The President suggests Cheney is right. Explaining his decision to put a stop to the CIA’s practice of “enhanced interrogations” of terrorist detainees, President Obama told a press conference Wednesday that “I am absolutely convinced it was the right thing to do — not because there might not have been information that was yielded by [...]
Archive for April, 2009
A Tortured Rationale
Posted in Law, tagged Cheney, Torture memos on April 30, 2009 | Comments Off
Abu Ghraib Guards Say Memos Show They Were Scapegoats
Posted in Conflicts and wars, Law, tagged Abu Ghraib on April 30, 2009 | Comments Off
Charles Graner and Lynndie England posed a few years ago at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Both were sentenced to prison for their role in detainee abuse. When the photos of detainee abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq surfaced in 2004, U.S. officials portrayed Army Private Charles A. Graner Jr. as the ringleader [...]
Engines of Main Street
Posted in Economy and business, Editorials and opinion on April 30, 2009 | Comments Off
You Can’t Help Detroit if You Hurt the Dealers A customer at a Chrysler Jeep dealership in Doylestown, Pa. My family has been in the automobile business since 1921, when my grandfather opened a Ford dealership in Hope, Ark. My father sold cars, I sold cars, and my sons are in the business. We’ve been [...]
The Surgeon and the Torture Memos
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Health, tagged Torture memos on April 30, 2009 | Comments Off
Having trained medical students, I’ve come to recognize a familiar pattern of behavior when young doctors hold a scalpel for the very first time. Most people — actually anyone who has experienced even a paper cut — are hesitant to slice through flesh. Aspiring surgeons are no different. Their first efforts are tentative and almost [...]
Maine Senate Backs Same-Sex Marriage
Posted in Law, tagged Maine, Same-sex union on April 30, 2009 | Comments Off
Maine could be the next New England state to embrace same-sex marriage after the State Senate voted Thursday to legalize the practice. The Democratic-controlled Senate voted 21 to 14 for a bill that would allow gay couples to marry starting later this year. The measure appears to have even broader support in the House of [...]
With New Software, Iranians and Others Outwit Net Censors
Posted in Computers, tagged Cyberwar on April 30, 2009 | Comments Off
The Iranian government, more than almost any other, censors what citizens can read online, using elaborate technology to block millions of Web sites offering news, commentary, videos, music and, until recently, Facebook and YouTube. Search for “women” in Persian and you’re told, “Dear Subscriber, access to this site is not possible.” Last July, on popular [...]
The Chrysler Bankruptcy
Posted in Economy and business, Editorials and opinion, tagged Bankruptcy, Chrysler on April 30, 2009 | Comments Off
When President Obama outlined his plan to restructure Chrysler under bankruptcy-court protection, we shared his view that keeping a company “afloat on an endless supply of tax dollars” was no solution to the cratering of even iconic American companies. We also admired his supreme confidence that the Chrysler bankruptcy will be a quick, official and [...]
Remains ID’d of vagabond poet Everett Ruess, who vanished in ’30s
Posted in Arts, tagged Ruess on April 30, 2009 | Comments Off
This image provided by National Geographic Adventure shows Everett Ruess photographed in 1933 by Dorthea Lange. Everett Ruess, a talented artist, poet and wanderer of the 1930s whose disappearance became the stuff of Western lore and Navajo legend. Scientists at the University of Colorado have confirmed that a skeleton found in remote southeastern Utah was [...]
Study bolsters hopes for prostate cancer vaccine rejected by FDA
Posted in Health, tagged Prostate cancer on April 30, 2009 | Comments Off
The vaccine, Provenge, extended life an average of four months, nearly twice as long as the best available chemotherapy, researchers say. __________ A controversial prostate cancer vaccine that previously had been rejected by the Food and Drug Administration improves survival of patients with the advanced form of the disease more than existing treatments and should [...]
Spider sex violent but effective
Posted in Natural sciences, tagged Spider on April 30, 2009 | Comments Off
A violent but evolutionarily effective mating strategy has been spotted in spiders from Israel. Males of the aptly-named Harpactea sadistica species pierce the abdomen of females, fertilising their eggs directly in the ovaries. The so-called traumatic insemination gives the first male to inseminate a reproductive advantage by bypassing structures in the females’ genitalia. The findings [...]
