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Americans' Faith in Afghan War Fades

2008-07-18T05:33:00.000-07:00

The Pentagon and presidential rivals Barack Obama and John McCain all seem to agree on the need to send more troops to Afghanistan, but they are at odds with much of the country these days on the need to send more Americans into the lawless Afghan mountains.
The latest ABC News/Washington Post poll found that a startling 45 percent of Americans said they do not think the war in Afghanistan is worth fighting, despite the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which provoked the war in the first place.

The growing disenchantment with the Afghan deployment hasn't reached the level of national frustration with the Iraq war, but after more than six years with U.S. troops stationed in Afghanistan and violence on the rise, Americans are becoming increasingly wary about the country's involvement.

Fifty-one percent of Americans now say that the U.S. military effort in Afghanistan has been unsuccessful, up from 24 percent in fall 2002.
Only 44 percent of Americans consider the war in Afghanistan a success, down from 70 percent in 2002.

The national poll of 1,119 randomly selected adults was conducted by telephone July 10-13, 2008, with a margin of error of three percentage points.

For Sholom Keller, a veteran who served in both Afghanistan and Iraq, it comes as no surprise that support for the war in Afghanistan is fading.
"I'm not shocked at all that American support is waning," Keller told ABCNews.com. "If we are in Afghanistan because the U.S. was attacked on Sept. 11, then I want to see the perpetrators captured and brought to justice.

"If we're not finding them in Afghanistan, then I don't know why we're there," he added. "And if they are there I want to know why we haven't found them in the last seven years if they've been giving troops the right intelligence and missions."

Experts on the Middle East told ABCNews.com that many Americans share Keller's frustration, blaming several factors, including the fatigue from hearing about not one but two wars, as well as pressing issues at home, such as the failing economy.

Healthy Diets Shown to Have Benefit Despite Modest Weight Losses

2008-07-18T05:07:00.000-07:00

In a tightly controlled dieting experiment, obese people lost an average of just 6 to 10 pounds over two years.
The study, published Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine, was supposed to determine which of three types of diets works best. Instead, the results highlight the difficulty of weight loss and the fact that most diets do not work well.

The researchers followed 322 dieters, 277 men and 45 women. The dieters were assigned to follow one of three types of diets — a diet with about 30 percent fat, based on American Heart Association guidelines; a Mediterranean diet; and a low-carbohydrate diet based on the Atkins diet plan. The study was partly financed by the Atkins Research Foundation.

The trial was conducted at the Nuclear Research Center in Dimona, Israel, an isolated workplace that has its own medical department.

In addition to regular meetings and telephone calls with dietitians for the participants, the plan included nutrition counseling for spouses and a revamping of the food served in the center’s cafeteria.

Because the center is in an isolated area, the dieters consistently ate lunch, the largest meal of the day, in the company cafeteria, where food was color-coded to help dieters comply with their eating plan.

The biggest weight loss happened in the first five months of the diet — low-fat and Mediterranean dieters lost about 10 pounds, and low-carbohydrate dieters lost 14 pounds.

By the end of two years, all the dieters had regained some, but not all, of the lost weight. The low-fat dieters showed a net loss of six pounds, and the Mediterranean and low-carbohydrate dieters both lost about 10 pounds.

Researchers said the results sound modest, but they said the small weight loss had resulted in improvements in cholesterol and other health markers.

“In order to keep participants on the diet for long term as a way of life, we did not impose extreme diet protocols,” said Iris Shai, the study’s lead author and a registered dietitian at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev at the S. Daniel Abraham International Center for Health and Nutrition. “More dramatic diet protocols could probably reduce more weight for the short term, but participants would have dropped out.”

There were subtle differences in the three diets studied. Men did better on the low-carbohydrate diets, losing 11 pounds compared with about 9 pounds for the Mediterranean diet.

Women fared best on the Mediterranean diet, losing about 14 pounds compared with about 5 pounds on the low-carbohydrate plan.

For all dieters, there were improvements in the ratios of good to bad cholesterol.

“This suggests that healthy diet has beneficial effects beyond weight loss,” Ms. Shai said.

10 U.S. Places to See Before You Die

2008-07-17T06:31:00.001-07:00

Many people have a list of places they'd like to visit before they move on to the next world; here are a few American suggestions of my own.

For conversation's sake, I have avoided the obvious targets, but a stroll across the Golden Gate Bridge or a trip up the Empire State Building is still definitely worth it.

Though we are lucky to live in a beautiful country, I have mostly focused on smaller, manmade sites, simply because a catalog of pretty American places could stretch on forever.

This list is admittedly subjective, but comes from 30 years of professional wandering. Some places are more well-known than others, but all share a sense of tranquility and wonder.

And since I review small boutique hotels for a living, I have included nearby recommended places to stay. Happy travels!

1. San Francisco de Asis Church, Ranchos de Taos, N.M.

Famously painted by Georgia O'Keefe and described by her as "one of the most beautiful buildings left in the United States by the early Spaniards," this handsome adobe mission a few miles outside of Taos Pueblo yokes together a staggering five centuries of North American history.
Harper hotel: Casa de las Chimeneas, Taos.

2. Whaling Museum, Nantucket, Mass.

At its whaling peak during the first half of the 19th century, the small island of Nantucket had 88 ships scattered across the oceans. The Whaling Museum is wonderfully evocative of this era (plenty of scrimshaw and rusty harpoons), and out-of-season Nantucket Town, with its Greek Revival mansions and cobblestone streets, is equally enchanting.
Harper hotel: The Wauwinet.

3. Battery District, Charleston, S.C.

The historic Battery District of Charleston, South Carolina, home to dozens of stately antebellum mansions, is one of the prettiest U.S. neighborhoods I've ever explored. Follow the promenade along the shores of the Charleston peninsula; Fort Sumter, where the first shots of the Civil War were fired, sits broodingly across the Cooper River.
Harper hotel: Planters Inn.

4. Madison Valley, Montana

Montana's Madison Valley, which runs between the Madison and Gallatin ranges down to West Yellowstone, is magnificent Lewis and Clark territory. This is unspoiled land, vast and uncompromising — everything you hope Big Sky Country will look like.
Harper hotel: The Lodge at Sun Ranch.

5. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

Housed in a charming Venetian-style palazzo, this gem of a gallery displays works by Rembrandt, Michelangelo, Whistler and Sargent. It's small enough to tour in an hour or so, and you can spend the rest of your time enjoying the sunny, flower-filled courtyard. And if your name happens to be Isabella, you get in free.
Harper hotel: XV Beacon.

6. The Four Seasons Restaurant, New York City

If you had to choose only one restaurant in New York City to visit, this would be the one. The city's prettiest dining room was designed by architects Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson, and astutely hasn't been touched since its introduction in 1959. The Pool Room is a study in muted sophistication, despite some of the outsized egos at the tables.
Harper hotel: The Lowell.

7. The Rothko Chapel, Houston

This small, non-denominational chapel located just off the Menil gallery in Houston's Museum District seems unassuming at first, but spend some time surrounded by the 14 mysterious paintings by Mark Rothko, and it may start sinking into your skin.
Harper hotel: St. Regis.

8. The Huntington Gardens, San Marino, Calif.

Huntington did quite well in railroads, and he's left us with a wonderful afternoon escape just outside of Los Angeles. After admiring some of the spoils of his industry — a Gutenberg Bible, a Shakespeare folio, Thomas Gainsborough's "The Blue Boy" — venture out into the superb botanical gardens, home to dozens of unique environments: an almost eerily authentic Japanese garden, a lily pond straight out of a Monet painting, and an entrancing collection of cacti.
Harper hotel: Hotel Bel-Air.

9. Robie House (Frank Lloyd Wright, Chicago

The Robie House, the world's first modern home, was designed in 1908 by architect Frank Lloyd Wright, and still seems startlingly contemporary 100 years later; with its broad horizontal lines and sleek art-glass windows, it looks like a modernist yacht. Wright himself showed up to protest the planned demolition of the house (it was to be replaced by a seminary dormitory) at the ripe old age of 90.
Harper hotel: Four Seasons.

10. The Oregon Coast

Highway 101 along the Oregon Coast swerves through 360 miles of jagged cliffs, rocky outcrops, sweeping dunes and temperate rain forests. The coastline lacks deep harbors, so there are no large cities here — just old logging towns, fishing villages and the occasional artist colony. And the entire coast is public land, which makes for excellent picnic opportunities in rugged and remote spaces.
Harper hotel: The Stephanie Inn, Cannon Beach

Gore sets 'moon shot' goal on climate change

2008-07-17T05:53:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON - Just as John F. Kennedy set his sights on the moon, Al Gore is challenging the nation to produce every kilowatt of electricity through wind, sun and other Earth-friendly energy sources within 10 years, an audacious goal he hopes the next president will embrace.
The Nobel Prize-winning former vice president said fellow Democrat Barack Obama and Republican rival John McCain are "way ahead" of most politicians in the fight against global climate change.

Rising fuel costs, climate change and the national security threats posed by U.S. dependence on foreign oil are conspiring to create "a new political environment" that Gore said will sustain bold and expensive steps to wean the nation off fossil fuels.

"I have never seen an opportunity for the country like the one that's emerging now," Gore told The Associated Press in an interview previewing a speech on global warming he was to deliver Thursday in Washington.

Gore said he fully understands the magnitude of the challenge.

The Alliance for Climate Protection, a bipartisan group that he chairs, estimates the cost of transforming the nation to so-called clean electricity sources at $1.5 trillion to $3 trillion over 30 years in public and private money. But he says it would cost about as much to build ozone-killing coal plants to satisfy current demand.

"This is an investment that will pay itself back many times over," Gore said. "It's an expensive investment but not compared to the rising cost of continuing to invest in fossil fuels."

Called an alarmist by conservatives, Gore has made combatting global warming his signature issue, a campaign that has been recognized worldwide — from an Academy Award to a Nobel Prize. He portrayed Thursday's speech as the latest and most important phase in his effort to build public opinion in favor of alternative fuels.

He knows politicians fear to act unless voters are willing to sacrifice — and demand new fuels.

"I hope to contribute to a new political environment in this country that will allow the next president to do what I think the next president is going to think is the right thing to do," Gore said. "But the people have to play a part." He likened his challenge to Kennedy's pledge in May 1961 to land a man on the moon by the end of the decade.

Gore narrowly lost the presidential race in 2000 to then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush after a campaign in which his prescient views on climate change took a back seat to other issues. While dismissing a suggestion that he pulled his punches eight years ago, Gore said his goal now is to "enlarge the political space" within which politicians can "deal with the climate challenge."

To meet his 10-year goal, Gore said nuclear energy output would continue at current levels while the nation dramatically increases its use of solar, wind, geothermal and so-called clean coal energy. Huge investments must also be made in technologies that reduce energy waste and link existing grids, he said.

If the nation fails to act, the cost of oil will continue to rise as fast-growing China and India increase demand, Gore said. Sustained addiction to oil also will place the nation at the mercy of oil-producing regimes, he said, and the globe would suffer irreparable harm.

Government experts recently predicted that, at the current rate, world energy demand will grow 50 percent over the next two decades. The Energy Information Administration also said in its long-range forecast to 2030 that the world is not close to abandoning fossil fuels despite their effect on global warming.

While electricity production is only part of the nation's energy and climate change problem, Gore said, "If we meet this challenge we will solve the rest of it."

Obama has 7-point edge on McCain

2008-07-16T06:10:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrat Barack Obama has a 7-point lead on Republican John McCain in the U.S. presidential race, and holds a small edge on the crucial question of who would best manage the economy, according to a Reuters/Zogby poll released on Wednesday.

More than a month after kicking off the general election campaign, Obama leads McCain by 47 percent to 40 percent. That is slightly better than his 5-point cushion in mid-June, shortly after he clinched the Democratic nomination fight against New York Sen. Hillary Clinton.

But Obama's 22-point advantage in June among independents, a critical voting bloc that could swing either way in the November election, shrunk to 3 points during a month in which the candidates battled on the economy and Obama was accused of shifting to the centre on several issues.

Obama had a 44 percent to 40 percent edge nationally over McCain on who would be best at managing the economy, virtually unchanged from last month. Among independents, the two were tied on the economy.

"There has been a real tightening up among independents, and that has to be worrisome for Obama," pollster John Zogby said. "It doesn't seem like Obama is coming across on the economy."

The economy was ranked as the top issue by nearly half of all likely voters, 47 percent. The Iraq war, in second place, trailed well behind at 12 percent. Energy prices was third at 8 percent.

The faltering economy had been expected to be a weakness for McCain, an Arizona senator and former Vietnam prisoner of war who has admitted a lack of economic expertise.

McCain has portrayed Obama, an Illinois senator, as a proponent of higher taxes, while Obama has tried to link McCain with President George W. Bush's unpopular economic policies.

Global warming may expand U.S. 'kidney stone belt', say scientists

2008-07-16T06:02:00.000-07:00

OTTAWA - One of the first direct impacts that global warming has on our health may hit us where it hurts: In the kidneys.

People will develop more kidney stones in a hotter climate, because the heat tends to make us dehydrated and that causes the stones to form, two Texas urologists say.

Drs. Margaret Peale and Yair Lotan of the University of Texas say there's already a "kidney stone belt" in the hot, humid U.S. southeast, stretching from Louisiana to Florida and north to Tennessee.
Expect that belt to move north with the warmer climate, increasing kidney stone rates outside today's belt by 30 per cent by 2050, they say in a paper published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The study doesn't cover Canada, but it suggests changes coming close to our doorstep. Of two computer models used in their study, one predicts most of the increase will come in central states such as Kentucky and Kansas. But the other forecasts a greater increase in states bordering Canada such as Ohio and Pennsylvania, and the U.S. Eastern seaboard generally.

Wherever the greatest effect happens, both models agree the kidney stone belt will expand northwards, approaching Canada, in some way.

The study worked by comparing the rate of kidney stones reported in different geographic regions, and comparing these with temperature records by region. From there the team looked at forecasts of how the U.S. climate is likely to change by the year 2050.

Kidney stones are a common ailment. They affect roughly one in 10 men in North America over a lifetime, though fewer women.

Normally, urine carries waste chemicals out of the body. But people who become dehydrated in hot weather have trouble producing enough urine to do the job.

Mineral salts left behind can form solid crystals in the kidneys, and eventually these can develop into painful "stones."

The link between temperature and kidney stones is well known, Peale said.

"When people relocate from areas of moderate temperature to areas with warmer climates, a rapid increase in stone risk has been observed. This has been shown in military deployments to the Middle East for instance."

It's the second recent piece of bad medical news for people in the U.S. Southeast.

In June, researchers reported that this area is also a "stroke belt," where the risk of stroke is about 10 per cent higher than in other regions, and even visiting increases the risk of a fatal stroke.

Oil rises above $146 a barrel

2008-07-15T06:22:00.000-07:00

Oil moves back above $146 a barrel as supply threats keep floor under prices
Oil rebounded above $146 a barrel Tuesday as a series of threats to supply in a skittish market kept a firm floor under prices.

"The oil market right now is fundamentally tight, which is why prices have been high and volatile," said David Moore, a commodity strategist with Commonwealth Bank of Australia in Sydney.
Light sweet crude for August delivery was up $1.30 at $146.48 a barrel by noon in Europe in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

The contract rose 10 cents in Monday's floor session to close at $145.18 a barrel, just over a dime short of the all-time settlement high. It has traded as high as $147.27 a barrel, a record set last week.

Most consumers in the major consuming countries feel the bite of pricey oil at the pump. In a research note, analyst and trader Stephen Schork wrote that although U.S. gasoline and diesel prices decreased marginally last week they "still averaged 79.9 cents (30 percent) above last year's pace."

"As a result, the year to-date average is now more than 50 percent, or $1.348 a gallon,bove last year's pace," he wrote.

Threats to supply in Brazil, Iran and Nigeria have been keeping oil near the record levels hit last week.

A five-day strike by Brazilian oil workers that began early Monday has cut the production of Petroleo Brasileiro SA, or Petrobras by about 4 percent, according to the state-run oil company. Oil workers are striking at 33 rigs in a dispute over pay but only two rigs were totally stopped, Petrobras said.

Petrobras produces about 1.6 million barrels of oil a day. It is estimated to be the world's sixth largest oil company in terms of market capitalization.

Also, tensions remain between Iran and the U.S. and Israel over what the two allies say are Tehran's suspicious nuclear programs. Investors worry that any worsening of the standoff has the potential to disrupt shipments from OPEC's second-largest oil exporter.

Still, some analysts say they expect an easing of pricing later in the second half of the year.

Oil prices that have doubled in the past year have begun to weaken demand, said Moore.

"We've started to see weaker demand in the U.S., but we don't expect this to help lower prices until the fourth quarter," he said. He expects the price of oil to average about US$143 in the third quarter and about US$137 in the fourth.

Also, a weakening of the dollar helped to support commodity prices Tuesday. Many investors view oil and other commodities as hedges against inflation and a weakening dollar, and their prices tend to rise as the currency declines.

The dollar fell to 105.79 yen in Asian currency trade, while the euro rose to an all-time high of $1.6038 in European trading, before settling back at $1.5983.

On Monday, President Bush lifted an executive ban on offshore oil drilling. That alone is not expected to loosen global supplies in the short term since a Congressional prohibition remains in place and any new wells would take years to complete.

August Brent crude rose $1.44 cents to $145.36 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange in London.

In other Nymex trade, heating oil futures rose more than 4 cents to $4.1072 a gallon while gasoline prices gained over 2 pennies to $3.5790 a gallon. Natural gas futures rose just over 3 cents $11.990 per 1,000 cubic feet.

The New Power Jobs

2008-07-15T06:13:00.000-07:00

White-hot jobs are opening up in the power sector.

"These aren't just hot jobs, they're sizzling jobs," said Christine Real de Azua, spokeswoman for the American Wind Energy Association. Wind energy grew by 45 percent last year. "We need every type of job candidate."

Indeed, with oil topping $100 per barrel, expect power industry jobs to explode in the next 10 years -- and not just in petroleum or the electric company. Want to repair wind turbines, manage a nuclear reactor or install solar panels? The jobs await.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and energy leaders reveal what fields are expected to grow, and they are listed below with projected growth levels through 2016, salary data, and what you need to get a related job.

Engineers
11 percent projected growth
$44,790-$145,600 annually, depending on specialty

"We're experiencing a comeback in 'dirty jobs,'" said Chris McCormick, partner and head of the energy division of venture capital firm Landmark Ventures. "While a few years ago, what we wanted were the 'clean' jobs in computer engineering, now we're back to the types of engineers who get their hands dirty with chemistry and broad-application engineering."

Chemical engineers who work with biofuels, electrical engineers who design power plants, mechanical engineers who find better ways to capture air and wind energy, and nuclear engineers who make plants run more efficiently will all be in high demand -- with salaries to match. While some engineers, like chemical engineers, may need a PhD to do their jobs, most others, like environmental engineers, only require a bachelor's degree in physics or engineering, according to the BLS.

Nuclear Power Reactor Operators
11 percent projected growth
$35,590-$75,240 annually

"When I got out of college, people told me, 'Go do other things.' The conventional wisdom was that nuclear power was going to go away," said Carol Berrigan, senior director for industry infrastructure at the Nuclear Energy Institute. "But now, with some regulatory changes, we have something like nine applications out there for 16 new nuclear power plants in the next few years."

Which jobs will grow fastest? Think Homer Simpson, but with more computer knowledge and less buffoonery. On top of the billions of dollars the industry is spending on new construction, the field's employees are aging: In the next 10 years, half of all nuclear reactor operators are expected to retire. You don't need to have an engineering degree for these jobs, but you should expect extensive on-the-job training and classroom instruction as well as licensing exams, according to the BLS.

Industrial Machinery Mechanic
9 percent projected growth
$42,350 median annual income

Someone's got to install the solar panels and repair wind turbines, and industrial machinery mechanics are often the ones who get the jobs. In solar, Tioga Energy's Executive Vice President Preston Roper said the biggest demand is for solar installers.

