Seroxat.
The findings could prompt more GPs to prescribe St John's Wort.
In Germany, it is commonly given to children and teenagers.
1) The Senate is made up of multi-millionaires who maintain power by accepting and granting favors. Those with large amounts of money, such as the Big Pharma lobby, mostly get what they want even though the American public is typically shafted in the arrangement. Senators don't need their paychecks; they get high on brokering power and facilitating deals to the highest bidder, based on whichever political party is most in control and who their friends may be.
2) While the House has some entrenched multi-millionaires who operate like those in the Senate, most members of the House are not the cream of any crop and could not make as much money in the private sector as they are being paid by their position in the House of Representatives (which includes a retirement plan that would be the envy of every American). Most of these people desperately need their paychecks and will do almost anything to keep them coming.
Although a great deal is now known about the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Bagram, and Abu Ghraib, little has been asked - and less revealed - about the years of solitary military detention and interrogation without trial at naval brigs in Virginia and South Carolina endured by two U.S. citizens and a legal resident - Yaser Hamdi, Jose Padilla and Ali al-Marri.
The U.S. embassy in Lebanon said on Wednesday that two American citizens were missing and appealed for information on their whereabouts.
The embassy said on its website two Americans -- who are believed to be journalists -- had not been heard from since October 1 when they left Beirut for the northern city of Tripoli, where anti-U.S. Sunni Muslim militant groups are active.
Page 1067 of 1156