Al-Qaeda ‘agent’ Ali al-Marri in US court plea
Posted in Conflicts and wars, Law on April 30, 2009 | Comments Off
Mr Marri is said to have met top al-Qaeda leaders and attended camps A man accused of being a sleeper agent for al-Qaeda has pleaded guilty in the US to conspiring to provide material support for terrorism. Ali al-Marri, a dual Saudi-Qatari national, was arrested two months after the attacks of 11 September 2001. [...]
Canada and Ontario to lend Chrysler $3.8-billion
Posted in Economy and business, tagged Canada, Chrysler on April 30, 2009 | Comments Off
Federal and Ontario governments secure 2% stake; car maker agrees to maintain 20% of output in Canada. Canadian governments are providing a $3.8-billion lifeline to Chrysler LLC, one they say is crucial to securing a future for the auto sector in Canada. The loans are part of a $15-billion (U.S.) bailout package announced on Thursday [...]
Gettelfinger Motors
Posted in Economy and business, Politics, tagged Chysler, GM on April 30, 2009 | Comments Off
The mauling of GM’s bondholders reveals Treasury’s political hand. President Obama insisted at his press conference last night that he doesn’t want to nationalize the auto industry (or the banks, or the mortgage market, or . . .). But if that’s true, why has he proposed a restructuring plan for General Motors that leaves the [...]
100 Days: ‘Harry, I Have a Gift’
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on April 30, 2009 | Comments Off
If opinion polls were real life, Barack Obama would be walking with the immortals. In polls taken as he headed to his 100th day, his numbers are high and heavenly, cruising on issue after issue at 70-plus percent. One number in last weekend’s Washington Post/ABC poll, however, stands out. On whether he is “willing to [...]
Young Saudi girl’s marriage ended
Posted in Law on April 30, 2009 | Comments Off
Saudi Arabia is ruled under an austere and patriarchal form of Sunni Islam Media reports say an arranged marriage between a Saudi girl aged eight and a man in his 50s has been annulled, in a case attracting worldwide criticism. The Saudi Gazette says the divorce was agreed in an out-of-court settlement after a judge [...]
Study: Africans More Genetically Diverse Than Rest of World
Posted in Natural sciences, tagged Africa on April 30, 2009 | Comments Off
Research Raises Questions About Accuracy of Ancestral Tracing for African Americans Africans are more diverse genetically than the inhabitants of the rest of the world combined, according to a sweeping study that carried researchers into remote valleys and mountaintops to sample the bloodlines of more than 100 distinct populations. The report, published today in the [...]
Foot-in-Mouth Disease
Posted in Health, Politics, tagged Biden on April 30, 2009 | Comments Off
The vice president isn’t helping calm an anxious public PRESIDENT OBAMA sought to assure a nervous nation Wednesday night that the H1N1 virus, the new strain of swine flu racing around the world, is “cause for deep concern, but not panic.” His calming words were trampled the next morning by Vice President Biden. In an [...]
The Berlusconisation of Italy
Posted in Politics, tagged Italy on April 30, 2009 | Comments Off
The Italian prime minister seems more strongly entrenched than ever IF ANYBODY is having a good recession, it is the Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi. Italy is certainly suffering: the IMF expects GDP to fall by 4.4% this year, a bigger drop than in Britain, France or Spain. But Mr Berlusconi remains significantly more popular [...]
Bringing Efficiency to the Infrastructure
Posted in Computers, Economy and business on April 30, 2009 | Comments Off
ROAD MAP At an I.B.M. lab in Hawthorne, N.Y., Jay Murdock demonstrates a traffic-management system similar to those used in Stockholm, Amsterdam and Singapore. IN the mid-1990s, the Internet took off because its technological time had come. Years of steady progress in developing more powerful and less expensive computers, Web software and faster communications links [...]
Gates Hints That Guantanamo Detainees May Be Held on U.S. Soil
Posted in Conflicts and wars, Politics on April 30, 2009 | Comments Off
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates suggested on Thursday that as many as 100 detainees at the prison at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba would end up housed on American soil. At a hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Mr. Gates said that he has asked for $50 million in a supplemental request to this year’s Pentagon [...]