Both Roper and Real de Azua said local community colleges are the places to go to get the training necessary for the jobs. Many are offering specialized training in solar or wind repair work.

Skilled Trade Workers
Electricians: 7 percent projected growth
$44,780 median annual income

Line Workers: 7 percent projected growth
$52,570 median annual income

Welders: 5 percent projected growth
$32,270 median annual income

These workers repair the lines that bring power to your home and build and repair power plant structures. Want one of these jobs? Usually you don't need post-high school education, but you will need an apprenticeship through a union or other skilled trade group. The programs usually take about four years.

Poll: Obama presidency huge advancement

2008-07-14T07:58:00.000-07:00

PRINCETON, N.J., July 14 (UPI) -- Blacks generally are buoyant about Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., being president, but aren't sure about who would be their spokesperson, a Gallup poll indicates.

Fifty-nine percent of blacks said they would view Obama's winning the presidency as one of the biggest advances of the past century for blacks, the Gallup poll released Monday reported.

Twenty-nine percent named Obama, the likely Democratic presidential candidate, as the person whom they'd choose as a spokesman for race issues, poll results indicated. However, 49 percent named someone else while nearly 25 percent offered no name.

The poll was conducted before the controversy arose over the Rev. Jesse Jackson's remark that Obama's message was "talking down to black people."

Other possible spokespersons respondents named were the Rev. Al Sharpton (6 percent), Jackson (4 percent) and Bill and Hillary Clinton (3 percent each), the Princeton, N.J., polling agency said.

The results from Gallup's annual Minority Rights and Relations survey are based on telephone interviews June 5-July 9 with 1,935 adults, including oversamples of blacks and Hispanics. The overall sampling has a margin of error of 4 percentage points; the oversamples have error margins of 5 percentage points to 6 percentage points.

Sudanese president charged with genocide in Darfur

2008-07-14T07:40:00.000-07:00

THE HAGUE, Netherlands - The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court filed genocide charges Monday against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, accusing him of masterminding attempts to wipe out African tribes in Darfur with a campaign of murder, rape and deportation.
The filing marked the first time prosecutors at the world's first permanent, global war crimes court have issued charges against a sitting head of state, but al-Bashir is unlikely to be sent to The Hague any time soon. Sudan rejects the court's jurisdiction, and senior Sudanese officials said the prosecutor was politically motivated to file the charges.

Luis Moreno-Ocampo asked a three-judge panel at the International Criminal Court to issue an arrest warrant for al-Bashir to prevent the slow deaths of some 2.5 million people forced from their homes in Darfur and still under attack from government-backed janjaweed militia.

"Genocide is a crime of intention — we don't need to wait until these 2.5 million die," he told The Associated Press.

"The genocide is ongoing," he added, saying systematic rape was a key element of the campaign. "Seventy-year-old women, 6-year-old girls are raped," he said.

Moreno-Ocampo was undeterred by concern that his indictment against al-Bashir might ignite a storm of vengeance against Darfur refugees and spur Sudan to shut out relief agencies and possibly peacekeeping troops.

"I am a prosecutor doing a judicial case," he said. Moreno-Ocampo filed 10 charges: three counts of genocide, five of crimes against humanity and two of murder. Judges are expected to take months to study the evidence before deciding whether to order al-Bashir's arrest.

Al-Bashir "wants to end the history of the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa people. I don't have the luxury to look away. I have evidence," the prosecutor said in a statement after submitting his case to the judges.

One victim cited by prosecutors said rapes are woven into the fabric of life in Darfur.

"Maybe around 20 men rape one woman. These things are normal for us here in Darfur," she said. "I have seen rapes too. It does not matter who sees them raping the women — they don't care. They rape girls in front of their mothers and fathers."

Moreno-Ocampo said the rapes were producing a generation of so-called "janjaweed babies" and "an explosion of infanticide" by victims.

The head of Sudan's Bar Association and ruling party stalwart, Fathi Khalil told The Associated Press that Sudan was not a member of the International Criminal Court and was not bound by Moreno-Ocampo's decision.

"The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court with his announcement demanding the arrest of President al-Bashir has proved that he is playing a political role, not a legal one," Khalil said.

Khalil said the decision came after international pressure on the court, undermining its reputation and independence. He said neither the ICC nor the U.N. Security Council have the right to refer a country that is not a member to the ICC to the court.

The Sudanese Liberation Movement-Unity, a rebel group in Darfur, offered to help arrest and extradite any war criminals from Sudan.

If judges issue an arrest warrant, they will effectively turn al-Bashir into a prisoner in his own country. In the past, Interpol has issued so-called Red Notices for fugitives wanted by the court, meaning they should be arrested any time they attempt to cross an international border.

Moreno-Ocampo said most members of the three targeted ethnic African groups were driven from their homes by Sudanese forces and the janjaweed in 2004. Since then, the janjaweed have been targeting the camps aiming to starve the refugees.

"These 2.5 million people are in camps. They (al-Bashir's forces) don't need gas chambers because the desert will kill them," Moreno-Ocampo said, drawing comparison's with Nazi Germany's most notorious method of mass murder during the Holocaust.

The refugees "have no more water, no more food, no more cattle. They have lost everything. They live because international humanitarian organizations are providing food for them," he added.

An estimated 300,000 people have died in Darfur since conflict erupted there in 2003 when local tribes took up arms against al-Bashir's Arab-dominated government in the capital, Khartoum, accusing authorities of years of neglect.

Moreno-Ocampo said the international community needs to act.

"We are dealing with a genocide. Is it easy to stop? No. Do we need to stop? Yes," he told AP.

"The international community failed in the past, failed to stop Rwanda genocide, failed to stop Balkans crimes," he added.

Al-Bashir's ruling National Congress Party on Sunday warned of "more violence and blood" in the vast western region if an arrest warrant is issued against the president, state TV reported.

There are also fears that the fresh Darfur case could spark a backlash against the 9,000-strong U.N.-African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur.

The prosecutor said it was up to the U.N. Security Council, which asked Moreno-Ocampo in 2005 to investigate crimes in Darfur, to "ensure compliance with the court's decision." Achieving unanimous backing for any action will be fraught with problems since two of the council's members, China and Russia, are Sudan's allies.

A spokeswoman for the force said it had not suspended any military operations.

"All essential peacekeeping operations are being carried-out by troops," Shereen Zorba told The Associated Press in an e-mail from Khartoum.

However, she said: "a limited number of operations that carry security risk to civilian staff are temporarily restricted."

New York-based Human Rights Watch welcomed the charges.

"Charging President al-Bashir for the hideous crimes in Darfur shows that no one is above the law," said Richard Dicker, director of the group's International Justice Program. "It is the prosecutor's job to follow the evidence wherever it leads, regardless of official position."

Other international courts previously have indicted Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic and Charles Taylor of Liberia while they were in office. Milosevic died in custody in The Hague in 2006 shortly before the end of his trial, while Taylor is on trial in a courtroom just four stories above the room where Moreno-Ocampo made his announcement Monday for orchestrating atrocities in Sierra Leone.

Oil hits new record as supply fears intensify

2008-07-11T05:19:00.000-07:00

LONDON (Reuters) - Oil jumped over $4 to a new record high near $146 a barrel on Friday, spurred by growing worries of threats to supplies from Iran and Nigeria and a strike of Brazilian oil workers next week.
U.S. crude was $3.54 at $145.19 a barrel by 7:50 a.m. EDT, off highs of $145.98, after jumping $5.60 or 4 percent a barrel on Thursday in a late burst of buying activity.

London Brent crude was up $3.64 at $145.67 a barrel.

Leading the oil complex was ICE gas oil futures which climbed to a new record high of $1,335 a tonne amid strong demand for diesel and aviation fuel.

Analysts said the threat of supply disruptions provided the bullish backdrop, as the demand picture was unlikely to change much until after the Beijing Olympics.

Oil, which had been on the retreat for much of the week, reversed course on Thursday as fears of supply disruptions from potential hot-spots, OPEC members Iran and Nigeria, resurfaced.

A spate of missile tests by Iran, the world's fourth-largest oil exporter, in the last two days against a backdrop of rising tensions with Israel and the United States has left the oil markets worried.

Iran has threatened to strike back at Tel Aviv as well as U.S. interests in and a key oil shipping route if it is attacked over its nuclear program, which Israel and the West fears is aimed at making nuclear weapons.

The United States reminded Tehran it was ready to defend its allies.

The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, the main militant group in Nigeria's oil-producing region, said it was abandoning a ceasefire to protest against a British offer to help tackle lawlessness in the region.

Rebel attacks on oil infrastructure in Nigeria, the world's eighth biggest exporter, have also been partly responsible for the nearly 50 percent rise in prices this year.

Investors have also flocked to oil and other commodities this year as a hedge against rising inflation and a weak dollar.

Workers at Brazil's Petrobras (PETR4.SA)(PBR.N) threatened to launch a five-day strike next week that would affect all 42 Campos basin offshore platforms, which account for more than 80 percent of daily oil output of around 1.8 million barrels.

Oil has continued rising despite efforts by top exporter Saudi Arabia to raise production to its highest rate in three decades in an effort to tame oil prices.

Qatar Oil Minister Abdullah al-Attiyah told Reuters on Friday that he saw no demand for the additional crude that Saudi Arabia has pledged to pump.

Do we lift the ban on offshore drilling?

2008-07-11T05:16:00.000-07:00

Pressure from voters for Congress to do something about rising oil prices has a growing number of Senate Democrats acknowledging that they would consider lifting a ban on new offshore drilling.

Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, who had adamantly opposed such drilling, is among those warming to the idea. He says any exploration would have to be far from the coast and that the oil produced would be used in the United States, not abroad.

Less than a month ago in the Senate, the Democrat assailed supporters of offshore drilling, citing a federal study that suggested it would not make any "appreciable difference in the price of gas until 2030."

And last year, Brown opposed an amendment to an energy bill that would have allowed Virginia to ask the federal government for permission to search for oil and natural gas off the coast. The amendment was defeated 44-43.

Sen. George V. Voinovich said yesterday that the combination of $4-per-gallon gas prices and rising voter support for more drilling could pave the way for a compromise that would have been unthinkable a year ago.

The Ohio Republican predicted that Congress will pass a comprehensive bill this year to clear the way for drilling off U.S. coasts while providing more money to develop cleaner energy sources.

"I think that all of us realize that we have got to show the American people that we're working together on something," Voinovich said. "We have to get some things done around here, get away from this partisanship and get some things done in the best interest of the country."

Voinovich said that if the Senate could agree on a bill that would boost oil supplies while reducing consumer demand for gasoline, it would "send a signal across the world that the U.S. has gotten off its you-know-what and understands the importance of domestic supply of oil."

To win Senate passage, Voinovich said, a bill could not include opening up exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Voinovich said he favors drilling in the refuge but acknowledged that "it's a lightning-rod issue" with Democrats and environmentalists. Brown, for example, remains opposed to drilling there.

Voinovich declined to say whether he is part of a bipartisan group of senators seeking a compromise on oil exploration and federal aid for renewable energies. But it is clear that some Democrats are showing a greater willingness to permit more drilling.

"I would say this is one of those difficult times for a political party when their ideology leads them into direct conflict with the facts," said Ted Hollingsworth, a Republican lobbyist and a former Voinovich aide.

Environmentalists have reacted with alarm to the idea of ending a 1981 federal moratorium on drilling offshore, primarily along the coasts of California and Florida. The ban grew out of a 1969 disaster off Santa Barbara when 3 million gallons of crude oil from an offshore platform covered 35 miles of coastline.

They argue that it would take years for new platforms to produce oil and that the U.S. should be working to change its oil-based economy to renewable energies.

"The drive to drill is like an obese man saying he is going to lose weight by eating more," said Dan Weiss, director of climate strategy at the Center for American Progress, a research group in Washington.

Frank O'Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch, a nonprofit environmental group in Washington, said, "Environmentalists are aghast that high gasoline prices might be a pretext for reversing decades of national policy.

"The evidence is pretty clear that none of these drilling schemes would have any near-term impact on gasoline supply or prices. It is a concern if Democrats start shifting their positions solely in response to polls."

That prompted Voinovich to reply that "Frank and his people fail to recognize the importance of our economy and our energy needs."

"They all must be very rich," he said of environmental leaders, because "they sure don't understand middle-class people and seniors who are getting killed because of energy costs."

Republicans see drilling as an issue that works in their favor. Next month, House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-West Chester, will lead a group of House Republicans to Alaska on what he is calling the "American Energy Tour." The trip is being funded by the White House.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain, who opposed offshore exploration during his 2000 presidential campaign, now supports opening up the coasts to exploration. Democrat Barack Obama is opposed.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said yesterday that "this call for drilling in areas that are protected is a hoax, an absolute hoax on the part of the Republicans and this administration."

The federal government estimates that 89 billion barrels of oil could be off the East, West and Gulf coasts. The U.S. consumes 20 million barrels of oil every day.

Dispatch Washington bureau chief Jonathan Riskind contributed to this story.

Bedtime habits that are ruining your sleep

2008-07-11T05:12:00.000-07:00

If you’re having trouble falling asleep, you’re in good company. An estimated 65% of Americans said they encounter sleep problems a few nights each week, according to a recent study by the National Sleep Foundation. Sleeping too little is linked with an increased risk for obesity and depression. But before you reach for a sleep aid from the nearest pharmacy, it’s worth reexamining your nighttime routine. Some of your favorite evening rituals could be responsible for that tossing and turning.
1. Setting a Bright Alarm Clock
The looming glare of your alarm clock can be distracting when trying to sleep. The goal is to have as dark a room as possible. Block the bright numbers with a book or consider buying a small travel clock. Your cell phone alarm may also do the trick.

2. Counting Sheep
When you just can’t fall asleep, it’s useless to stay in bed. If you’ve been trying to fall asleep for more than 30 minutes, the National Sleep Foundation suggests doing something mundane, like balancing a checkbook, reading or watching TV. An activity that demands marginal brainpower will lull your mind. Before you know it, you’ll be crawling back into bed genuinely tired.

3. Exercising Late at Night
Daytime workouts will keep you invigorated for hours. That’s why you don’t want to exercise within three hours of hitting the sack. Intense physical activity raises your body temperature and pumps your energy level—both interrupt a calm transition into sleep.

Salmonella Illness Toll Tops 1,000

2008-07-10T07:30:00.000-07:00

More than 1,000 people now are confirmed ill from salmonella initially linked to raw tomatoes, a grim milestone Wednesday that makes this the worst foodborne outbreak in at least a decade. Adding to the confusion, the government is warning certain people to avoid types of hot peppers, too.

Certain raw tomatoes — red round, plum and Roma — remain a chief suspect and the government stressed again Wednesday that all consumers should avoid them unless they were harvested in areas cleared of suspicion.

But people at highest risk of severe illness from salmonella also should not eat raw jalapeno and serrano peppers, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urged Wednesday. The most vulnerable are the elderly, people with weak immune systems and infants.

Raw jalapenos caused some of the illnesses, conclude CDC investigations of two clusters of sick people who ate at the same restaurant or catered event.

But jalapenos cannot be the sole culprit — because many of the ill insist they didn't eat hot peppers or foods like salsa that contain them, CDC food safety chief Dr. Robert Tauxe told The Associated Press. As for serrano peppers, that was included in the warning because they're difficult for consumers to tell apart.

In some clusters of illnesses, jalapenos "simply were not on the menu," Tauxe said. "We are quite sure that neither tomatoes nor jalapenos explain the entire outbreak at this point. ... We're presuming that both of them have caused illness."

That has Food and Drug Administration inspectors looking hard for farms that may have grown tomatoes earlier in the spring and then switched to pepper harvesting, or for distribution centers that handled both types of produce.

Also still being investigated is fresh cilantro, because a significant number of people who got sick most recently say they ate all three — raw tomatoes, jalapenos and cilantro.

"I understand the frustration" that after weeks of warnings, the outbreak isn't solved, Tauxe said. "But we really are working as hard and as fast as we can to sort out this complicated situation and protect the health of the American people."

Added FDA food safety chief Dr. David Acheson: "It's just been a spectacularly complicated and prolonged outbreak."

The outbreak isn't over, or even showing any sign of slowing, said Tauxe — with about 25 to 40 cases being a reported a day for weeks now, to a total of 1,017 known since the outbreak began on April 10.

Illnesses now have been reported in 41 states — and even four cases in Canada, although three of those people are believed to have been infected while traveling in the U.S. and the fourth is still being probed.

At least 300 people became ill in June, with the latest falling sick on June 26. Two deaths are associated with the outbreak — a Texas man in his 80s, and another Texas man who died of cancer but for whom salmonella may have played a role — and 203 people have been hospitalized.

The toll far surpasses what had been considered the largest foodborne outbreak of the past decade, the 715 salmonella cases linked to peanut butter in 2006, Tauxe said. In the mid-1990s, there were well over 1,000 cases of cyclospora linked to raspberries, and previous large outbreaks of salmonella from ice cream and milk.

The CDC acknowledges that for every case of salmonella confirmed to the government, there may be 30 to 40 others that go undiagnosed or unreported.

"The outbreak could actually be tens of thousands of people rather than 1,000 people," agreed Caroline Smith DeWaal of the consumer advocacy Center for Science in the Public Interest. "It's certainly a disturbing event to have this many illnesses spanning this many months."

Moon's interior 'did hold water'

2008-07-10T07:26:00.000-07:00

US scientists have found evidence that water was held in the Moon's interior, challenging some elements of the theory of how Earth's satellite formed.

The Moon is thought to have been created in a violent collision between Earth and another planet-sized object.

Scientists thought the heat from this impact had vaporised all the water.

But a new study in Nature magazine shows water was delivered to the lunar surface from the interior in volcanic eruptions three billion years ago.

This suggests that water has been a part of the Moon since its early existence.

The discovery came from lunar volcanic glasses, pebble-like beads collected and returned to Earth by the US Apollo missions in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
In the decades since, scientists have sought to determine the nature of a class of chemical elements known as volatiles in the multicoloured glasses.

In particular, they searched the glasses for signs of water - but the evidence has remained elusive. This was consistent with a general consensus that the Moon was dry.

The team, from Brown University, the Carnegie Institution for Science, and Case Western Reserve University, used secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) technology to detect extremely minute quantities of water in glasses and minerals.

"We developed a way to detect as little as five parts per million of water," said Erik Hauri, from the Carnegie Institution in Washington DC.

"We were really surprised to find a whole lot more in these tiny glass beads, up to 46 parts per million."

Lost to space

The team then confirmed through a series of tests that hydrogen had been present all along, and the samples had not been infused by hydrogen-rich solar winds or tainted by other volatiles.

"This confirms that water comes from deep within the mantle of the Moon," said lead author Alberto Saal, assistant professor of geological sciences at Brown University.

"It has nothing to do with secondary processes, such as contamination or solar wind."
The researchers believe the water was contained in magma which erupted via "fire fountains" on to the lunar surface more than three billion years ago.

About 95% of this water vapour was lost during the volcanic activity.

"Since the Moon was thought to be perfectly dehydrated, this is a giant leap from previous estimates," said co-author Erik Hauri, from the Carnegie Institution.

"It suggests the intriguing possibility that the Moon's interior might have had as much water as the Earth's upper mantle. But even more intriguing: If the Moon's volcanoes released 95% of their water, where did all that water go?"

Since the Moon's gravity is too feeble to retain an atmosphere, the researchers speculate that some of the water vapour from the eruptions was probably forced into space.

But some may also have drifted towards the cold poles of the Moon where ice may persist in permanently shadowed craters.

Ancient rocks

The research also might yield additional insight into how long water had been on Earth, Saal added.

"It suggests that water was present within the Earth before the giant collision that formed the Moon," Dr Saal explained.

