Georgia will not drug-test food stamp recipients under a controversial new law that federal and state officials concluded was illegal, the governor's office said Friday.
The Republican-controlled legislature this spring passed a law that required testing if authorities had a “reasonable suspicion” of drug use. Adults failing the test would temporarily lose food stamp benefits, although children could still receive them.
Georgia backs down on law requiring drug tests for food stamp recipients
Massive 'ocean' found under Earth's surface
Scientists have found evidence of a huge underground reservoir containing up to three times as much water as on the entirety of Earth’s surface and theorized to be the source for all of the world’s oceans.
The new evidence, published Friday in the journal Science, suggests that melting rocks, including those containing the water-rich mineral ringwoodite, may exist far deeper below the Earth's surface. The discovery suggests to researchers that most of the Earth’s water slowly seeped out from within, as opposed to arriving on ice-bearing comets, a theory many scientists have posited.
Alarmed by Iraq, Iran open to shared role with U.S. - Iran official
Shi'te Muslim Iran is so alarmed by Sunni insurgent gains in Iraq that it may be willing to cooperate with Washington in helping Baghdad fight back, a senior Iranian official told Reuters.
The idea is being discussed internally among the Islamic Republic's leadership, the senior Iranian official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity. The official had no word on whether the idea had been raised with any other party.
Alex Baer: Another Day on Planet X
Here I am again: I woke up again this morning. And, once again, I ran through all my available choices. Once more, I found no basic improvement in the human condition -- nothing astonishing had happened while I slept, no new options had evolved or hatched or arrived in flying saucers, or tunneled up from the deeps. No thoroughly new way of existing had been birthed, fizzing and crackling into existence from a wormhole's termination point on the surface of the planet nearest my thoroughly beat-up and timeworn footwear.
No, here I was able to again discover life at its simplest: There was the staying-in-the-rack option, or there was the up-and-at-'em angle. While there were no new lifeform alternatives presented overnight -- none that I could detect, at any rate -- at least both of the standard choices were still available. I wake up slow and groggy these days, but I glommed onto that much, sure enough.
After Lull, U.S. Drone Strikes Kill 13 in Pakistan
Missiles from U.S. drones slammed into militant hideouts overnight in northwestern Pakistan, killing 13 suspected insurgents and marking the resumption of the CIA-led program after a nearly six-month break, officials said Thursday.
The strikes came just days after a five-hour siege of Pakistan’s busiest airport ended with 36 people, including ten militants, killed. The audacious attack raised concerns about whether Pakistan was capable of dealing with the Pakistani Taliban, which said it carried out the assault along with an Uzbek militant group.
Alex Baer: We Could End Up Miles from Here
The days unfold strangely for anyone puttering around gamely, if lamely, in life. As an amateur human being a long way from pro status, it's possible to stroll among the headlines and footnotes, around the millstones and milestones, taking informal readings on this and that.
Even on a good day, with a stiff, sane breeze blowing across the news websites of the land, it's impossible to gauge the gradations of cultural degradation, to get accurate readings of any kind. It's a gut-feeling sort of enterprise. There are no calibrated anything-ometers to slap into play. There are no national and regional numbers pouring in to Tracking Central. There are no land mine or shock wave or blast zone maps.
Blackwater on trial over killing of 14 Iraqi civilians in 2007
After years of delays, four former guards from the security firm Blackwater Worldwide are facing trial in the killings of 14 Iraqi civilians and the wounding of 18 others in bloodshed that inflamed anti-American sentiment around the globe.
Whether the shootings were self-defense or an unprovoked attack, the carnage of 16 September 2007 was seen by critics of the George W Bush administration as an illustration of a war gone horribly wrong.
Study: Red meat possibly linked to breast cancer
Women who often indulge their cravings for hamburgers, steaks and other red meat may have a slightly higher risk of breast cancer, a new study suggests.
Doctors have long warned that a diet loaded with red meat is linked to cancers including those of the colon and pancreas, but there has been less evidence for its role in breast cancer.
In the new study, researchers at Harvard University analyzed data from more than 88,000 women aged 26 to 45 who had filled in surveys in 1991. Their red meat intake varied from never or less than once a month, to six or more servings a day.
U.S. student loan refinancing bill fails Senate hurdle
Democratic-sponsored legislation to allow student loan borrowers to refinance at lower interest rates failed to clear a procedural hurdle in the U.S. Senate on Wednesday.
The Senate voted 56-38 to end debate and move to a final vote, short of the 60 votes required.
Democrats had said their measure would let holders of both federal and private undergraduate loans - some with rates of 9 percent or higher - to refinance at 3.86 percent.
Page 256 of 1143