A visit former U.S. President George W. Bush planned to make to Switzerland next week has been canceled because of security concerns, after left-wing groups called for mass protests and rights activists proposed legal action against him for allegedly ordering the torture of terrorism suspects.
Bush's spokesman David Sherzer said the two-term president was informed Friday by the United Israel Appeal that his Feb. 12 dinner speech in Geneva had been called off.
Bush visit to Geneva canceled after protest threat
Justice Thomas’s Wife Sets Up a Conservative Lobbying Shop
The wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, who has raised her political profile in the last year through her outspoken conservative activism, is rebranding herself as a lobbyist and self-appointed “ambassador to the Tea Party movement.”
Virginia Thomas, the justice’s wife, said on libertyinc.co, a Web site for her new political consulting business, that she saw herself as an advocate for “liberty-loving citizens” who favored limited government, free enterprise and other core conservative issues. She promised to use her “experience and connections” to help clients raise money and increase their political impact.
Popular infant juices loaded with toxic fluoride
A study to be presented at the March 17, 2011, annual meeting of the International Association for Dental Research in San Diego reveals that infant fruit juices of all types contain toxic fluoride, and many contain levels that far exceed federal guidelines. Infants and children that drink such juices are also exposed to high levels of fluoride in drinking water, food products, toothpaste, and various other sources, which is triggering dental fluorosis, hormone disruption, thyroid problems, brain degradation, and other illnesses. Consequently, many experts are urging an immediate end to artificial fluoridation.
Pope's organs are too holy to donate to mortals, says Church
In 1999, the then-Cardinal Ratzinger said he was on an organ-donor list. "I am available to offer my organs to whoever might need them. It is an act of love, of affection and generosity," he said at the time.
And as recently as 2008, three years after being elected pontiff, Benedict attended an international congress on donor transplantation where he repeated his support for organ donors. "It's a special way of showing charity," he said, though he added that donations had to be "free, voluntary [and] respectful of the health and dignity of the donor".
Health care fraud no longer a faceless crime
Health care fraud used to be a faceless crime - until now. Medicare and Medicaid scams cost taxpayers more than $60 billion a year, but the average bank holdup is likely to get more attention. Seeking the public's help to catch more than 170 fugitive fraudsters, the government has launched a new health care most-wanted list, with its own website.
Among those featured is Leonard Nwafor, convicted a couple of years ago in Los Angeles of billing Medicare more than $1 million for motorized wheelchairs that beneficiaries didn't need. One of those who got a wheelchair was a blind man who later testified he couldn't see to operate it.
More than half a billion people worldwide are clinically obese
More than half a billion men and women - nearly one in nine of all adults around the world - are clinically obese, a report backed by the World Health organisation (WHO), says.
The figures, released on Friday, are nearly double those of 1980, leading doctors to warn that a "tsunami of obesity" is unfurling across the world. In 2008, the latest year for which statistics were available, nearly one woman in seven and one man in 10 were obese, the study by Imperial College of London and Harvard University found.
Ron Reagan: Palin has nothing in common with dad
Sarah Palin is honoring one Reagan and offending another with the same speech. The former Alaska governor is scheduled to speak in Santa Barbara, Calif., on Friday at a tribute to former President Ronald Reagan - just one of the celebrations marking the centennial of the 40th president's birth on Feb. 6.
But his son, Ron Reagan, tells The Associated Press he doesn't see anything in common between his dad and the 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate, who was invited to speak by the event's sponsor, the conservative Young America's Foundation.
Special report: Catastrophic drought in the Amazon
A widespread drought in the Amazon rainforest last year caused the "lungs of the world" to produce more carbon dioxide than they absorbed, potentially leading to a dangerous acceleration of global warming. Scientists have calculated that the 2010 drought was more intense than the "one-in-100-year" drought of 2005.
They are predicting it will result in some eight billion tonnes of carbon dioxide being expelled from the Amazon rainforest, which is more than the total annual carbon emissions of the United States. For the second time in less than a decade, the earth's greatest rainforest released more carbon dioxide than it absorbed because many of its trees dried out and died.
Two U.S. clients of HSBC sentenced for tax evasion
A father-and-son team of Miami-based property developers was sentenced to 10 years in jail on Friday for failing to report more than $49 million of income in a case that marked the first trial since the start of an intensified U.S. crackdown on offshore tax evasion.
Mauricio Cohen and his son, Leon Cohen Levy, both clients of HSBC Holdings Plc, Europe's largest bank, were convicted in October of using shell entities and offshore tax havens to hide tens of millions of dollars from the U.S. Internal Revenue Service.
Page 659 of 1154