"That points to two possibilities: Water either was not completely vaporised in that collision or it was added a short time - less than 100 million years - afterward by volatiles introduced from the outside, such as with meteorites."

The glasses analysed in the study colour the lunar soil green or orange. While most glasses collected on the Moon were produced by melting of rocks during meteorite impacts, these lack the typical characteristics of so-called impact glasses.

In addition, their ages are similar to those of surrounding basaltic rocks, linking them to the Moon's geological evolution.

Verifying that water is at the Moon's poles is one goal of Nasa's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission, due to launch later this year.

It is the primary objective of the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCross) scheduled for launch in 2009.

America's Top Growing and Disappearing Jobs

2008-07-10T07:19:00.000-07:00

There are a couple groups for whom rising oil prices haven't been all bad: roustabouts and service unit operators in the oil and gas industry.

Roustabouts are the workers who assemble and repair oil and gas field equipment. They do other unskilled work around rigs like cleaning up spilled oil, moving pipes to and from trucks and guiding cranes that move loads around decks.

It's hard and dirty work, and in the labor hierarchy of oil rigs, roustabouts are a notch below roughnecks. But theirs is the fastest growing job category in our listing of America's 20 top growing and disappearing jobs.
Roustabouts' numbers have increased by almost a third, to 54,200 from 41,120 a year earlier, reflecting the boom in energy markets.

The number of service unit operators, who keep the oil flowing from wells and remove obstructions such as stuck pipes and casings, is up by a fifth, to 30,440 from 25,360 a year earlier, putting them at number three on our list behind aircraft assembly workers.

Our numbers are drawn from the U.S. government's National, State and Metropolitan Area Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates. The available reports use 2007 data and are based on a national survey of employers in all industry sectors regardless of size.

They examine 800 occupations. For our lists, we excluded those occupations where total employment was less than 25,000.

The survey covers full- and part-time workers who are paid a wage or salary. It does not include the self-employed, owners and partners in unincorporated firms, household workers and unpaid family workers.

Our list of expanding jobs in America is drawn from a swathe of industries. Some--like oil and gas, health care, logistics and media--are to be expected. Others--like locomotive engineers and aircraft assembly workers--were more surprising.
Most of the growing job opportunities are at the non-specialist, or unskilled, end of the field, though they run the full gamut of wage levels. Non-specialist physicians and surgeons earn an average $155,150 a year, while home health aides average $20,850 a year and had the largest absolute increase in numbers--up 83,100 to 834,580, a year-on-year increase of 11%.

The disappearing jobs are concentrated in the lower third of the pay range, though the field work was done before the onset of the credit crisis, so it precedes recent job losses in the housing and financial services industries.

The disappearing jobs list also reflects the continuing long-term decline of no- and low-skilled manufacturing jobs in the U.S.--sewing machine operators, engine assemblers, machine tool setters, home appliance repairers and textile knitting machine operators.

There are some surprises: Actors and tax examiners show up on the disappearing list, which is topped by entertainers who performed in places like amusement parks and arcades--or at least who used to.

Live Longer: The One Anti-Aging Trick That Works

2008-07-09T07:22:00.000-07:00

While the quest for the proverbial Fountain of Youth is endless and typically fruitless, one method known to extend the human lifespan by up to five years has quietly become accepted among leading researchers.
he formula is simple: Eat less. It could add years to your life, several experts now say. And done in moderation, it could at least help you live a more healthy life.

The only question is: Will the average person do it?

While little short of a nip-and-tuck will make you look younger, calorie restriction, as it is called, is as close to a real Fountain of Youth as any known technique comes. Even scientists who are cautious about anti-aging hype say it works, both by cutting risks for some diseases and by allowing all body cells, somehow, to hang in there longer.

"There is plenty of evidence that calorie restriction can reduce your risks for many common diseases including cancer, diabetes and heart disease," says Saint Louis University researcher Edward Weiss, who last week announced a new study that brings fresh understanding to how it works. "And you may live to be substantially older."

The numbers

Here's a rough rule of thumb that many experts generally agree on now: Eat 15 percent less starting at age 25 and you might add 4.5 years to your life, says Eric Ravussin, who studies human health and performance at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Louisiana.

One important caveat: Ravussin's estimate is based mostly on studies of other animals and only preliminary research in humans. But the work by Weiss and others is unlocking the mysteries of aging and suggesting the animal studies apply to humans.

"There is absolutely no reason to think it won't work," Ravussin told LiveScience.

Perhaps even more promising, though in early stages of research, are drugs designed on the basis of what's been learned from calorie-restriction studies. Those drugs would target human cells to deliver the same benefits, turning off bad things and turning on good things to extend cell life in general, or offer new therapies and cures to vexing diseases like Alzheimer's and cancer.

If you can hang in there until these promising new drug therapies are developed, you may live in a world where lifespan increases by 10 to 15 years, researchers say.

Don't plan on living to be 200, Ravussin said, "but I think we're going to gain quite a few years."

Mysteries remain

Scientists aren't sure exactly why calorie restriction slows aging. But they're on the verge of a firm understanding. In a nutshell, it is thought to lower metabolic rate and cause the body to generate fewer damaging "free radicals."

One hypothesis is that it decreases a thyroid hormone, triiodothyronine (T3), which then slows metabolism and tissue aging.

Weiss and colleagues studied men and women, aged 50 to 60, who did not smoke, were not obese and were in good health. The volunteers were split into three groups - a calorie-restriction group, an exercise group, or a control group - and followed for one year. The calorie-restriction group cut back by 300 to 500 calories per day. (A typical healthy adult diet should include about 2,000 calories.) Volunteers in the exercise group maintained their regular diet and exercised regularly.

While both the calorie-restriction and exercise groups experienced similar changes of body fat mass, only those in the calorie restriction group also experienced lower levels of the thyroid hormone. A longer-term study is still needed to pin down whether reducing T3 levels through calorie restriction indeed slows the aging process as suspected, the scientists say.

The results were published in the June issue of the journal Rejuvenation Research.

Step-by-step

Weiss' work advances the body of anti-aging knowledge, said Christy Carter, an aging researcher and assistant professor at the University of Florida College of Medicine.

"The more that scientists can demonstrate similar biological profiles between rodents and humans with regards to calorie restriction, the greater the possibility that lifespan extension will translate to human as well," Carter said.

Weiss figured it's sensible to take steps now. You can cut 300 to 500 calories by simply skipping dessert or substituting a turkey sandwich for fast food. A nutritional diet and exercise are important to any weight-loss effort, Weiss and others caution.

"Our research provides evidence that calorie restriction does work in humans like it has been shown to work in animals," Weiss said. "The next step is to determine if this in fact slows age-related tissue deterioration. The only way to be certain, though, is to do a long-term study."

Others agree: more research is needed.

"I think that they've documented a real and interesting effect of caloric restriction in humans," said UCLA evolutionary biologist Jay Phelan. "But they are still a long way from demonstrating that it changes human lifespan at all."

Proven in animals

Evidence that calorie restriction boosts lifespans in rodents is solid. Christiaan Leeuwenburgh of the University of Florida's Institute on Aging showed in 2006 that eating just 8 percent less and exercising a little more over a lifespan can reduce or even reverse aging-related cell and organ damage in rats.

Various studies have shown that cutting calories by 20 to 40 percent significantly both extends life and, with a little exercise, leaves old animals in better shape.

Eating fewer calories also reduces age-related chronic diseases such as cancers, heart disease, and stroke in rodents. That's important because it suggests ways to not just make us live longer, but to allow us to age more gracefully, healthwise.

Research last year found that rats on a restricted diet are more physically fit in old age, apparently slowing the typical onset of physical disability. The rodents also looked and probably felt better: "Rats that ate a normal diet lost a significant amount of lean muscle mass and acquired more fat, while calorie-restricted rats maintained lean muscle mass as they aged," said lead researcher Tongjian You from the University of Buffalo. The finding was published in the October issue of the Journals of Gerontology Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences.

Rodents are thought to be good analogues to humans. Dogs are even better.

A 14-year study of 48 Labrador Retrievers found restricting their diets by 25 percent starting at 8 weeks of age extended their lives by an average of 1.8 years. For a creature that typically never gets beyond its early teens, that's a big number. The findings were published back in 2002 in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association.

"The study also showed that lean body conformation forestalls some chronic illnesses, most notably osteoarthritis," said University of Pennsylvania researcher Gail K. Smith, who worked on the dog study. Ailments typically struck the lean dogs 2.1 years later than the others.

Probably works in humans

Convincing humans to eat less, and then studying the effects over a lifetime, is considerably more challenging. But mounting research suggests that what works for rats and dogs seems to apply to people.

Studies are under way with monkeys, which have lifespans of around 25 to 30 years, and early indications are promising, Ravussin said.

A study of humans last year found that cutting calories in human test subjects reduced oxidative damage in muscle cells. In the journal PLoS Medicine, the researchers speculated that the effect might translate into longer life.

Researchers caution, however, that longer lifespans does not mean immortality. The vast majority of mainstream researchers envision lifespans extending a few years.

"My estimate would be that 40 years of caloric restriction would give a 3 to 7 percent increase in longevity, so an optimistic estimate would be an additional four years or so," said Phelan, the UCLA researcher.

But researchers are quick to point out that human nature is not conducive to life-long calorie-restriction diets. "It's going to be limited to a few people who are going to try to do that," Ravussin said.

Seeking balance

"Suffering years of misery to remain super-skinny is not going to have a big payoff in terms of a longer life," Phelan said back in 2005 when the idea of "living forever" was particularly hyped in the media. "I once heard someone say caloric restriction may not make you live forever, but it sure would seem like it. Try to maintain a healthy body weight, but don't deprive yourself of all pleasure. Moderation appears to be a more sensible solution."

Phelan uses rodents as an example of why caution is warranted:

Mice will live longer if their diet is restricted by 10 percent, he said in 2005. "If you restrict their intake by 20 percent, they live even longer, and restrict them to 50 percent, they live longer still. But restrict their intake by 60 percent and they starve to death."

In an email interview the other day, Phelan said he stands by this assessment.

And Phelan now thinks there is "nothing" on the research horizon "that would extend lifespan in a significant amount, on the order of 10 or more years."

Big promise?

Other experts are optimistic that research into calorie restriction will lead to greater things.

Scientists are investigating what they call CR mimetics, or compounds that mimic the effects of calorie restriction. "This includes naturally occurring compounds and pharmaceuticals," explained Carter, the University of Florida researcher. "One that has received much attention lately is a compound called resveratrol, found in red wine."

Researchers have long pondered the French paradox: The French eat high-fat diets but live relatively long lives. Resveratrol and other compounds in red wine are thought by many to contribute to that good life. But testing any anti-aging drug or therapy sets up another tricky paradox: Nobody wants to invest in a 70-year test, and the Food and Drug Administration won't approve a chemical's use without thorough testing. There's a potential shortcut: Researchers are testing compounds thought to thwart aging on Alzheimer's patients to see if they slow the degradation of neurons. And similar human trials will begin soon on diabetes patients.

"However, many of these studies are still in the development phase, still being tested in rodent models," Carter said. "I expect that this field will begin to explode in the next few years. Caution is still merited given the need for extensive study of these compounds as to their efficacy and long-term safety."

Eventually, Ravussin thinks the combined efforts of all these research angles could extend lifespans by 15 years later this century.

In a society where lifespan has already increased significantly in recent decades, many people are at least as concerned with aging well as they are with living long.

"Many researchers are focusing on the effects of CR on health-span as opposed lifespan," Carter said. "We know that small reductions in caloric intake, even as little as 8 percent, result in improvements in health related outcomes."

Oil pauses near record over $145, U.S. holiday ahead

2008-07-09T07:16:00.000-07:00

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Oil took a breather above $145 a barrel on Friday a day after tensions between Iran and Israel prompted traders to stock up on oil ahead of the Independence Day long weekend, sending futures to an all-time peak.

U.S. crude oil inched down 6 cents to $145.23 a barrel by 2:13 a.m. EDT, off an all-time high of $145.85 hit on Thursday. The contract has risen more than 50 percent this year.

London Brent gained 8 cents to $146.16, near the record $146.69 touched a day ago.
Bullish investors have rushed into crude ahead of the Fourth of July holiday, traditionally the peak U.S. driving period, as they do not want to be caught short should the Iran-Israel row escalate, analysts said.

Heightened tension between Israel and OPEC's second-biggest producer Iran has put oil prices on the boil over the past two weeks, helping crude smash records five times in the last seven sessions.

"There weren't many changes in the situation. I think the current market is driven by speculative money, not by fundamentals," said Takeda Makoto, an analyst at Bansei Securities.

Speculation has mounted in recent weeks that Israel may be preparing a preemptive strike against Tehran's nuclear program.

Iran has threatened to block oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz if it were attacked. Approximately 40 percent of the world's seaborne crude oil trade passes through that Strait.

Concerns of tight supplies and money inflows from investors buying crude as a hedge against inflation, and a weakened dollar also lent support.

Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi reiterated his belief that the current oil rally was driven by speculators rather than any shortage of crude oil. He repeated promises that Saudi Arabia would pump more oil if there was demand. Oil refiners in the United States and Asia have said official Saudi prices make it uneconomical to buy more barrels.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said that a price of $100 per barrel for oil is "more than enough."

"If it were up to us, $100 per barrel would be more than enough, but it's not our fault," Chavez said during a televised address. Crude prices have surged seven-fold since the start of 2002 as supply struggles to keep up with demand from emerging nations like China. The price spike has caused fuel protests worldwide and hurt demand in consuming nations like the United States.

On Friday, the dollar steadied against the euro and weighed on oil prices, as the greenback kept most of the sharp gains made a day ago after U.S. payroll data came in close to expectations and eased fears about the health of the U.S. job market and economy.

Comments from the head of the European Central Bank that suggested further interest rate increases in Europe could be put on hold also supported the U.S. currency.

Tropical Storm Bertha, which formed on Thursday in the eastern Atlantic Ocean, was not expected to threaten any U.S. oil and gas production facilities in Gulf of Mexico. Hurricane experts have predicted an above-average number of storms and hurricanes through the U.S. hurricane season, which began on June 1 and runs through the end of November.

Pioneer says to launch Blu-ray recorders this year

2008-07-08T05:02:00.000-07:00

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese consumer electronics maker Pioneer Corp <6773.T> said on Tuesday it plans to launch Blu-ray DVD recorders by the end of the year, taking aim at a rapidly growing market after the end of a bitter format battle.

Pioneer is developing Blu-ray recorders with help from Sharp Corp <6753.T>, Pioneer's top shareholder with a 14 percent stake. Sharp already offers Blu-ray recorders.

Pioneer plans to start selling Blu-ray recorders in Japan before the year-end shopping season, followed by overseas launches.
The selling price and unit sales target have yet to be set, a Pioneer spokesman said.

Blu-ray recorder demand in Japan is likely to jump 18 fold to 3.6 million units by 2012, according to Fuji Chimera Research Institute.

Japan was at the heart of an optical-disc format war that pitted Blu-ray discs championed by Sony Corp <6758.T> against Toshiba Corp's <6502.T> HD-DVD discs, until movie studios lined up behind Blu-ray and its rival format bit the dust in February.

Shares in Pioneer were down 2.4 percent at 842 yen, underperforming the Tokyo stock market's electrical machinery index <.IELEC.T>, which fell 1.4 percent.

(Reporting by Elaine Lies and Kiyoshi Takenaka; Editing by Brent Kininmont)

Powerful Hurricane Bertha May Weaken Over Atlantic, Center Says

2008-07-08T04:58:00.000-07:00

uly 8 (Bloomberg) -- Hurricane Bertha, a `powerful' Category 3 storm, may weaken this week as it passes over the Atlantic away from land, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.

Bertha's maximum sustained winds were blowing at 120 miles (195 kilometers) an hour, the center said in an advisory posted on its Web site shortly after 4:30 a.m. Miami time. The system strengthened yesterday from a tropical storm.

``Some fluctuations in intensity may occur today, but a gradual weakening trend is expected to begin within the next couple of days,'' the center said.

The eye of Bertha, the first hurricane of the 2008 Atlantic season, was about 675 miles east-northeast of the northern Leeward Islands and 1,035 miles southeast of Bermuda. The system was moving northwest at 10 miles an hour, and is forecast to swing to the north, possibly threatening Bermuda, about 670 miles east of the North Carolina coast, by July 12.

The Atlantic hurricane season runs from June 1 to Nov. 30. Bertha is a Category 3 storm, the third-most powerful on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale. Category 3 storms have winds between 111 and 130 mph.

Kids and Cholesterol

2008-07-08T04:48:00.000-07:00

In the past few years there's been a steady push to get kids with very high cholesterol on statins, the LDL-lowering drugs already found in the medicine cabinets of 13 million Americans. Now the American Academy of Pediatrics--the nation's most influential group of pediatricians--has gotten in on the act. On Monday it released new guidelines suggesting that docs should start testing overweight kids or those with a family history of heart disease for high cholesterol at age two--and that they should consider prescribing statins as early as age eight. Four of the drugs are already FDA-approved for use in kids. The new AAP recommendations are sure to be controversial, especially since the drugs' long-term effects on kids are unknown.

Newsweek's Mary Carmichael spoke with Peter Belamarich, a pediatrician at Children's Hospital at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City, who has prescribed statins to some kids but takes issue with the new guidelines. Excerpts:

You've written that "lifestyle modification is the cornerstone of cardiovascular prevention in childhood." Isn't that what the AAP should be focusing on? Are you worried that these guidelines will encourage doctors to prescribe drugs to kids with high cholesterol instead of changes in diet and exercise?
Dr. Peter Belamarich: No. If people read them carefully, they say that the statin medications should be targeted to very high-risk children. The kids who would qualify for drug treatment based on these guidelines are less than one percent of all children. Ninety-nine percent of children and adolescents still should be treated with what's called therapeutic lifestyle change: limiting animal fat, increasing physical activity to an hour a day.
So what is your problem with the AAP guidelines?
My criteria for what justifies medication are higher than the guidelines'. I tend not to start medication until after age ten. And I don't treat very high-risk girls as aggressively as I would treat very high-risk boys, for two reasons. One, women develop cardiovascular disease slightly later in life, so there's less urgency in initiating treatment in childhood. Two, there are data suggesting that statins can interfere with growth and development in utero, so we should not use them in anybody who might get pregnant unintentionally, and that would include adolescents.

What does "very high-risk" mean regarding children and heart disease? It's not like these kids are having heart attacks at 10.
I think the children who most deserve these meds, if anybody does, are children who have a direct family history of premature coronary heart disease in young relatives who are under 40 or 50. Often, those kids have very low HDL, or "good," cholesterol levels. So I tend to treat boys with low HDL, a positive family history, and "bad" LDL levels in the 190s [milligrams per deciliter]. What makes it tricky is that prescribing these drugs in kids requires a lot more clinical judgment than it does in adults. In adults, there are scores that put all the risk factors together--hypertension, age, smoking, diabetes, sex, LDL/HDL ratio--and in middle-aged men, you can predict the risk of heart attack in the following year using those scores. We don't have that kind of score for children. So we have to use our judgment.

Are there enough data to support the use of statins in kids?
There's unequivocal data that if you've had a heart attack you should be on statins. There's no question, this is a fantastic drug. It decreases your risk of another heart attack by 30 percent or more and it's very safe. But that's for middle-aged people at high risk. We need studies with a logical progression showing it's okay to treat young adults, then very high-risk adolescents, and then extremely high-risk children younger than that. And that data is not all there. Some people would say, look, we're in the midst of an epidemic and it's really unethical to wait to start treatment. And other people, such as myself, would say that we need to be absolutely sure that what we're doing is safe before we do it.

Scientists obtain first look at Mercury's composition

2008-07-04T07:50:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON -- By measuring the charged particles in the planet Mercury's magnetic field, a University of Michigan sensor enabled the first observations about the surface and atmospheric composition of the closest world to the sun.
"We now know more about what Mercury's made of than ever before," said U-M professor Thomas Zurbuchen, who is project leader of the Fast Imaging Plasma Spectrometer (FIPS), a soda-can sized sensor on board the MESSENGER spacecraft, which performed the first of three scheduled Mercury flybys in January, 2008.