Birds show off their dance moves
Posted in Natural sciences on April 30, 2009 | Comments Off
Some birds have a remarkable talent for dancing, two studies published in Current Biology suggest. Footage revealed that some parrots have a near-perfect sense of rhythm; swaying their bodies, bobbing their heads and tapping their feet in time to a beat. Previously, it was thought that only humans had the ability to groove. The researchers [...]
From Obama, Presidential Prose
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on April 30, 2009 | Comments Off
Mario Cuomo once observed that politicians campaign in poetry but govern in prose. That truth was on display at tonight’s prime-time press conference, in which a president renowned for his soaring rhetoric found himself instead mired in the prosaic. He instructed Americans to wash their hands, cover their mouths when they cough and keep their [...]
Milk the Drama, Obama
Posted in Media, Politics, tagged 100 days on April 30, 2009 | Comments Off
President Barack Obama walks away from Marine One after touching down on the south lawn. He has returned from a trip to St. Louis, Missouri. There must have been 50 ways to celebrate the 100 days. Hop on the plane, Barack Hussein. Let the words flow, Joe. Go out and be glib, Gibbs. Get yourself [...]
As Detroit Is Remade, the U.A.W. Stands to Gain
Posted in Economy and business, tagged UAW on April 30, 2009 | Comments Off
The union’s Local 7 hall in Detroit, where voting on a Chrysler deal was taking place Wednesday. The United Automobile Workers represents nearly all workers at Detroit automakers. In the devastating slump that has forced two of Detroit’s automakers to the brink of bankruptcy, the United Automobile Workers union stands to become one of the [...]
Chrysler Bankruptcy Plan Is Announced
Posted in Economy and business, tagged Chrysler, Fiat on April 30, 2009 | Comments Off
President Obama spoke on Thursday about Chrysler seeking bankruptcy protection and its alliance with the Italian automaker Fiat. Chrysler, the third-largest American auto company, will seek bankruptcy protection and enter an alliance with the Italian automaker Fiat, the White House announced Thursday. The bankruptcy case, which officials envisioned as a swift, “surgical” process, was set [...]
Israeli Arabs held on ‘bomb plot’
Posted in Conflicts and wars, Law, Politics, tagged Israel on April 30, 2009 | Comments Off
The offensive in Gaza caused massive destruction Israeli police have arrested seven Arab Israelis suspected of planning to carry out bomb attacks and kidnap soldiers. Police said the men wanted revenge for Israel’s offensive in Gaza earlier this year, which left an estimated 1,400 Palestinians dead. The men were detained earlier this month but details [...]
Invisibility cloak edges closer
Posted in Physical sciences on April 30, 2009 | Comments Off
Tiny holes all over the cloak bend the light around the bump Scientists have rendered objects invisible to near-infrared light. Unlike previous such “cloaks”, the new work does not employ metals, which introduce losses of light and result in imperfect cloaking. Because the approach can be scaled down further in size, researchers say this is [...]
South Korea ex-president Roh Moo-hyun in bribe probe
Posted in Law, Politics, tagged South Korea on April 30, 2009 | Comments Off
Mr Roh made a public apology for the corruption scandal South Korea’s former president is being questioned over allegations that he took millions of dollars in bribes from a wealthy businessman. Prosecutors have to decide whether to charge Roh Moo-hyun, who came to power in 2003 promising his administration would be free from foul play. [...]
Courting Mr. Chávez
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics, tagged Venezuela on April 30, 2009 | Comments Off
The Obama administration seeks to please a strongman by ignoring his crackdown on domestic opposition. ONE OF Venezuela’s most important politicians was granted asylum in Peru this week. Manuel Rosales, a former state governor who challenged Hugo Chávez in the 2006 presidential election and won election as mayor of Maracaibo last fall, fled the country [...]
Specter the Defector
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on April 30, 2009 | Comments Off
It’s been more than four decades since Arlen Specter, senator from Pennsylvania, earned the nickname “Specter the Defector.” With his decision this week to leave the Republican Party, he confirmed that it is indeed an accurate description of his political character. I was a kid reporter for the New York Times back in 1965, when [...]