A paper on FIPS' results from this flyby is published in the July 4 edition of Science.

Since the Mariner 10 spacecraft's 1975 discovery of Mercury's magnetic field, scientists have speculated about how this magnetic field and the solar wind interact with the planet's surface and exosphere, or thin atmosphere.

FIPS detected silicon, sodium, sulfur and even water ions around Mercury. Ions are atoms or molecules that have lost electrons and therefore have an electric charge.

Because of the quantities of these molecules that scientists detected in Mercury's space environment, they surmise that they were blasted from the surface or exosphere by the solar wind. The solar wind is a stream of charged particles emanating from the sun. It buffets Mercury, which is closer to the sun than the Earth, and it causes particles from Mercury's surface and atmosphere to sputter into space. FIPS measured these sputtered particles.

"This flyby got the first-ever look at surface composition (of the planet)," Zurbuchen said. "The Mercury magnetosphere is full of many ionic species, both atomic and molecular, and in a variety of charge states. What is in some sense a Mercury plasma nebula is far richer in complexity and makeup than the Io plasma torus in the Jupiter system."

Io is a volcanically active moon of Jupiter that is often considered one of the most exciting space environments, Zurbuchen said. Images and other measurements made by MESSENGER suggest that Mercury's surface composition was determined at least in part by volcanic processes.

Biofuels behind food price hikes: leaked World Bank report

2008-07-04T07:47:00.000-07:00

LONDON (AFP) - Biofuels have caused world food prices to increase by 75 percent, according to the findings of an unpublished World Bank report published in The Guardian newspaper on Friday.
The daily said the report was finished in April but was not published to avoid embarrassing the US government, which has claimed plant-derived fuels have pushed up prices by only three percent.

Biofuels, which supporters claim are a "greener" alternative to using fossil fuel and cut greenhouse gas emissions, and rising food prices will be on the agenda when G8 leaders meet in Japan next week for their annual summit.

The report's author, a senior World Bank economist, assessed that contrary to claims by US President George W. Bush, increased demand from India and China has not been the cause of rising food prices.

"Rapid income growth in developing countries has not led to large increases in global grain consumption and was not a major factor responsible for the large price increases," the report said.

Droughts in Australia have also not had a significant impact, it added. Instead, European and US drives for greater use of biofuels has had the biggest effect.

The European Union has mooted using biofuels for up to 10 percent of all transport fuels by 2020 as part of an increase in use of renewable energy.

All petrol and diesel in Britain has had to include a biofuels component of at least 2.5 percent since April this year.

"Without the increase in biofuels, global wheat and maize stocks would not have declined appreciably and price increases due to other factors would have been moderate," the report said.

It added that the drive for biofuels has distorted food markets by diverting grain away from food for fuel, encouraging farmers to set aside land for its production, and sparked financial speculation on grains.

But Brazil's transformation of sugar cane into fuel has not had such a dramatic impact, the report said.

"The basket of food prices examined in the study rose by 140 percent between 2002 and this February," The Guardian said.

"The report estimates that higher energy and fertiliser prices accounted for an increase of only 15 percent, while biofuels have been responsible for a 75 percent jump over that period."

Brain imbalance 'cot death key'

2008-07-04T07:42:00.000-07:00

More evidence has emerged that a chemical imbalance in the brain may play a key role in cot deaths.

Researchers found low levels of serotonin triggered changes in heart rate and body temperature that led to sudden death in tests on mice.

Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that passes messages between brain cells and is most associated with mood.

The research, by the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Italy, follows similar findings in 2006 in the US.

About 300 babies die suddenly each year in the UK, although numbers have fallen by 75% since the early 1990s when a public campaign was launched to reduce the risks.

Unpredictable

In the latest study, published in the journal Science, mice susceptible to sudden death had been engineered to slow the production of serotonin.

This affected the brain stem which is linked to the spinal cord and helps control the lungs and heart.

Study leader Dr Cornelius Gross said: "At first sight the mice were normal.

"But then they suffered sporadic and unpredictable drops in heart rate and body temperature.

"More than half of the mice eventually died of these crises during a restricted period of early life."

A spokeswoman for the Foundation for the Study of Infant Deaths said it "reinforced" the findings from two years ago.

But she added: "What we need now is more research to find out what causes the serotonin imbalance - genetic factors or environmental?"

Circulating Tumor Cells Reveal Insights Into Lung Cancers

2008-07-03T11:11:00.000-07:00

WEDNESDAY, July 2 (HealthDay News) -- A new technique for finding and analyzing stray cancer cells in the blood of lung cancer patients may make it possible for doctors to one day not only determine the genetic "signature" of particular tumors but to monitor changes in those cells and adjust treatments accordingly.

"I think this is key to personalized medicine," said Dr. Daniel Haber, senior author of a paper detailing the technology, to be published in the July 24 issue of theNew England Journal of Medicinebut released early online Wednesday. "As we get to targeted therapies in increasing numbers, and increasing understanding about the genetics that guide targeted therapies, we need a way to know what we're treating."

The "CTC chip" technology described in the new paper may also one day aid in the detection of cancers that are likely to spread. "This is an early warning sign we could use for earlier detection," said Haber, who is director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center in Boston.
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A previous study published inNatureused the CTC (Circulating Tumor Cells) chip technology to look at CTCs in lung, pancreatic, prostate, breast and colon cancers. The CTC chip successfully found such cells in 99 percent of the samples.

"We're very interested in the biology of these cells because no one has really been able to study metastasis [spread of cancer to other parts of the body] in action," Haber said. "These are the cells that cause metastases and the lethality of cancer. Now that we can identify and purify them in decent numbers, we can study and hopefully identify some of their vulnerabilities. It opens up a whole field of human metastasis and human therapies."

The CTC chip is a silicon chip about the size of a business card that has 80,000 "columns" coded with an antibody that acts like a "glue" to capture tumor cells "that have no business being in the blood," Haber explained.

Haber and his colleagues analyzed blood samples from 27 patients with non-small cell lung cancer, 23 who had EGFR gene mutations and four who did not. CTCs were identified in all samples and in genetic analyses from mutations 92 percent of the time.

Mutations in EGFR, a protein, can help predict whether these tumors will respond to a family of drugs called tyrosine kinase inhibitors.

"Even in the three to four months that we followed patients, the genetic make-up of the tumors changed. Resistant mutations appear and other mutations appear, obviously because we're doing things [with drug therapy] to the cancer," Haber said. "But the way we practice oncology we don't typically test for that. We do one biopsy which takes a tiny, tiny amount and assume that for the rest of the course, the tumor is the same."

"It's important to know in real time what you're treating," he continued. "We need to be able to follow the patient without needing to re-biopsy the tumor every time."

The technology is in its infancy, however. "This is still in a very, very early stage where it takes a long time to handle every sample, to flow the blood through the chip," Haber said. "This is a proof of principle that we can do this. We need a much more automated system for larger clinical trials."

Dr. Len Horovitz, a pulmonary specialist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, said that "you have to have some circulating cells to do this test, but it's very exciting because they're getting a genetic fingerprint of a tumor which will tell an oncologist what therapy the tumor might respond to or not respond to.

"It's expensive, but it may well be that if we can identify patients who can have a personalized regimen that works, we will be saving the cost of treating all those patients with regimens that don't work," he added.

Two other studies looking at lung cancer are published in the July issue of theJournal of Thoracic Oncology.

One, a review of existing studies, concluded that analyzing so-called volatile organic compounds in the breath of lung cancer patients may hold promise as a tool to detect cancer earlier. The technique deserves further attention, said researchers from the Cleveland Clinic.

For the second study, researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham found certain socioeconomic factors that may contribute to a higher death rate among blacks with non-small cell lung cancer. These included a higher smoking rate among blacks patients than white patients; a greater delay to the start of treatment among blacks; and less willingness to undergo chemotherapy among blacks than their white counterparts.

How to Guard Against Rising Gas Prices

2008-07-03T10:32:00.000-07:00

Rising gas prices are inspiring drivers to find new ways of protecting themselves against future increases--including buying gas in advance and investing in stocks that tend to rise along with the price of gasoline.
One new company, MyGallons.com, lets customers buy gallons ahead of time based on the current prices in their area--in theory, locking in a lower price--and then redeem those gallons at a later date, regardless of any price increases in the interim.

Consumers can also invest in oil companies, coal companies, and other stocks that are likely to benefit from more expensive oil. "Look for companies that will benefit indirectly from oil prices and directly from increased energy efficiency," says Paul Larson, editor of Morningstar StockInvestor. That way, he says, consumers can balance higher expenses at the pump with higher returns on their investments.

At MyGallons.com, the company makes those investments itself. Founder Steve Verona says that the company protects itself against future gas price increases through taking positions in the stock market. That way, customers can enjoy the simplicity of purchasing and redeeming gallons for an established amount and avoid experiencing market fluctuations themselves. Verona says the company doesn't plan to make money on gas, but rather from the annual membership fee (about $30), the interest float on the money that is paid before the gas is redeemed, and advertising on its website.

For consumers interested in hedging their own bets, one option is investing in oil companies. "When gas prices go up, generally oil prices have gone up, and that raises [oil companies'] revenue," Larson says. He also suggests looking for companies that benefit indirectly from rising oil prices, such as railroads, which are a more energy efficient way of moving cargo over long distances than trucks. "That's why railroads are doing so well today," Larson adds.

Oil exploration companies such as Southwestern Energy also offer a way of protecting oneself against future gas price increases, says Peter Cohan, president of a management consulting and venture capital firm that bears his name. In addition, he recommends coal companies, including Walter Industries, Arch Coal, and Peabody Energy, since coal can be used as an energy source instead of oil. Alternative-energy companies, on the other hand, tend to be overvalued right now, Cohan says, and he advises staying away from them.

Of course, gas prices could come down, which could turn any of these investment ideas into losing propositions. As with all investments, says Tim Maurer, director of financial planning for Financial Consulate, a Baltimore advisory firm, consumers need to be prepared to stomach volatility. In fact, his firm has recently limited its exposure to oil in expectation of a short-term market correction.

If prices do indeed fall, then what will happen to MyGallons.com customers' prepurchased gallons? Verona says most people will simply hold on to them until prices go back up again.

But what if prices are currently at their peak and don't go up again? Verona says that's unlikely. "Very few analysts expect prices to come down...because current demand is increasing, while supply has stayed steady. We're talking years, if not decades, before [proposed] solutions have any impact. In the interim, prices should continue to rise," Verona says. He adds that if customers opt to drop out of the program, they can get a refund for their purchased gallons.

Still, the simplest way to protect oneself from rising gas prices, says Charlie Ober, vice president at T. Rowe Price and manager of its New Era Fund, is to drive less, plan vacations closer to home, carpool, and drive more fuel-efficient vehicles. "I think as a consumer, you're going to have to get used to a world of higher gasoline prices," he says, "and that is potentially a lifestyle-changing event."

Bush concedes `tough month' in Afghanistan

2008-07-02T11:13:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON - President Bush said Wednesday it has been a "tough month" in Afghanistan, where more U.S. and NATO troops died during the past two months than in Iraq. The Pentagon said it is too strapped to send more forces to Afghanistan now.
The president told a Rose Garden news conference that one reason for the rising deaths "is that our troops are taking the fight to a tough enemy ... of course there is going to be resistance." It has also been a "tough month for the Taliban," he said.

At the Pentagon, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that if security continues to improve in Iraq, he hopes troops will be available to shift to Afghanistan by the end of this year.

He said he currently doesn't have the troops — or brigade combat teams — to send to Afghanistan because of the military commitment in Iraq. But, he added, "we're on an increasingly positive path in Iraq in lots of dimensions. And so I'm hopeful toward the end of the year, opportunities like that would be created."

Bush spoke ahead of a trip to Japan this weekend to participate in the annual Group of Eight economic summit.

He urged Americans to pressure Congress to allow more oil exploration in the United States.

"We can help alleviate shortages by drilling for oil and gas in our own country, something I've been advocating ever since I've been the president. I've been reminding our people that we can do so in environmentally friendly ways," he said. "And yet the Congress, the Democratically controlled Congress now has refused to budge. It makes no sense."

The president sought to tamp down speculation that Israel will launch a military strike against Iran before he leaves office. He said all options are on the table but said military action would not be his first choice.

"I have made it very clear to all parties that the first option ought to be solve this problem diplomatically," Bush said. "And the best way to solve it diplomatically is for the United States to work with other nations to send a focused message — and that is, you will be isolated, and you will have economic hardship, if you continue to enrich."

Iran says its nuclear program is aimed only at generating electricity and cites its right under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to pursue uranium enrichment, a process that can produce either fuel for a nuclear reactor or material for a warhead.

The United Nations has demanded that Iran suspend enrichment and has imposed three rounds of similar financial sanctions on Iranian companies and individuals. The United States and European allies have been pushing Tehran to halt enrichment and offering incentives, to no avail.

In June, militants killed more U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan than in Iraq for the second straight month. It was the deadliest month for U.S. troops in Afghanistan since the war began.

Bush and Defense Secretary Robert Gates earlier this year told NATO allies that they would increase troop levels in Afghanistan in 2009 in response to the growing violence. The United States now has about 31,000 troops there — the most since the war began in October 2001 — and has been pressing allies to contribute more.

As the holiday weekend began, Bush said Congress was in part to blame for rising gas prices that have stung American consumers.

He said lawmakers continue to block his proposals, including lifting prohibitions on offshore oil drilling. The president has also called for allowing oil drilling in a portion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for drilling, easing the regulatory process to expand oil refining capacity, and lifting restrictions on oil shale leasing in the Green River Basin of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming.

Bush even appealed to Americans to lobby their congressional representatives on the matter.

"We have got the opportunity to find more crude oil here at home in environmentally friendly ways and they ought to be writing their Congress people about it," Bush said.

Bush outlined his goals for his last G-8 summit of nations, which are the United States, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia.

The debate about what to do about global warming will be front and center in Hokkaido too, although the discussion will be on the sidelines of the actual summit. Bush is hosting a meeting of major economies to urge nations to embrace long-term commitments to reduce green house gas emissions, but he appeared to be lowering expectations.

"The first step is to agree to a long-term goal," Bush said, adding that his advisers think other nations are "now coming to that clear understanding that we're going to have to come to a long-term goal. Hopefully, we can do it at this meeting. If not, we'll continue to press forward to get it done."

Bush said that at the summit in Japan he will urge other nations to make good on earlier pledges to help alleviate malaria, HIV-AIDS and other deadly diseases. He said he will make a push to train more health care workers in areas of the world where people lack access to medical care

Bush also said that he would call on nations to increase their shipments of food, fertilizer and seed to ease global food shortages. He said developed nations need to share advanced agricultural technology and work to lower tariffs and agricultural subsidies that impede trade.

The president said he'll also use the summit to remind the world that the threat of terrorist attacks has not gone away.

"The temptation is to kinda say, 'Maybe this isn't really a war. Maybe this is just a bunch of disgruntled folks that occasionally come and hurt us.' That's not the way I feel about it," Bush said.

Oil is making millionaires in North Dakota

2008-07-02T11:05:00.000-07:00

BEULAH, N.D. - Oscar Stohler was raised in a sod house in western North Dakota and ranched there for nearly seven decades. He never gave much thought to what lay below the grass that fattened his cattle.
When oilmen wanted to drill there last year, Stohler, 83, doubted oil would be found two miles underground on his property. He even joked about it.

"I told them if they hit oil, I was going to buy a Cadillac convertible and put those big horns on the front and wear a 10-gallon hat," Stohler recalled.

He still drives his old pickup and wears a mesh farm cap — but it's by choice.

In less than a year, Stohler and his wife, Lorene, 82, have become millionaires from the production of one well on their land near Dunn Center, a mile or so from the sod home where Oscar grew up. A second well has begun producing on their property and another is being drilled — all aimed at the Bakken shale formation, a rich deposit that the U.S. Geological Survey calls the largest continuous oil accumulation it has ever assessed.

Landowners in western North Dakota have a much better chance of striking it rich from oil than they do playing the lottery, say the Stohlers. Some of their neighbors in the town of about 120, from bar tenders to Tupperware salespeople, have become "overnight millionaires" from oil royalty payments.

"It's the easiest money we've ever made," said Lorene Stohler, who worked for decades as a sales clerk at a small department store.

State and industry officials say North Dakota is on pace to set a state oil-production record this year, surpassing the 52.6 million barrels produced in 1984. A record number of drill rigs are piercing the prairie and North Dakota has nearly 4,000 active oil wells.

The drilling frenzy has led companies to search for oil using horizontal drilling beneath Parshall, a town of about 980 in Mountrail County, and under Lake Sakakawea, 180-mile-long reservoir on the Missouri River.

"I have heard, anecdotally, that there is a millionaire a day being created in North Dakota," said Ron Ness, president of the North Dakota Petroleum Council.

Kathy Strombeck, a state Tax Department analyst, said the number of "income millionaires" in North Dakota is rising.

The number of taxpayers reporting adjusted gross income of more than $1 million in North Dakota rose from 266 in 2005 to 388 in 2006, Strombeck said. The 2007 numbers won't be known until October, she said.

Bruce Gjovig, director of the University of North Dakota's Center for Innovation, said his informal survey estimates the number of new millionaires in Mountrail County, one of the biggest drilling areas of the Bakken, may be as many as 2,000 — or nearly a third of the county's population — in the next three to five years.

North Dakota's per capita income in 2007 was $36,846, ranking the state 30th in the nation and up from 42nd in 1997, said Richard Rathge, the state Data Center director and North Dakota demographer.

"The two main drivers are energy and agriculture income," Rathge said. The increasing wealth in the state from oil should push the average annual wage in North Dakota, he said.

The oil boom has spurred several "Jed Clampett-like" tales of ordinary folks getting rich, said Tom Rolfstad, the economic development director for the city of Williston.

Rolfstad said he hasn't spotted any Ferraris or Rolls Royces in town, though several people can afford them now.

"I'm seeing a lot more big, shiny gas-guzzling pickups," he said.

Several homes that cost more than a million dollars also are being built in Williston, he said. The community of about 12,500 people is perhaps best known as the hometown of NBA coach Phil Jackson.

Most people "don't want people to know how much money they got and they don't want to be tagged with being wealthy — they want to be themselves," Rolfstad said.

Oscar and Lorene Stohler said their newly found wealth hasn't changed them.

"We still know what tough times are," Oscar said. "We grew up in the Dirty '30s."

"We put our kids through college without that oil money," Lorene said.

The couple moved a few miles east to Beulah and paid cash for their new home, the first one they have owned. They have established trust accounts for their four children.

Lorene said the only thriftless purchase was an automatic sprinkler system for her flowers that surround the couple's new home. And Oscar bought a $1,000 ring for his wife to celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary.

"We got enough now to buy new stuff," Lorene said, "but we like our old stuff."

Particularly long gas lines in Baghdad

2008-07-01T09:34:00.000-07:00

BAGHDAD - Frustrated Iraqis trying to tank up their cars faced miles-long gas lines in temperatures soaring above 100 degrees Tuesday — a stark reminder that a country with one of the world's largest oil reserves still has major challenges delivering fuel to its people.
Oil Ministry spokesman Assem Jihad blamed the shortage on sabotage of a pipeline bringing crude oil from the southern fields to a refinery in Baghdad. He gave no further details and would not say how long the shortage would last.

The fragile nature of the country's oil distribution system means that periodic shortages appear from time to time. But this week's crunch seems worse than most.

Although unrelated, the long lines followed Iraq's announcement Monday that it was opening six major oil fields and two natural gas fields to development by foreign firms, which could lead to the biggest outside stake in Iraq's oil industry since it was nationalized more than 30 years ago.

The government hopes these contracts will boost oil production by 60 percent from levels that are already the highest since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. Increased production would provide additional resources to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure and deliver services to the people.

But the gas lines snaking nearly 2 miles down the streets of Baghdad on Tuesday show it will take a lot more than money to translate record oil prices and increased production into concrete improvements in the quality of life for the Iraqis.

Iraq's Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani has said the country expects to reap revenues of $70 billion by year's end if world prices remain high. Oil prices exceeded $143 for the first time ever on Monday and show few signs of falling.

But sectarian strife, rampant corruption, lack of adequate refineries and inefficient government institutions limit the positive impact that increased public revenues could have on average Iraqi citizens like Habib Hadi, who lined up for gas at 4 a.m. Tuesday.

After waiting more than four hours, he said he finally edged close to the gas station and "saw a catastrophe."

"The gas pump was not working because of the lack of electricity," Hadi said.

Fuel and electricity shortages increase hardships in Iraq in the summer, when temperatures soar well above 100 degrees Fahrenheit, making life uncomfortable without air conditioning.

The government continues to have problems providing regular power, and many rely on gas-run home generators for electricity.

The official price for a liter of gasoline in Iraq is the equivalent of about 38 cents, or about $1.44 a gallon. But the black market price, which has risen significantly in recent days, can be almost three times that amount.

Many residents in eastern Baghdad who lined up early Tuesday for fuel could do little more than stand outside their cars in the sweltering heat, waiting for the lines to move.

A vendor rode his bicycle cart by a group of frustrated Iraqis, as several drivers pushed their cars toward a gas station they couldn't even see, they were so far away.

Falah Taweel, a gas station attendant scrambling to serve endless customers, said he blames the long waits on fuel shortages, rising summer demand and electricity problems.

"As official distributors, we are in a very bad situation. We can't meet the demand," said Taweel. Frustrated drivers behind him yelled at one another.

An Iraqi's simple demand for a tank of gasoline is in sharp contrast to the grand plans announced Monday on the opening of the major oil and gas fields to foreign firms to boost production by 1.5 million barrels per day.

Iraq currently produces 2.5 million barrels per day and hopes to raise that to 4.5 million by 2013.

Al-Shahristani named 35 foreign companies that would be eligible to bid for the development contracts, including seven from the U.S., three from Britain and others from countries like Russia and China.

Iraq had been expected to announce short-term, no-bid contracts with five major Western oil firms Monday as a stopgap measure to boost production until the government awards longer-term deals next June. However, the oil minister said the government was still negotiating with the companies, which he did not identify.

He said the firms wanted to participate in oil field production rather than simply provide consulting services for cash.

Some fear a dominant role for Western firms in Iraq's oil industry could feed perceptions that U.S.-led forces toppled Saddam Hussein to grab the country's natural resources.

Can't pay for your palace? Then get out

2008-07-01T09:26:00.000-07:00

Her Majesty the Queen has let it be known that, as one headline put it “One is on one's uppers”. Apparently the Queen cannot afford to get the decorators into Buckingham Palace without more government money.

In which case, might one make a modest proposal? Parliament should vote to abolish the monarchy, declare the United Kingdom “an independent, indivisible, sovereign, secular and inclusive democratic republic nation”, then give the Royal Family a fortnight to quit the palace and turn it into a museum.

That, after all, is what the Nepalese parliament voted to do with its monarchy problem a month ago (by a majority of 560, with only four votes against). Or is Nepal now too modern and progressive a society for us to emulate?

Publication of the Royal Household's financial report and the Prince of Wales's creative accounts has refuelled debate about the cost of the monarchy when millions are feeling the pinch. The palace's financial advisers say the Royal Family costs only £40 million a year - 66p per person in Britain or “less than the price of a download for an MP3 player”. The MP3 monarchy - who says one is not with it?
However, the campaign group Republic estimates the real cost of the royals at more like £150 million. In response to claims that the royals earn Britain millions of pounds in tourism, Republic notes that only one royal residence, Windsor Castle, features in the UK's top 20 tourist attractions - at number 17, while Windsor Legoland is at number 7: “Indeed, the success of the Tower of London (number 6) suggests that tourism would benefit if Buckingham Palace and Windsor castle were vacated by the Windsor family.”

But there is far more at stake than a few million quid. Even if it could be proved that the entire institution of monarchy cost a total of 66p, some of us would still think that too high a price for a 21st-century democracy to be headed by a hereditary leftover of the Middle Ages.

The monarchy has long provided a ceremonial front for a political system in which power is concentrated at the top of the State in the name of the Crown. The Crown prerogative invests the residual powers of the monarch in the executive- Her Majesty's Government. Prerogative powers give the Government the right to wage war or conclude treaties without consulting Parliament or the public. The Crown prerogative has also given governments a free hand over dissolving Parliament and calling general elections, running the Civil Service and over appointments of ministers, peers, judges and Church of England bishops.

It is the constitutional status of the Crown that enables the Prime Minister to act as an absolute monarch. In his first important statement as Prime Minister last July, Gordon Brown promised sweeping reforms to the Crown prerogative that would allow greater parliamentary scrutiny. This was hailed in that bright dawn as a constitutional “revolution”, but Mr Brown's record since then hardly inspires confidence that his Government will boldly go where no monarchist has gone before.

In any case, the one outdated institution that he has no intention of changing is the monarchy itself. It might have been clear from the moment he enjoyed such a long, warm first meeting with the Queen - when she “invited” him to become “her” Prime Minister - that the Brown revolution was stillborn.

Bending the knee to the monarchy is often symptomatic of spine problems in a politician. Mr Brown seems as much of a royal toady as other supposedly radical Labour leaders. Indeed, with the monarchy now seen as one institution still commanding public respect, new Labour appears keen to teach our children greater subservience by making them swear an oath of allegiance to Queen and country.

The question of monarchy raises wider issues than the Crown prerogative. It goes to the heart of the sort of society in which we want to live. It is not about the personal lifestyles of the royals. It is about the rest of us. Do we want to see ourselves the legal subjects of a medieval crown? Or as free citizens of a modern nation? Whatever one thinks of the Windsors, the monarchy is a truly absurd anachronism. Queens and princes are for children in a fairytale world. Republics and freely elected heads of state are for adults. Even if we don't like a UK president, we could probably get rid without the need to execute anybody. It's time to grow up.

So come on Gordon, why not go out in a blaze of glory? Follow the Nepalese way, try to pass that resolution (though there may be more than four votes against) and give the royals a fortnight's notice to quit the palace. Despite the credit crunch and all her reported money problems, one suspects our former queen could still manage a decent deposit for a mortgage.

Study: World Gets Happier

2008-07-01T09:24:00.000-07:00

The upbeat outlook is attributed to economic growth in previously poor countries, democratization of others, and rising social tolerance for women and minority groups.

"It's a surprising finding," said University of Michigan political scientist Ronald Inglehart, who headed up the survey. "It's widely believed that it's almost impossible to raise an entire country's happiness level."

Denmark is the happiest nation and Zimbabwe the the most glum, he found. (Zimbabwe's longtime ruler Robert Mugabe was sworn in as president for a sixth term Sunday after a widely discredited runoff in which he was the only candidate. Observers said the runoff was marred by violence and intimidation.)

The United States ranks 16th.

The results of the survey, going back an average of 17 years in 52 countries and involving 350,000 people, will be published in the July 2008 issue of the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science. Researchers have asked the same two questions over the years: "Taking all things together, would you say you are very happy, rather happy, not very happy, not at all happy?" And, "All things considered, how satisfied are you with your life as a whole these days?"

A Happiness Index created from the answers rose in 40 countries between 1981 and 2007, and it fell in the other 12.

Scientists had thought happiness is stable over time when looking at entire societies. "Most previous research suggests that people and nations are stuck on a 'hedonic treadmill,'" Inglehart said. "The belief has been that no matter what happens or what we do, basic happiness levels are stable and don't really change."

So Inglehart's team was surprised that happiness "rose substantially." They speculate reasons for the sunny outlooks include societal shifts in recent decades: Low-income countries such as India and China have experienced unprecedented rates of economic growth; dozens of medium-income countries have democratized; and there has been a sharp rise of gender equality and tolerance of ethnic minorities and gays and lesbians in developed societies.

Despite the anxieties of these times, happiness has been on the rise around the world in recent years, a new survey finds.
Previous research has found that happiness is partly inherited and that money doesn't buy much of it.

Yet the new survey finds people of rich countries tend to be happier than those of poor countries. And controlling for economic factors, certain types of societies are much happier than others.

"The results clearly show that the happiest societies are those that allow people the freedom to choose how to live their lives," Inglehart said.

A survey released last week found one reason America doesn't top the list: Baby Boomers are generally miserable compared to other generations. Further, a public opinion poll released by the Pew Research Center in April found that 81 percent of Americans say they believe the country is on the "wrong track." The response is the most negative in the 25 years pollsters have asked the question.

The World Values Surveys, led by Inglehart, was funded by the National Science Foundation, the Swedish and Netherlands Foreign Ministries, and other institutions.

5 Lifestyle Activities That Can Get You Fired

2008-06-27T06:22:00.000-07:00

Can having a bacon double cheeseburger and a cigarette put your job at risk? Maybe. It may sound surprising, but many off-the-job actions and lifestyles could put your job in jeopardy.

Fair Game?

Employment experts point out five key areas that a company may scrutinize:

* Smoking, drinking, and overeating. Due to the cost of health insurance, more and more employers view "unhealthy" habits as a threat to their bottom line.
* Risky behavior. Likewise, a company might see your bungee jumping hobby as a liability.
* Speech. Will your employer consider your blogging to be destructive griping?
* Romantic relationships. Dating someone at a competitor's company has landed employees in hot water. And some employers might take issue with unmarried coupling or even same-sex relationships (federal law doesn't protect employees from discrimination based on real or perceived sexual orientation).
* Political activity. Volunteering for Obama could be trouble if you have a pro-McCain boss, and vice versa.

Job- or industry-specific behaviors can lead to termination as well. A Ford worker who drives a Toyota is probably safe -- unless he or she is president of Ford. But a bank employee who bounces a personal check could get the boot.

Cause or Just Because

If these reasons for termination seem unfair, they must be illegal, right? Not necessarily. Just because most employers don't let valued employees loose for off-the-job activities and lifestyles, doesn't mean they can't.

"Most workers in the private sector don't understand that, unless they live in Montana and Arizona, their job is at-will," Paul Secunda, an assistant professor of law at the University of Mississippi, told Yahoo! HotJobs. "At-will means an employee can be fired for good cause or no cause at all," Secunda said.

Federal job protections include gender, race, religion, and national origin, as well as disability. "Some state laws forbid discrimination on other bases, including sexual orientation, or status as a smoker," said Rick Bales, a professor at Northern Kentucky University/Chase College of Law. Smokers in the tobacco-growing state of Kentucky, for example, are safe from termination, he said.

Don't Be Fooled

Although union members and public sector (government) workers generally have more protections, employees in the private sector -- the bulk of the U.S. workforce -- can be fired at any time, and usually without recourse.

"Unless you were fired because you are a member of a protected class under federal law, or under another state statute, it's likely not illegal," said Kimberly Malerba, an associate who litigates employment cases with Ruskin Moscou Faltischek, P.C., a law firm on Long Island, New York.

The good news is that most companies don't go out of their way to snoop into employees' lives, Malerba told Yahoo HotJobs. "A company is most concerned with (off-the-job) behaviors that directly conflict with business interests."

5 Tips to Consider

Legal experts have advice for protecting your job from unexpected dangers:

* Understand the concept of at-will employment. Don't assume that termination must be illegal just because you think it was unfair.
* Be fully aware of your company's policies and terms of employment. Read the employee handbook, and ask HR if you have any questions.
* Be familiar with the company's internal dispute mechanisms (if any) for filing grievances.
* Think before you act. Could your employer see your actions off the job as potentially destructive to the company?
* Don't disclose. "You don't have to disclose lifestyle choices or off-the-clock activities unless there is a clear link to your ability to perform the job," Secunda said.

"My general advice is, don't do anything on your own time that, if reported in the local paper, would reflect poorly on you or your employer," Bales told Yahoo! HotJobs.

Oil climbs to record above $141 in Asia

2008-06-27T05:11:00.000-07:00

SINGAPORE - Oil prices climbed to a record above $141 a barrel in Asian trading Friday as the dollar's protracted slump prompted investors to flock to oil as a hedge against inflation.
Prices were also lifted Thursday after OPEC's president said crude prices could rise well above $150 a barrel this year and Libya said it may cut oil production.

Light, sweet crude for August delivery rose as high as $141.71 a barrel before pulling back to $141.10, up $1.46 in Asian electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange, midafternoon in Singapore. The contract Thursday rose $5.09 to settle at a record $139.64.

The previous trading record for a front-month contract was $139.89, set on June 16.

On Thursday, the dollar slipped against key currencies as U.S. data showed sluggish economic growth and pointed to a struggling labor market. Oil is priced in dollars, and some investors buy oil contracts to protect the value of their assets against accelerating inflation when the dollar falls.

"The dollar movements caused the surge in oil pricing and the bullish trend remains intact," said Victor Shum, an energy analyst with Purvin & Gertz in Singapore. "The oil market is subject to further spikes in the coming weeks."

On Friday, the dollar slipped to 106.42 yen from 106.91 yen Thursday; the euro was trading at $1.5738, down from $1.5751.

Crude futures were also driven higher after Chakib Khelil, president of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, said he believes oil prices could rise to between $150 and $170 a barrel this summer. Khelil also said prices will decline later in the year, and aren't likely to reach $200 a barrel.

Khelil joined a long list of forecasters who have made bold oil price predictions this year. Each new forecast — such as Goldman Sachs' recent prediction that prices could rise as high as $200 — causes a jump in prices as speculative buyers are drawn into the market.

Meanwhile, the head of Libya's national oil company said the country may cut crude production because the oil market is well supplied, according to news reports.

Addison Armstrong, director of market research at Tradition Energy in Stamford, Connecticut, said in a research note that Shokri Ghanem, the nation's top oil official, has declined to say when a decision would be made on whether to lower production, or give any indication of the size of the cut under consideration.

But analysts expressed skepticism over the comments out of Libya, saying the current level of oil prices provides an incentive for producers not to cut output.

"I doubt that any real effort in cutting output would be forthcoming, considering that pricing continues to hit new records," Shum said. "There's no economic reason to cut output at this time so it's just talk."

Oil prices have more than doubled over the past year on concerns about rising demand in fast-growing economies such as China and India, and supply disruptions in the Middle East and Nigeria.

Analysts have also attributed oil's rapid climb to speculative buying, with traders jumping into the market purely on the expectation that futures will continue to rise.

"Even though we have continued to see weakening demand in the U.S., other markets in the developing world still show growth," Shum said. "The tight market has empowered speculators to invest in oil and the oil market is subject to further spikes in the coming weeks."

In other Nymex trading, heating oil futures rose 0.71 cent to $3.8905 a gallon while gasoline prices lost 0.68 cent to $3.5045 a gallon. Natural gas futures declined 1.7 cents to $13.231 per 1,000 cubic feet.

Brent crude futures rose 17 cents to $140 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange in London.

20 cancer-fighting foods to eat all summer

2008-06-26T10:48:00.000-07:00

A healthy, balanced diet is key, experts say, but these foods may have an extra punch.

Leafy greens: Deep green leafy vegetables are packed with lutein, vitamin A and folate, nutrients that may help prevent colon and ovarian cancer.

* Spinach
* Kale
* Collard greens
* Arugula
* Dandelion greens

Curry: Yellow curry contains cur-cumin, a pungent spice that may help prevent melanoma and other types of cancer cells from proliferating.

Cruciferous veggies: These contain phytochemicals that may cut the risk of stomach, breast and skin cancers.

* Broccoli
* Broccoli sprouts
* Cabbage
* Bok choy
* Cauliflower
* Watercress
* Swiss chard

Berries: These fruits contain antioxidants such as polyphenols, which counteract and repair cell damage.

* Blueberries
* Blackberries
* Raspberries
* Strawberries
* Cranberries
* Red grapes

Tomatoes: Studies suggest that having a tomato-rich diet may help lower the risk of developing both lung and stomach cancer.

North Korea hands over nuclear declaration

2008-06-26T10:45:00.000-07:00

(NECN/ABC) - President Bush said today he will remove North Korea from the U.S. terrorism blacklist. It is a sharp reversal of policy towards a country he once branded part of the "axis of evil." Mr. Bush acted after North Korea agreed to take the first steps towards dismantling its nuclear weapons program.

For years, North Korea's leader Kim Jong Il has defied U.S. demands to give up his nuclear weapons program. Today, concessions from both sides.

President Bush: "Today we have taken a step, and it is a very positive step but there are more steps to be done."

Click here to watch the news conference President Bush held after learning the news.

In a deal reached between North Korea and the U.S., China, Russia, South Korea and Japan, North Korea agreed to provide details of its nuclear facilities.

It will also reveal how much plutonium, the key ingredient to making a nuclear bomb, it has.

In exchange, the U.S. will drop North Korea from the State Dept. list of countries that sponsor terrorism.

It will also lift some politically significant sanctions, but hold onto its leverage.

President Bush: "The two actions the US is taking will have little impact on North Korea's financial and diplomatic isolation. North Korea will remain one of the most heavily sanctioned nations in the world."

Massive Asteroid Caused Mars to Appear Deformed Forever

2008-06-26T10:38:00.000-07:00

Boston (dbTechno) - According to a series of new studies released on Wednesday, a massive asteroid slammed into Mars 4.4 billion years ago. The impact from the asteroid caused Mars to take its deformed shape it currently has today.

Three studies in total were released on Wednesday speaking about the asteroid and how it changed the red planet forever.

Mars is about half of the size of Earth, but when you look at its shape you realize that it has a very strange, split appearance to it.

The northern part of Mars appears extremely smooth, while the south is a whole different story.

Scientists have speculated in the past why Mars looks like this, with many blaming a volcano or something of that nature.

In one of the three studies, a team was led by Jeffrey Adnrews-Hanna from MIT.

They used gravity observation to remove any type of volcanic deposits. Once this was done, what they found was that there was an area where you could see an impact occured which stretched 6,600 miles.

The shape of the hole was smooth and elliptical according to the study.

They also managed to find low-altitude gravity measurements in the southern half of Mars, meaning that they found cracks there from the impact in the north.

Though this has yet to be fully proven, it could be true that Mars was hit the hardest in our solar system by an asteroid.

Francis Nimmo of the University of California-Santa Cruz led one of the studies in the journal Nature, and stated it was a bad day for Mars to say the least.

North America's 10 Sexiest Beaches

2008-06-25T08:24:00.000-07:00

Dreams of barefoot strolls and barely-there beachwear help coax us through the gray days of winter. You know how it is. On a clear summer night, when the warm wind kisses your skin and the sun slips down into the sea, even the most jaded city slicker starts to feel the sap rising. So break out the bikinis and bring on the heat. Summer is here, and it’s time for a little reckless abandonment.

While some of the beaches on our list are family-friendly, we focused on places where adults get to play in a giant sandbox.

In Pictures: North America's Sexiest Beaches

For many urban jungle dwellers, the stimulation of breathtaking scenery and perfect temperatures is enough to kick-start the libido. The topographically-blessed states of California and Hawaii offer perhaps the most gratifying combination of untamed nature and unrestrained sexiness. Picture yourself cavorting among hula dancers in the lush tropical wonderland of Maui’s stunning Kaanapali Beach. Or perhaps you’d rather be frolicking with ripped surf kings beneath the rainbow-laced mountains of Kauai’s Hanalei Bay.

California’s La Jolla Cove, with its rugged sandstone cliffs, is another one of those pinch-me beautiful places etched into our minds from countless movies and postcards. These are places that demand we peel back as many layers of prudery — and clothing—as we dare.

Maybe you prefer your own private paradise? Two of our top picks boast special temptations for those vacationing as couples. Amid the lavish resorts of Mexico’s Playa del Carmen, couples indulge in massages surrounded by lush, fragrant gardens. Private infinity pools, secret dining spots, and Mayan saunas right on the beach are all here for the taking. Laguna Beach, a coastal jewel set between Los Angeles and San Diego,, offers hidden coves beyond the more scene-y stretches where you and your amour can steal away from prying eyes. For adults-only romance, Miami’s South Beach delivers plenty of sexy hotels where you can lounge on secluded beach-beds.

If you’re ready to keep up with the best, Cabo San Lucas is world-famous for attracting thirsty college kids, cruise ship revelers and fashionable party people from every corner of the world. From a casual beach-bar refreshment to a full-throttle dance-a-thon, Cabo delivers an endless array of sensual summer entertainment. For a très chic party-scene, South Beach scores again with its jet-setting sun worshippers from near and far who don’t know the meaning of the word “no.” Deco and decadence go hand-in-hand in this haven for fun-loving models and flamboyant beach boys.

California’s Manhattan Beach and Pacific Beach are the best places to check out the buff boys and girls of summer as they glide along on rollerblades and leap gracefully among volleyball nets. If the golden SoCal scenery wasn’t enough, PB’s tanned, twenty-something surfers and MB’s well-muscled professional volleyball players are attractions that no summer pleasure-seeker should miss. Their enviable physical perfection urges you strike a pose on a surfboard and take a turn at wind-surfing, sailing, or sea kayaking. You not only feel sexy, you look sexy, too, and that’s half the game. No skills? No problem. Get a local beach babe to show you the ropes.

Finally, some may call it swimming with the sharks, but there are people who like a little bling-bling with their bikini. Main Beach, East Hampton, is the most happening section of the fabled Long Island playground where the rich and famous gather every summer. Each way you turn, A-listers, celebrities, trust-fund bunnies and house-sharers are blowing off serious steam. Chasing hot Hamptonistas in velvet-roped clubs is certainly not a sport for the timid, but there are plenty of seaside bars for more low- key flirting. Of course, if you’re ensconced in one of the multi-million-dollar mansions that line the beach, the party will be coming to you. Bonus: East Coast surfers flock to the Hamptons to pick up swells.

Of course, the only way to be sure which beach is the sexiest is to get out there and try them all. That’s a summer assignment we highly recommend.

World's ugliest dog is all winner

2008-06-25T08:20:00.000-07:00

Petaluma: Gus the dog has three legs, one eye, skin cancer and no hair, except for a white tuft on the top of his head. He's a real winner.

The pedigree Chinese crested won the World's Ugliest Dog contest on Saturday at the Sonoma-Marin Fair in Northern California.

His owner, Jeanenne Teed, brought Gus all the way from St. Petersburg, Florida, to compete for the dubious distinction.

She said she would spend the $1,600 prize on treatment for Gus's skin cancer.

After the excitement of the moment, Teed characterised her dog's reaction, "Well, I think right now he's ready for a nap."

The Chinese crested breed is a popular choice in this annual contest. Last year's champ, Elwood, was a Chinese crested and Chihuahua mix.

'Hospital risk' from radio tags

2008-06-25T08:01:00.000-07:00

Lifesaving equipment in hospitals may be switched off by radio-frequency devices used to track people and machines, Dutch scientists claim.

Radio frequency identification devices (RFIDs) are on the rise in healthcare, helping identify patients, and reveal the location of equipment.

The Journal of the American Medical Association study found they could interfere with machines.

But NHS computer specialists said RFIDs could eventually make patients safer.

Even the most seductive technology will interact in the tightly-coupled healthcare world in ways physicians and other members of the healthcare team had better understand, or they and their patients may pay a dear price
Dr Donald Berwick
Institute for Healthcare Improvement

There are two types of RFID, one which transmits information, and another, "passive", device which can be "read" by a powered machine when it is held nearby.

They are small and cheap enough to be in everyday use in society, in everything from security and travel cards - such as London Transport's Oystercard, to anti-theft devices on goods in shops, and hospitals are starting to become aware of their potential.

At Heartlands Hospital in Birmingham, patients heading for the operating theatre wear an RFID wristband, so that even when anaesthetised, their full identity, including a picture, can be downloaded into a PDA held nearby.

Turned off

The latest research, conducted at Vrije University in Amsterdam, tested the effect of holding both "passive" and powered RFIDs close to 41 medical devices, including ventilators, syringe pumps, dialysis machines and pacemakers.

A total of 123 tests, three on each machine, were carried out, and 34 produced an "incident" in which the RFID appeared to have an effect - 24 of which were deemed either "significant" or "hazardous".

In some tests, RFIDs either switched off or changed the settings on mechanical ventilators, completely stopped the working of syringe pumps, caused external pacemakers to malfunction, and halted dialysis machines.

The device did not have to be held right up to the machine to make this happen - some "hazardous" incidents happened when the RFID was more than 10 inches away.

Patient safety

Dr Donald Berwick, from the Institute of Healthcare Improvement in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said: "Design in isolation is risky - even the most seductive technology will interact in the tightly-coupled healthcare world in ways physicians and other members of the healthcare team had better understand, or they and their patients may pay a dear price."

A spokesman for NHS Connecting for Health, which manages various IT projects across the health service, said that RFIDs had the potential to deliver big improvements in patient safety, reducing mistakes caused by the wrong identification of patients.

She said: "Any product such as this which is for use in a healthcare setting has to meet a standard which means it is very unlikely to interfere with medical equipment.

"This risk is more likely to come from RFID tags from other sources - such as a travel card, a tag on clothing, or on another retail item."

A spokesman for the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency said that, as for mobile phone use, individual Trusts needed to make risk assessments about the use of RFIDs.

He said: "Despite much debate in the literature on the subject of electromagnetic interference (EMI) of medical devices by mobile telephones and other sources of radiofrequency transmission, the MHRA has received very few reports of adverse events caused by this problem over the last seven years or so.

"Of those incidents reported, only a very small number have been proven to be as a direct result of EMI."

Sunshine Vitamin Linked To A Longer Life

2008-06-24T10:59:00.000-07:00

New York - According to a new study, people with lower levels of vitamin D in their blood are more likely to die from any cause during the next eight years than those with the highest levels of vitamin D.

An Austrian study found the link to heart-related deaths especially strong.

“This is the first association study that shows vitamin D affects mortality regardless of the (primary) reason for death,” said Dr Harald Dobnig of the University of Graz, who led the study.

Researchers are still unsure how vitamin D effects heart related deaths and other illnesses. However the sunshine vitamin has been shown to help regulate the body’s ability to combat illness through improving the immune system.

Experts warn that this study doesn’t mean people should start spending hours under the hot sun or popping vitamin D pills.

The study which included more than 3,200 men and women can be found in the latest issues of Archives of Internal Medicine.

Bill Clinton 'committed to' Obama

2008-06-24T10:57:00.001-07:00

Former US President Bill Clinton has announced for the first time that he is backing fellow Democrat Barack Obama to win the US presidential election.

Mr Clinton's wife Hillary was Mr Obama's biggest rival for the party nomination, and he was often critical of Mr Obama on the campaign trail.

Mr Obama and Mrs Clinton are set to hold a joint rally on Friday.

Mr Clinton will be in Europe to celebrate Nelson Mandela's 90th birthday and will not attend the rally.

"President Clinton is obviously committed to doing whatever he can and is asked to do to ensure Senator Obama is the next president of the United States," said spokesman Matt McKenna.

Not talking

The Obama campaign welcomed Mr Clinton's declaration of support, saying: "A unified Democratic Party is going to be a powerful force for change this year and we're confident President Clinton will play a big role in that."

Relations between Mr Clinton and Mr Obama have been "frosty" since Mrs Clinton suspended her campaign, and the two men have not spoken, the Associated Press news agency reported.

During the primary battle between Mr Obama and Mrs Clinton, Mr Clinton made the headlines when he described Mr Obama's record of opposition to the Iraq War as a "fairy-tale", and when he accused Mr Obama of "playing the race card".

Observers say Mr Obama is making efforts to heal the divisions within the party and win over Democrats who supported Mrs Clinton in the primaries.

To this end, the Obama-Clinton rally on Friday will be held in the town of Unity, New Hampshire, where Mr Obama and Mrs Clinton both received 107 votes in the New Hampshire primary.

You don't still use a screen saver, do you?

2008-06-24T10:51:00.000-07:00

I'm happy that at this stage in my career I often find myself writing articles about energy-efficient ways to use computers, peripherals, gadgets, and consumer electronics. It makes me feel so, you know, virtuous.

Whenever I crank out a list of helpful hints, one of the first items I include is this obvious but often overlooked gem of advice: Kill your stupid screen saver. In the good old days of tube monitors, screen savers such as those unforgettable flying toasters were invented to prevent burn-in, a permanent shadow branded into the phosphors of your monitor by a static image of, say, a spreadsheet that you left on your screen all weekend.

Well, flat-screen LCD monitors don't burn in, so if you still have flying toasters or an endlessly looping slide show of your adorable niece and nephew, you're behind the times. When you're not sitting in front of your monitor it should be off off off.

It warmed my heart to read at Green Daily that Telstra, the biggest phone company in Australia, has removed all the corporate screen savers from the 36,000 computers in its offices. What will happen? The change will cut tons of CO2, which they claim will be the equivalent of taking 140 cars off the road for a year. Good on ya, mate. Follow Telstra's example. Let your flying toasters crash and burn.

New clue to Alzheimer's found

2008-06-23T08:34:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON (AP) — Researchers have uncovered a new clue to the cause of Alzheimer's disease.

The brains of people with the memory-robbing form of dementia are cluttered with a plaque made up of beta-amyloid, a sticky protein. But there long has been a question whether this is a cause of the disease or a side effect. Also involved are tangles of a protein called tau; some scientists suspect this is the cause.

Now, researchers have caused Alzheimer's symptoms in rats by injecting them with one particular form of beta-amyloid. Injections with other forms of beta-amyloid did not cause illness, which may explain why some people have beta-amyloid plaque in their brains but do not show disease symptoms.

The findings by a team led by Dr. Ganesh M. Shankar and Dr. Dennis J. Selkoe of Harvard Medical School were reported in Sunday's online edition of the journal Nature Medicine.

The researchers used extracts from the brains of people who donated their bodies to medicine.

Forms of soluble beta-amyloid containing different numbers of molecules, as well as insoluble cores of the brain plaque, were injected into the brains of rats. There was no detectable effect from the insoluble plaque or the soluble one-molecule or three-molecule forms, the researchers found.

But the two-molecule form of soluble beta-amyloid produced characteristics of Alzheimer's in the rats, they reported.

Those rats had impaired memory function, especially for newly learned behaviors. Studies were also done on mice and when their brains were inspected, the density brain cells were reduced by 47 percent. The beta-amyloid seemed to affect synapses, the connections between cells that are essential for communication between them.

The research, for the first time, showed the effect of a particular type of beta-amyloid in the brain, said Dr. Marcelle Morrison-Bogorad, director of the division of neuroscience at the National Institute on Aging, which helped fund the research.

It was surprising that only one of the three types had an effect, she said in a telephone interview.

Morrison-Bogorad said the findings may help explain the discovery of plaque in the brains of people who do not develop dementia. For some time, doctors have wondered why they find some brains in autopsy that are heavily coated with beta-amyloid, but the person did not have Alzheimer's.

The answer may lie in the two types of beta-amyloid that did not cause symptoms.

Now, the question is why one has the damaging effect and not others.

"A lot of work needs to be done," Morrison-Bogorad said. "Nature keeps sending us down paths that look straight at the beginning, but there are a lot of curves before we get to the end."

Dr. Richard J. Hodes, director of the National Institute on Aging, said that "while more research is needed to replicate and extend these findings, this study has put yet one more piece into place in the puzzle that is Alzheimer's."

In addition to the Institute on Aging, the research was funded by Science Foundation Ireland, Wellcome Trust, the McKnight and Ellison foundations and the Lefler Small Grant Fund.

NASA Mars Lander To Dig As Team Probes Flash Memory

2008-06-23T08:31:00.000-07:00

NASA's Phoenix Mars Mission generated an unusually high volume of spacecraft housekeeping data on Tuesday causing the loss of some non-critical science data. Phoenix engineers are analyzing why this anomaly occurred.

The science team is planning spacecraft activities for Thursday that will not rely on Phoenix storing science data overnight but will make use of multiple communication relays to gain extra data quantity.

"The spacecraft is healthy and fully commandable, but we are proceeding cautiously until we understand the root cause of this event," said Phoenix Project Manager Barry Goldstein of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Usually Phoenix generates a small amount of data daily about maintaining its computer files, and this data gets a high priority in what gets stored in the spacecraft's non-volatile flash memory.

On Tuesday, the quantity of this data was so high that it prevented science data from being stored in flash memory, so the remaining science data onboard Wednesday, when the spacecraft powered down for the Martian night after completing its 22nd Martian day, or sol, since landing, was not retained. None of that science data was high-priority data.

Almost all was imaging that can be retaken, with the exception of images taken of a surface that Phoenix's arm dug into after the images were taken.

To avoid stressing Phoenix's capacity for storing data in flash memory while powered off for overnight sleeps, the team commanded Phoenix Tuesday evening to refrain from any new science investigations on Wednesday and to lower the priority for the type of file-housekeeping data that exceeded expected volume on Tuesday.

"We can continue doing science that does not rely on non-volatile memory," Goldstein said.

Most science data collected during the mission has been downlinked to Earth on the same sol it has been collected, not requiring overnight storage, but on some sols the team has intentionally included imaging that yields more data than can fit in the afternoon communication passes.

This has been done in order to take advantage of the capacity to downlink additional data during communications passes on the following Martian mornings. In the short term, while the root cause of the unexpected amount of housekeeping data is being determined, the science team will forgo that strategy of storing data overnight.

Meanwhile, extra communication-relay opportunities have been added to Thursday's schedule, so the science plan for the day will be able to generate plentiful data without needing overnight storage. Trench-digging, imaging and weather monitoring are in the plan.

Oil rises on modest Saudi increase, Nigeria

2008-06-23T08:27:00.000-07:00

NEW YORK - Oil prices rose Monday on disappointment over Saudi Arabia's modest production increase and concerns that output from Nigeria will decline. Retail gas prices, meanwhile, inched lower overnight, but appear unlikely to change much as long as oil prices remain stuck in their recent trading range.
Saudi Arabia said Sunday at a meeting of oil producing and consuming nations that it would turn out more crude oil this year if the market needs it. The kingdom said it would add 200,000 barrels per day in July to a 300,000 barrel per day production increase it first announced in May, raising total daily output to 9.7 million barrels.

But that pledge at the meeting held in the Saudi city of Jeddah fell far short of U.S. hopes for a larger increase. The United States and other nations argue that oil production has not kept up with increasing demand, especially from China, India and the Middle East. Saudi Arabia and other OPEC countries say there is no shortage of oil and instead blame financial speculation and the falling U.S. dollar.

"The Jeddah meeting became a non-event," said Linda Rafield, senior oil analyst at Platts, the energy research arm of McGraw-Hill Cos. "There was no surprise."

Light, sweet crude for August delivery rose $1.20 to $136.56 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Saudi Arabia did say it would work to boost its long-term production capacity.

"Obviously, the Saudis are concerned, and that could be a bearish factor," said Andrew Lebow, senior vice president at MF Global LLC in New York.

But any longer-term production increases are years away, Rafield said.

"The oil summit really has not done much to temper oil pricing," said Victor Shum, an energy analyst with Purvin & Gertz in Singapore. "It was a modest output increase and hardly really compensates for the disruption out of Nigeria."

Concerns about Nigerian production also boosted prices Monday. Royal Dutch Shell PLC said it cannot meet contractual obligations to export oil from a Nigerian oil field following a militant attack Thursday, and news reports say Chevron Corp. has been forced to shut down a Nigerian oil facility following a militant attack.

Those production outages appeared to overshadow Sunday's ceasefire declaration by the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, or MEND, the main militant group in Africa's largest oil producing nation. Attacks by MEND have sliced about one quarter from Nigeria's normal oil daily oil output, helping buoy crude prices in international markets.

Despite the ceasefire, investors are not convinced that lost Nigerian oil production will resume any time soon, analysts say.

Keeping a lid on oil's gains Monday was the dollar, which rose against the euro. When the dollar gains ground, investors who bought commodities such as oil as a hedge against inflation tend to sell. Also, a stronger greenback makes oil more expensive to overseas investors. Many analysts believe the dollar's protracted decline has been one of the main reasons oil has nearly doubled in value over the past year.

At the pump, meanwhile, the average national price of a gallon of regular gas slipped a tenth of a cent overnight to $4.072, according to AAA and the Oil Price Information Service. Prices have changed little since reaching a record of $4.08 one week ago.

Analysts think gas prices are unlikely to change much as long as oil prices remain stuck in their recent trading range between roughly $130 and $140 a barrel. Oil futures are unlikely to break out of that range without major news concerning supply and demand, or the dollar, analysts said.

"There's a general uncertainty," Lebow said. "There are forces on both sides," aiming to push prices higher and lower.

In other Nymex trading Monday, July gasoline futures rose 1.58 cents to $3.455 a gallon, and July heating oil futures rose 3.27 cents to $3.8044 a gallon. July natural gas futures rose 16.5 cents to $13.159 per 1,000 cubic feet.

Melanoma Treated By Blood Cell Therapy

2008-06-20T12:03:00.000-07:00

New Process Shows Patient Recovery May Be Possible

Seattle,WA-One patient that had late stage skin melanoma cancer was successfully treated and is now in remission using an experimental process of treatment.

The process is experimental and controversial, but has shown progress and possible promise for use with other patients across the United States.

The patient was treated by tinkering with his own infection body defenses, using a blood cell therapy that has been examined in the past, but has also been the subject of much controversy.

The new study is being published in this Weeks issue of the New England Journal of Medicine and it talks about using the 30-year-old historical field of the usage of the body’s own defenses to fight cancer and abnormal cell growth.

The process is often referred to as “Adoptive immunotherapy,” and is traced back to the 1980s when it was first used.

Transferring this process from theory to actual usage has been slow. The treatment involves using the patient’s own white blood cells that have been reproduced in a petri dish outside the body, then giving them back to the patient.

It is considered the ultimate in personalized medicine, but it is surrounded with a lot of controversy on both sides.

House easily passes compromise surveillance law

2008-06-20T11:40:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON - The House Friday easily approved a compromise bill setting new electronic surveillance rules that effectively shield telecommunications companies from lawsuits arising from the government's terrorism-era warrantless eavesdropping on phone and computer lines in this country.
The bill, which was passed on a 293-129 vote, does more than just protect the telecoms. The update to the 30-year-old Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is an attempt to balance privacy rights with the government's responsibility to protect the country against attack, taking into account changes in telecommunications technologies.

"This bill, though imperfect, protects both," said Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., and a former member of the intelligence committee.

President Bush praised the bill Friday. "It will help our intelligence professionals learn enemies' plans for new attacks," he said in a statement before television cameras a few hours before the vote.

The House's passage of the FISA Amendment bill marks the beginning of the end to a monthslong standoff between Democrats and Republicans about the rules for government wiretapping inside the United States. The Senate was expected to pass the bill with a large margin, perhaps as soon as next week, before Congress takes a break during the week of the Fourth of July.

The government eavesdropped on American phone and computer lines for almost six years after the Sept. 11 attacks without permission from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the special panel established for that purpose under the 1978 law. Some 40 lawsuits have been filed against the telecommunications companies by groups and individuals who think the Bush administration illegally monitored their phone calls or e-mails.

The White House had threatened to veto any surveillance bill that did not also shield the companies.

The compromise bill directs a federal district court to review certifications from the attorney general saying the telecommunications companies received presidential orders telling them wiretaps were needed to detect or prevent a terrorist attack. If the paperwork were deemed in order, the judge would dismiss the lawsuit.

It would also require the inspectors general of the Justice Department, Pentagon and intelligence agencies to investigate the wiretapping program, with a report due in a year.

Critics of the bill say dismissal is a foregone conclusion.

"These provisions turn the judiciary into the administration's rubber stamp," said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif. She opposes the bill.

Opponents of immunity believe civil lawsuits are the only way the full extent of the wiretapping program will ever be revealed.

Key senators voiced strong opposition to the compromise, although they're unlikely to have the votes to either defeat or filibuster the bill. Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, condemned the immunity deal. He said that nothing in the new bill would prevent the government from once again wiretapping domestic phone and computer lines without court permission.

Specter said the problem is constitutional: The White House may still assert that the president's Article II powers as commander in chief supersede statutes that would limit him actions.

"Only the courts can decide that issue and this proposal dodges it," Specter said.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi of California disputed that, saying FISA would from now on be the authority for the government to conduct electronic surveillance.

"There is no inherent authority of the president to do whatever he wants. This is a democracy, not a monarchy," she said.

Some civil liberties and privacy groups are also opposing the bill. They object not only to the immunity provision but to what they consider the weakening of the FISA court's oversight of government eavesdropping. For example, the government can initiate a wiretap without court permission if "important intelligence" would otherwise be lost. It has a week to file the request for approval with the court, and the court has 30 days to act on it. But if the court objects to how the government is carrying out the wiretap, it could be weeks before those methods are changed or stopped.

"What we have here is the opportunity for the government to commit mass untargeted surveillance," said Texas Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee.

Opponents also contend the privacy of Americans who communicate with people overseas is not adequately protected. The bill would allow the government to tap the foreigner's calls without court approval, and critics contend that innocent American conversations can be swept up in that.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendment bill also would:

_Require FISA court permission to wiretap Americans who are overseas.

_Prohibit targeting a foreigner to secretly eavesdrop, without court approval, on an American's calls or e-mails.

_Require the government to protect American information or conversations that are collected when in communications with targeted foreigners.

_Allow the FISA court 30 days to review existing but expiring surveillance orders before renewing them.

_Allow eavesdropping in emergencies without court approval, provided the government files required papers within a week.

_Prohibits the president from superseding surveillance rules in the future.

PC World Former 'spam King' Must Pay MySpace $6 Million Former 'spam King' Must Pay MySpace $6 Million

2008-06-19T05:27:00.000-07:00

A Colorado man has been ordered to pay US$6 million in damages and legal fees for spamming thousands of MySpace.com users.
Scott Richter of Westminster, Colorado, must pay MySpace $4.8 million in damages and $1.2 million in legal fees, a court-appointed arbitrator ruled on Thursday.

Richter, who was once accused of pumping out more than 100 million spam messages per day, had been sued by MySpace in January 2007 in connection with an August 2006 campaign in which MySpace members were hit with unsolicited messages promoting a Web site called Consumerpromotionscenter.com. The messages were sent from phished MySpace accounts, according to the findings of Philip Boesch, the court-appointed arbitrator in the case.

The messages were sent to a MySpace community that was ill-equipped to deal with any security problems. At the time, "MySpace only employed two relatively junior staff employees to deal with these issues," Boesch wrote. The company's security staff has now grown to about 40, he added.

MySpace had been seeking a court ruling in the case, but in August 2007, U.S. District Judge George King of the Central District of California granted Richter's request to assign the matter to arbitration. Terms of the award were made public on Monday.

In a statement, Richter said that he and his company, Media Breakaway, were happy to have this matter behind them, noting that the arbitrator's award was 95 percent less than the amount sought by MySpace.

"We respect the decision of the arbitrator and we're not going to appeal it," said Steven Richter, the president and general counsel of Media Breakaway and father of Scott Richter. "We're going to pay the money he awarded."

This is not the first time a Scott Richter company has had to cough up millions of dollars to fight spam charges. In 2005, his previous company, Optinrealbig.com, paid $7 million to settle similar charges brought by Microsoft.

Scott Richter was removed from anti-spam organization Spamhaus' list of known spammers that same year.

Media Breakaway, which has no other spam cases pending, is doing everything it can to build a compliance team and make sure it is acting within the law, Steven Richter said.

MySpace said the Richter award was the latest in a series of steps it has taken to combat abuse on its Web site. In May, the company was awarded a $230 million antispam judgment against Sanford Wallace and Walter Rines.

"This award reflects MySpace's continued momentum and holistic approach to ridding the site of spammers and phishers," MySpace said in a statement. "We will continue to do our part in cleansing the Internet of this invasive onslaught of spam."

Bush urges Congress to lift offshore drilling ban

2008-06-19T05:21:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON -- President George W. Bush urged Congress on Wednesday to lift its long-standing ban on offshore oil and gas drilling, saying the United States needs to increase its energy production.

"There is no excuse for delay," the president said in a statement. With the presidential election on the horizon, Bush blamed Democratic lawmakers for opposing his energy policies and for high gasoline costs, now topping US$4 a gallon (3.8 liters) in the U.S. His proposal echoed a call by Republican presidential candidate John McCain to open the Continental Shelf for exploration

"Families across the country are looking to Washington for a response," Bush said.

He said that offshore drilling could yield up to 18 billion barrels of oil over time, although it would take years for production to start. Bush also said offshore drilling would take pressure off prices over time.

There are two prohibitions on offshore drilling, one imposed by Congress and another by executive order. Bush is not lifting the executive order, saying he wants Congress to take the first step. He said he will lift the executive ban once Congress lifts its moratorium.

Before Bush spoke, the House Appropriations Committee postponed a vote it had scheduled for Wednesday on legislation doing the opposite of what the president asked _ extending Congress' ban on offshore drilling. Lawmakers said they wanted to focus on a disaster relief bill for the flood-battered Midwest.

Bush also proposed opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska for drilling, lifting restrictions on oil shale production in the Green River Basin of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming and easing the regulatory process to expand oil refining capacity.

With Americans deeply pessimistic about the economy, Bush tried to put on the onus on Congress. He acknowledged that his new proposals would take years to have a full effect, hardly the type of news that will help drivers at the gas stations now. The White House says no quick fix exists.

Still, Bush said Congress was obstructing progress _ and directly contributing to consumers' pain at the pump.

"I know the Democratic leaders have opposed some of these policies in the past," Bush said. "Now that their opposition has helped drive gas prices to record levels, I ask them to reconsider their positions."

Bush said that if congressional leaders head home for their July 4 holiday recess without taking action, they will need to explain why "US$4 a gallon gasoline is not enough incentive for them to act. And Americans will rightly ask how high gas prices have to rise before the Democratic controlled Congress will do something about it."

See a Huge Moon Illusion Wednesday

2008-06-18T11:30:00.000-07:00

As the full moon rises this Wednesday evening, June 18, many people will be tricked into thinking it's unusually large
The moon illusion, as it's known, is a trick in our minds that makes the moon seem bigger when it's near the horizon. The effect is most pronounced at full moon. Many people swear it's real, suggesting that perhaps Earth's atmosphere magnifies the moon.

But it really is all in our minds. The moon is not bigger at the horizon than when overhead.

The illusion will be particularly noticeable at this "solstice moon," coming just two days before summer starts in the Northern Hemisphere. The reason, according to NASA, lies in lunar mechanics: The sun and full moon are like kids on a see-saw; when one is high, the other is low. This week's high solstice sun gives us a low, horizon-hugging moon and a strong, long-lasting version of the illusion.

If it's any consolation, space station astronauts report the same effect.

Here's how it works: Your mind believes things on the horizon are farther away than things overhead, because you are used to seeing clouds just a few miles above, but the clouds on the horizon can indeed be hundreds of miles away. So if we think something (such as the moon) is farther away, and it's not, then it seems larger.

If you remain doubtful, test the idea yourself. Go out at moonrise with a small object, perhaps a pencil eraser. Hold it at arm's length as the moon rises and compare the sizes of the moon and the eraser, then repeat the experiment an hour or two later when the moon is high in the sky. A rolled up tube of paper works well, too.

Moonrise times vary by location. On Wednesday, it will come up at these local times at these locations, according to NASA: New York City, 8:58 p.m.; Miami, 8:35 p.m.; Seattle, 9:51 p.m.

The moon rises about 50 minutes earlier Tuesday night, when the effect will also be noticeable because the moon will be nearly full. Oh, and that raises another fallacy: There's no such thing as a full moon.

Additional moonrise times for your location are available from the U.S. Naval Observatory Web site.

F.D.A. Takes Aim at Herbal Cancer ‘Cures’

2008-06-18T11:27:00.000-07:00

With ingredients like bloodroot, shark cartilage and Cat’s Claw and assertions like “causes cancer cells to commit suicide,” it’s no wonder the Food and Drug Administration is taking notice.

On Tuesday, the agency warned 23 American companies and 2 foreign ones to stop claiming to prevent or cure cancer with their various “tablets, teas, tonics, black salves, and creams.”

Here are a few of the claims the agency cited:

– “Treats all forms of cancer”
— “80 percent more effective than the world’s number one cancer drug”
— “Skin cancers disappear”
— “Target cancer cells while leaving healthy cells alone”
— “Shrinks malignant tumors”
— “Avoid painful surgery, radiotherapy, chemotherapy, or other conventional treatments”

All told, 125 products were identified on the agency’s web site, www.fda.gov. Legal notices were sent to the companies urging prompt corrective action, which were also posted on the Web.

In the agency’s letter to Herbs for Cancer, an Arizona company that markets teas for more than a dozen cancers — from bladder and bone to malignant lymphoma — the agency shreds the company’s claims one by one. It also scolded that firm and others for deceptively spreading word about their products on the Web:

These claims are supplemented by use of the word “cancer” in most of your product names, as well as in the URL address for your website. Furthermore, the metatags used to bring consumers to your website include “cancer,” “herbs for cancer” and “fight-cancer.”

The site, herbsforcancer.com, has apparently been shut down, for unstated reasons.

In a matter of hours, the F.D.A.’s warnings have invaded Google search results, providing clear expressions of caution for anyone seeking more information on individual products like “C-Cell 4 Destroyer” and subjects like “herbs for cancer.”

Indeed, the effort was a strong sign that the agency was moving even more aggressively to counter fraud in the booming market for health advice and treatments on the Web. “Although promotions of bogus cancer ‘cures’ have always been a problem,” Margaret Glavin, the agency’s regulatory chief, said, “the Internet has provided a mechanism for them to flourish.”

Obama holds on to small lead over McCain

2008-06-18T11:14:00.000-07:00

Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama opens the US general election campaign with a narrow lead over Republican John McCain but the two score near even among independent voters, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday.

According to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, Obama leads McCain by 48 percent to 42 percent among all adults, while McCain has picked up support from independents who could be key to deciding the November election. Independents see McCain, an Arizona senator, as more credible on fighting terrorism and are split evenly on who is the stronger leader and better on the Iraq war, the Post reported. McCain has a 14-point lead over Obama, an Illinois senator, on the issue of dealing with terrorism and a narrow edge on who is best equipped to handle international affairs, the poll found. On Iraq, 47 percent of all respondents said they trust McCain more and 46 percent said they have faith in Obama. Independents were 45 percent for McCain to 43 percent for Obama on the question of Iraq, according to the poll.

Experience appears to be Obama's clearest weakness, the newspaper said. The poll found that just 50 percent of Americans said Obama has the necessary experience to be president, almost unchanged since early March. Fifty-six percent said McCain was a safe choice, while 52 percent said that of Obama. The two candidates were evenly matched on the question of who is the stronger leader, with 46 percent of respondents rating each as top. McCain was in a far weaker position on domestic issues with Obama leading by 16 points on the economy, which continues to top the list of the campaign's most important issues, the Post reported. The poll of 1,125 adults was conducted by telephone on June 12-15 and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

On Monday, Obama said he plans to visit Iraq and Afghanistan before November's election and was encouraged by a recent reduction in violence in Iraq. Obama, who later picked up the endorsement of former Vice President Al Gore at a Detroit rally on Monday night, spoke by telephone with Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari and reiterated his support for a pullout of US troops.

Da Vinci Code movie banned from filming in church

2008-06-17T11:32:00.000-07:00

Rome's diocese said Monday it has barred the producers of "Angels & Demons" from filming in two churches for the prequel to the "The Da Vinci Code" the popular book and film that angered many Catholic leaders.

Producers of the film, directed by Ron Howard and starring Tom Hanks, were turned down because the movie "does not conform to our views," said Monsignor Marco Fibbi, a spokesman for the diocese.

The crew had asked to film in the churches of Santa Maria del Popolo and Santa Maria della Vittoria, two architectural jewels in the heart of Rome that include paintings by Caravaggio, sculptures by Bernini and a chapel designed by Raphael.
Permission was denied in 2007, but the issue surfaced only now that filming is ongoing in Rome, Fibbi said. The Sony-produced film was put on hold during the Writers Guild of America strike that ended in February and is now scheduled for release in May 2009.

Fibbi's comments first were reported this week by the Italian entertainment magazine "TV Sorrisi e Canzoni." "It's a film that treats religious issues in a way that contrasts with common religious sentiment," Fibbi told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. "We would be helping them create a work that might well be beautiful but that does not conform to our views."

Fibbi acknowledged that the controversy over writer Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code" and its blockbuster movie version had weighed on the decision.

The story drew anger and prompted calls for boycotts by church leaders worldwide with the idea that Jesus married and fathered children and by depicting the conservative Catholic movement, Opus Dei, as a murderous cult.

"This is a prequel to 'The Da Vinci Code' and it's clear that the theme is similar," Fibbi said. He added that the ban would not stop the crew from filming the exterior of the churches.

Brown's "Angels and Demons" is a religious thriller combining an ancient secret brotherhood called the Illuminati, code-cracking, a papal conclave and a high-tech weapon threatening to destroy the Vatican.

It features Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon of "The Da Vinci Code" fame, played by Hanks in the movie.

NBC's Tim Russert Dies From Sudden Heart Attack

2008-06-17T11:29:00.000-07:00

June 16 2008 - The sudden death of famous journalist Tim Russert this past Friday has shocked everyone, and is gotten people talking about the risks of heart attacks for men over the age of 50.

Russert, 58 had previously been diagnosed with a couple of the enormous risk factors for heart attacks for men over the age of 50, them being coronary artery disease and diabetes.

Russert, was an employee of NBC and according to reports suffered a sudden heart attack away from the hospital.

Co-workers did their best to revive him while medics were called but to know avail.

They also tried using a defibrillator once the ambulance arrived on the scene.

According to the American Heart Association, each year in the US more than 300,000 deaths are caused by sudden heart attacks.

Flooding in Iowa Reaches Record Levels

2008-06-17T11:15:00.000-07:00

"We made the decision to evacuate our patients into what we consider to be a safer environment," Mercy Medical Center's President Tim Charles said, according to the Cedar Rapids Gazette. "We were concerned with the possibility of the flood breaching the facility that our backup power system could be compromised.

"Quite frankly, if that were to occur, that would be catastrophic for our patients. We wanted to ensure their safety."

The city has been particularly hard hit. The Associated Press has reported that more than 3,000 homes have been emptied amid a city in which more than 400 blocks remain underwater.

No deaths or serious injuries were reported in Iowa, but one man was killed in southern Minnesota after his car plunged from a washed-out road into floodwaters, according to news agencies.

Officials said they expect the Cedar River to crest late in the day Friday, at about thirty-two feet, dramatically higher than the last major flood which reached only 19 feet.

Throughout the state, the governor of Iowa has said nine rivers have reached or are near record levels and 83 of 99 counties in the state are currently classified as disaster areas.

Parts of Cedar Rapids also faced shortages of drinking water with only one of the city's six wells in proper functioning order.

"If we lost that one we would be in serious trouble. Basically we are using more water than we are producing," Dave Koch, a spokesman for the Cedar Rapids fire department, said. "We really need to reduce the amount of water we are using ... even using paper plates, hand sanitizer."

In other parts of the state, like Des Moines, citizen volunteers and National Guard members have been doing everything possible to shore up vulnerable levees to prevent any major flooding, including adding 60,000 sandbags to a particularly weak spot along the levee wall protecting a neighborhood in the city.

A similar situation is being played out on the Fond du Lac River in Iowa, the Fox River in northern Illinois and along the northern areas of the Missouri River. All are facing the prospect of rising water from rivers that can no longer contain the rush of water as these rivers crest, starting Friday, and continuing into early next week.

While Cedar Rapids may be facing the worst trial of the flood late Friday, the prospect of a flooding Missouri river this weekend and the possibility of the Mississippi flooding next week is stirring continued concern over the spate of weather problems.

People in several northern Missouri communities piled up sandbags to prepare for possible Missouri River flooding over the weekend, with a more significant rise in the Mississippi River expected Wednesday.

FDA: J&J’s Psoriasis Drug Might Raise Cancer Risk

2008-06-16T11:09:00.001-07:00

Johnson & Johnson’s experimental drug, ustekinumab appears to be effective in treating psoriasis, but its long-term use could slightly increase cancer risks, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration wrote in an analysis released on Friday, a few days before an advisory panel would discuss the drug’s efficacy and dosing.

Centocor Inc., a unit of Johnson & Johnson, is seeking approval for the drug to treat adults with chronic moderate to severe plaque psoriasis.

Psoriasis, a skin disorder that causes scaly red patches, affects an estimated 7.5 million Americans.

Ustekinumab injections work by blocking an inflammation-causing protein called tumor necrosis factor (TNF). Animal studies showed suppression of these proteins raised the chances of developing cancer, the FDA reviewer said.

An advisory panel is scheduled to discuss on Tuesday ustekinumab’s potential dangers that may arise in people taking the drug without medical supervision. Also the FDA will ask the panel whether or not to put animal data (highlighting the cancer risk) on the label of the drug or whether the company should do more research on the safety issue.

If approved, ustekinumab would compete fierce competition from other leading injectable drugs like Amgen Inc and Wyeth’s Enbrel and Abbott Laboratories Inc.’ Humira, as well as Johnson & Johnson’s Remicade, administered by intravenous infusion.

The FDA is expected to make its decision on whether to approve ustekinumab for sales in the U.S. in September.

Flood Waters Still A Problem For Cedar Rapids

2008-06-16T11:02:00.000-07:00

The dark, filthy water that inundated the entire downtown of Iowa's second-largest city was receding Saturday after forcing 24,000 people to flee, but those who remained were being urged to take draconian measures to avoid overwhelming the city's only remaining drinking water source.

A sandbagging siege saved the last of the city's four collection wells from contamination by the record flood. But officials warned that if people didn't cut back on flushing toilets, taking showers and other nonessential uses, the town would be out of potable water within three to four days.

``Water is still our primary concern,'' said Pat Ball, the city's utilities director. ``We're still using water at a greater rate than we're producing.''

More than 400 city blocks and 3,900 homes were flooded in Cedar Rapids, where early estimates put property damage at $736 million, according fire department spokesman Dave Koch.

While the Cedar River ebbed in hard-hit Cedar Rapids, a levee breach in the state capital of Des Moines flooded a neighborhood of more than 200 homes, a high school and about three dozen businesses.

More than 200 homes were evacuated in Iowa City, home of the University of Iowa, as a flood crest headed down the Iowa River. The Iowa City crest isn't expected until Monday or early Tuesday.

``This is our version of Katrina,'' Johnson County Emergency Management spokesman Mike Sullivan said of Iowa City. ``This is the worst flooding we've ever seen.''

At least two deaths in Iowa have been attributed to the flooding, which has prompted the governor to issue disaster proclamations for 83 of the state's 99 counties.

Elsewhere, Illinois emergency authorities said a levee along the Mississippi River in far western Illinois burst Saturday morning and voluntary evacuations were under way in Keithsburg, a town of about 700 residents.

``The levee broke in two places,'' Keithsburg Alderman George Askew, 76, said of the town some 35 miles southwest of Moline.
``We're getting under water.''

Parts of southern Wisconsin have been dealing with flooding for days. West of Milwaukee in Summit, authorities on Saturday found the body of a 68-year-old man near his vehicle on a flooded road.

Iowa's worst damage so far was in Cedar Rapids, where the Cedar River crested Friday night at nearly 32 feet, 12 feet higher than the old record set in 1929.

Murky, petroleum- and garbage-choked water inundated three collection wells and threatened the fourth before several hundred volunteers staged a last-ditch sandbagging operation. The collection wells are fed by a network of four dozen smaller wells.

Water lapped to within 3 feet of the improvised, 4-foot-high wall surrounding the brick pumping station before it began to recede. Two portable generators, one as big as a semitrailer, roared around the clock to keep the three pumps inside running.

``It's the little engine that could,'' said Ron Holtzman, one of several people who came to watch the operation Saturday from a nearby foot bridge.

The pumps were drawing at near capacity of 15 million gallons a day. But that's not enough for the city of around 120,000-plus residents and the suburbs that depend on its water system.

Officials estimate it could be four days before the river drops enough for workers to begin pumping out flooded portions of the city.

Since June 6, Iowa has gotten at least 8 inches of rain, and that followed a wet spring. As of Friday, nine rivers were at or above historic flood levels. More thunderstorms are possible in the Cedar Rapids area during the weekend, but next week is expected to be sunny and dry.

Microsoft offered $1 bln for Yahoo search - source

2008-06-13T12:33:00.000-07:00

SEATTLE/SAN FRANCISCO, June 13 (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) offered Yahoo Inc (YHOO.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) $1 billion in cash to buy its search business in a deal that would have delivered $1 billion in additional annual operating income to Yahoo, a source familiar with Microsoft's thinking said on Friday.

In an alternative to a full acquisition, Microsoft would have taken control of Yahoo's search business, delivering the company better rates for advertisements tied to its search results than Yahoo's current Panama advertising system, the source said.

Microsoft would have also paid $8 billion to take a 16 percent stake in Yahoo, which would have valued the company's stock at $35 a share, the source said.

Talks between the two companies broke down after Yahoo entered into an advertising agreement with Google Inc (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz). Microsoft is still open to discussing its proposal despite Yahoo's agreement with Google, the source said.

Yahoo had no immediate comment. (Reporting by Daisuke Wakabayashi in Seattle and Anupreeta Das in San Francisco, editing by Gerald E. McCormick)

Rising water forces evacuation of hospital in Cedar Rapids, Iowa; 100 city blocks underwater

2008-06-13T12:11:00.000-07:00

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (AP) - Rising river water forced the evacuation of a Cedar Rapids hospital Friday after residents of more than 3,000 homes fled for higher ground. A railroad bridge collapsed, and 100 city blocks were under water as America's Midwest struggled through a spate of bad weather that killed at least seven
people this week.
The hospital's 176 patients, including about 30 patients in a nursing home facility at the hospital, were being evacuated to other hospitals in the region. The evacuation started late Thursday night and continued Friday morning in the Iowa city of 124,000 residents.
«Some are frail and so it's a very delicate process with them,» said Karen Vander Sanden, a hospital spokeswoman.
Dave Koch, a spokesman for the Cedar Rapids fire department, said the river will crest Friday at about 31.8 feet (9.7 meters). It was at 30.9 feet (9.4 meters) early in the morning. In a 1993 flood, considered the worst flood in recent history, it was at 19.27 feet (5.9 meters).
No deaths or serious injuries were reported in Iowa on Friday, but one man was killed in southern Minnesota after his car plunged from a washed-out road into floodwaters. Late Wednesday, a tornado tore through a Boy Scout camp in the remote hills of western Iowa, killing four teenagers, while other tornadoes killed two people in Kansas.
In Wisconsin, amphibious vehicles that carry tourists on the Wisconsin River were used to evacuate homes and businesses in Baraboo, north of Madison. Hundreds more in the region were urged to evacuate.
People in several northern Missouri communities, meanwhile, were piling up sandbags to prepare for flooding in the Missouri River, expected to crest over the weekend, and a more significant rise in the Mississippi River expected Wednesday.

Amtrak's California Zephyr railway line was suspended across Iowa because of flooding along the BNSF Railway.
Gov. Chet Culver declared 83 of the state's 99 counties as state disaster areas. Nine rivers are at or above historic flood levels.
In Des Moines, about 300 volunteers and members of the Iowa Army National Guard worked late Thursday into Friday to shore up a levee showing some soft spots north of downtown. The levee protects a neighborhood along the rising Des Moines River.
There are about 200 homes in the neighborhood, which is under a voluntary evacuation.

Mars Microbes Could Survive with Natural Antifreeze

2008-06-12T10:26:00.000-07:00

More than 30 years ago, NASA's Viking life-detection experiments on Mars returned inconclusive results, and controversy surrounds the Viking data to this day.

The Phoenix mission now on Mars may collect data that will help answer questions raised by Viking, but to do so researchers will need to be able to spot the difference between chemical and biological signatures on Mars.

In the mid 1970s, NASA's Viking Landers analyzed material from the Martian surface in the hopes of finding signatures of life. The Viking life-detection experiments indicated the presence of oxidized organic material near the surface. At first, researchers on the instrument team believed this was evidence of biological activity on Mars.

However, other scientists immediately criticized the results. Eventually, the scientific community decided that it was more likely the organic material had been oxidized by the chemical hydrogen peroxide, which was detected at the surface by the Viking Gas Exchange experiment.

Not everyone is satisfied with this explanation. There are still questions about where hydrogen peroxide on Mars comes from, how long it can naturally remain stable at the surface and how much is actually present.

New answers

An answer may be on the horizon.

NASA's Phoenix Lander touched down on Mars on May 25. Onboard is an instrument called the Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer (TEGA), which will be used to analyze soil and ice samples on Mars. The instrument could help explain the puzzling Viking results.

In order to prepare for the Phoenix experiments, a team of researchers performed a series of tests. They simulated the experiments to be conducted by Phoenix to determine what the results would look like if microbes were present in martian soil. Researchers inoculated simulated martian soil with known Earth-organisms that can survive in the presence of hydrogen peroxide. (On Earth, some microbes produce hydrogen peroxide and others are able to utilize it.)

Unique Mars microbes

Mixtures of water and hydrogen peroxide freeze at much lower temperatures than water alone. The researchers theorize that microbes might be able to use hydrogen peroxide to survive at lower temperatures. The idea is based on Earth microbes that use salts in a similar way, providing them with an "antifreeze" that keeps them alive in cold environments. If microbes on Mars adapted to use hydrogen peroxide in a similar way, it may mean that the Viking results need to be reinterpreted.

By testing the simulant Martian soil with the TEGA instrument, the research team was able to identify signatures that indicated microbes. Specific chemicals that can be detected by TEGA can now serve as biomarkers for possible life on Mars.

The simulated experiments provide an important test for chemical versus biological responses in the Phoenix mission. In other words, the Phoenix mission could provide definitive answers to the questions posed by Viking, and may even tell us if life exists on Mars.

Tornado kills four at US scout camp

2008-06-12T10:24:00.000-07:00

Four people have been killed and up to 40 injured when a tornado ripped through a boy scout camp in the US state of Iowa.

More than 120 scouts and leaders were staying at the Little Sioux camp near Des Moines when the tornado struck.

They had been attending the annual Pohuk Pride week-long junior leader training event at the 1,800-acre ranch, which has four cabin shelters, a 15-acre lake, a rifle range and six hiking trails.

Iowa Governor Chet Culver said: "We are profoundly saddened...our heart goes out to all of the families and the children affected by this horrific tragedy."

At least two tornado warnings were issued for the Little Sioux area before the twister struck. However, state officials said they did not know if there were any warning sirens operating at the camp.

The twister was one of more than 30 moving across eastern Kansas into Nebraska, Iowa and into Minnesota which were accompanied by baseball-sized hail and vicious winds, and came in addition to rampant flooding that has forced hundreds from their homes in Iowa.

In Kansas, at least two people died after tornadoes ripped through neighbour hoods in in the northeastern part of that state. One woman was found dead in the yard outside her home in Chapman and a man was later found dead outside a mobile home in Soldier.

The Kansas twisters injured dozens and destroyed at least 60 homes, authorities said.

Mr Culver has declared 54 of Iowa's 99 counties disaster areas due to damage from the flooding and tornadoes.

And the violent weather is continuing in the region, with tornado watches issued for areas of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Missouri, Iowa and Kansas.

Fed brushes past Berrer

2008-06-11T12:45:00.000-07:00

Roger Federer started to place his French Open disappointment behind him by defeating Germany's Michael Berrer 6-4 6-2 to reach the second round of the Gerry Weber Open in Halle.

Three days after Rafael Nadal scored a straight-sets win in the final at Roland Garros, the Swiss star looked relaxed and needed just 61 minutes to record his 55th consecutive victory on grass.

Federer conceded just one point on his serve in the first set and eventually broke Berrer in the ninth game.

He then broke his opponent again in the first and fifth games of the second set before saving one sole break point at 4-1.

Federer wrapped up the one-sided encounter with his 11th ace to move into the second round, where he will face Czech qualifier Jan Vacek on Thursday.

Berdych "not in the match"

However, defending champion Tomas Berdych has been sent packing, the Czech player going down 6-2 7-5 to Sweden's Robin Soderling.

"This was not one of my best days," Berdych said.

"I was not in the match and lost the first set easy.

"His game was solid and I couldn't stay close to him - he has a great serve and the grass court suits his game."

Fact Sheet & Background: Roadrunner Smashes the Petaflop Barrier

2008-06-11T12:37:00.000-07:00

ARMONK, NY -- 06/09/08 -- In 2006, the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration selected Los Alamos National Laboratory as the development site for Roadrunner and IBM as the computer's designer and builder. Roadrunner, named after the New Mexico state bird, cost about $100 million, and was a three-phase project to deliver the world's first "hybrid" supercomputer -- one powerful enough to operate at one petaflop (one thousand trillion calculations per second). That's twice as fast as the current No.1 rated IBM Blue Gene system at Lawrence Livermore National Lab -- itself nearly three times faster than the leading contenders on the current TOP 500 list of worldwide supercomputers.

Oil soars on dollar, Energy Department report

2008-06-11T12:16:00.000-07:00

NEW YORK (AP) -- Oil prices regained their stunning upward momentum Wednesday, soaring as crude's biggest drivers -- a weak dollar and supply concerns -- brought buyers back in force. At the pump, gas prices rose to a new record over $4.05 a gallon.
The Energy Department's Energy Information Administration said oil inventories fell by 4.6 million barrels last week. Analysts surveyed by energy research firm Platts expected a much smaller decline of about 1.4 million barrels; any sign that oil supplies are falling has tended to send oil climbing.

Light, sweet crude rose $5.07 to settle at $136.38 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange after earlier trading as high as $138.30. Oil shot up more than $16 over the course of last Thursday and Friday, reaching a trading record of $139.12 before pulling back this week.

The dollar's travails also sent oil prices rising. The euro bought $1.5571 in late afternoon trading, up from $1.5449 Tuesday. Oil prices have closely tracked dollar moves; prices rose sharply last week when the dollar fell, then retreated more than $7 earlier this week as the dollar gained ground.

"It's been hand in hand with what the dollar's been doing," said James Cordier, president of Tampa, Fla.-based trading firms Liberty Trading Group and OptionSellers.com.

Many investors buy commodities such as oil as a hedge against inflation when the dollar falls. Also, a weaker greenback makes oil less expensive to investors dealing in other currencies. Many analysts believe the dollar's protracted decline is the primary reason oil prices have doubled over the past year.

Energy investors are betting that the European Central Bank will raise interest rates later this summer, and that the U.S. Federal Reserve will hold rates steady until this fall, Cordier said. If rates rise in Europe but remain unchanged in the U.S., the dollar will likely fall further against the euro.

"That's going to really fuel the (investment) funds back into the long side of crude oil," Cordier said.

Other elements of the EIA's report were considered bearish for prices. Supplies of gasoline and distillate fuels such as diesel and heating oil both rose last week, and demand for gasoline fell by 1.3 percent.

But traders chose to focus on the big drop in crude supplies and the weaker dollar, propelling prices higher. Crude inventories have fallen by 23.6 million barrels over the past four weeks.

"If crude inventories were seriously in surplus, I think that would start to override the effects of the dollar," said Michael Lynch, president of Strategic Energy & Economic Research Inc. in Winchester, Mass.

Retail gas prices, meanwhile, reached another record Wednesday, rising 0.9 cent overnight to a national average of $4.052, according to a survey of stations by AAA and the Oil Price Information Service. Prices continue rising, despite falling demand, because the price of oil keeps moving higher.

While oil prices have slipped some from last week's record, analysts say gas prices still have some catching up to do, and could rise another nickel or so. Of course, if oil futures blast past that record and reach new highs, gas prices will likely rise even higher.

EIA chief Guy Caruso on Wednesday said motorists should expect gasoline prices to remain close to $4 a gallon through next year. On Tuesday, the EIA predicted that gas pries will peak at a monthly average price of $4.15 in August. Cordier thinks gas prices could reach $4.25 by the Fourth of July if oil remains near $140 a barrel.

Oil prices were also supported Wednesday by reports that Chinese fuel imports rose more than expected over the first 5 months of the year, and Royal Dutch Shell PLC's decision to extend force majeure on some Nigerian oil shipments. The legal declaration that means the company can't meet contractual obligations to supply some customers. The company first made the declaration following a militant attack in April.

In other Nymex trading Wednesday, July gasoline futures rose 14.65 cents to settle at $3.4658 a gallon, and July heating oil futures rose 16.24 cents to settle at $3.9748 a gallon.

Cheap Gas in Missouri

2008-06-10T12:35:00.000-07:00

While the average gas price nationwide passed $4 last weekend, Missouri could boast of prices around $3.825, the cheapest in the country. How come the Show Me State has the lowest gas prices?

Taxes, pipelines, and ethanol. State gas taxes—which are assessed on top of the federal rate of 18.4 cents per gallon—tend to get the most attention in comparisons of fuel prices across states. At 17.6 cents per gallon, Missouri's gas taxes are low, but they aren't quite as low as some other states'. New Jersey, for example, takes just 14.5 cents per gallon, but its prices remain more expensive than Missouri's. (The Garden State's ban on self-service pumps adds an estimated nickel or so per gallon to the retail price.)

In Missouri, geography helps keep prices low. The state doesn't have any oil refineries, and its share of U.S. crude oil production is so small that the Department of Energy reports it as 0 percent. But because of its proximity to Texas, Oklahoma, and the Gulf Coast states, Missouri is crisscrossed by some of the nation's larger pipelines. Oil barges also pass through the state on the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. Proximity to producers reduces transportation costs a little, but it also makes Missouri less susceptible to price spikes when individual refineries run into problems.

Plane bursts into flames in Sudan; 200 aboard

2008-06-10T12:27:00.000-07:00

KHARTOUM, Sudan - A plane carrying about 200 passengers veered off a runway late Tuesday amid thunderstorms and burst into flames. The number of casualties was not immediately known.
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An Associated Press reporter at the scene said the plane arriving from Amman, Jordan apparently left the runway as it landed in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan.

The head of Sudanese police, Mohammad Najib, said bad weather "caused the plane to crash land, split into two and catch fire."

"We believe that most of the passengers were able to make it out and escape with their lives," said Najib, without disclosing further details on how they escaped.

But he stressed that officials could not say for sure how many were killed.

The plane took off from Damascus, Syria, Najib said. Al-Jazeera television station said it was a Sudanese Airways passenger jet, and Najib confirmed the plane was from a Sudanese airline.

Sudan has a poor aviation safety record. In May, a plane crash in a remote area of southern Sudan killed 24 people, including key members of the southern Sudanese government.

In July 2003, a Sudan Airways Boeing 737 en route from Port Sudan to Khartoum crashed soon after takeoff, killing all 115 people on board.

Internet Providers to Block Child Pornography Sites

2008-06-10T12:21:00.001-07:00

Some of the nation's largest Internet service providers have agreed to block connections to newsgroups and Web sites that offer child pornography, according to an announcement today by the New York State Attorney General's Office.

The move follows an eight-month child pornography investigation. The probe turned up 88 newsgroups involving11,390 sexually lewd photos featuring prepubescent children. Among them were photos of children being raped and sexual activity involving animals, according to state Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo.

The agreements with Sprint, Verizon and Time Warner Cable are expected to hold nationwide. It was not immediately known why the nation's other large Internet service providers were not party to the agreement.

"We seek to continue the investigation with other providers," Cuomo said.

Child pornography, like many illegal Web offerings, is difficult to prosecute because the criminals can operate virtually anywhere. Even if they are detected, they can easily shut down and start business under a different Web site name.
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But Cuomo said his strategy, while difficult, was better than simply identifying and prosecuting the users of child pornography.

"If you're just going to prosecute the users of the material, you can be doing that all day every day for the rest of your life," Cuomo said. "You have to get to the suppliers."

While Internet users are most familiar with Web sites, newsgroups are different. They're essentially online public bulletin boards where users can upload and download files.

"As part of the agreements, Verizon, Time Warner Cable, and Sprint will for the first time completely block access to all child porn Newsgroups," the statement from the attorney general's office said.

New iPhone, lower price: 8GB $199

2008-06-09T13:11:00.000-07:00

Arriving in early July, the new "iPhone 3G" will sell for hundreds less than the original and-as expected-will come equipped with GPS and access to AT&T's speedy HSDPA network. Also: A new version of Mac OS X is on the way, along with a major revamp of Apple's .Mac online service.
iPhone 3G
It's real, it's thinner (at the edges, at least), and, truth be told ... it looks an awful lot like the original iPhone, from the front anyway. A couple of key changes, however: The headphone jack is now flush with the case-so no more need for a headset adapter-and the back panel is now glossy black plastic, which looks good, but may well be more susceptible to scratches than the original brushed-metal version.

So that's how the new iPhone looks. What's inside? As expected, 3G and GPS, good for turn-by-turn directions. Nice, but we'd heard rumors of videoconferencing-which, judging from the lack of a front-facing camera on the iPhone 3G, isn't in the cards.

Also, no word on iChat instant messaging for the iPhone; then again, AOL has already announced it's making its own AIM app, and I'm sure plenty of other IM apps will arrive once the App Store launches (more on that in a moment).

And while we're at it-there was no discussion of music or video downloads over AT&T's HSDPA network, reportedly a sticking point between the carrier and Apple.

That said, it turns out the rumors of lower prices were true. A 16GB iPhone 3G will sell for $299, while the 8GB will go for $199. That sounds a lot better than $599 for the original 8GB iPhone. Also: The iPhone in white!

And finally, the release date: July 11. Looks like we've got a little wait on our hands.

iPhone Firmware 2.0
We already knew that the new App Store (which will come stocked with applications built by third-party developers, courtesy of the iPhone SDK), Exchange support (including over-the-air syncing of e-mail, contacts, and events), and IT-focused security enhancements would come with the latest version of the iPhone firmware, but now we have a few more details on the upcoming iPhone update, along with an estimate of availability: early July.

First, of all: contact search, which will pull up matching contacts the moment you type starting characters. We'll also be getting read-only support for PowerPoint documents, as well as full support for iWork, Apple's Office competitor.

Next up: the ability to move or delete groups of messages, or even save photos attached to e-mails in the iPhone's photo album (no mention of saving images from Web pages).

Rounding out the new Firmware 2.0 features: parental controls (including restrictions on YouTube and the iTunes Store-sorry, kids); a new and improved scientific calculator (just turn the iPhone on its side to get all the new buttons); and support for Chinese, Japanese, and other languages.

Applications
A series of developers demoed at least a dozen games and applications during the keynote. Among the highlights: Sega's previously announced Super Money Ball (now with 110 "stages"), an auction tracker from eBay, GPS-assisted social networking from Loopt (good for seeing if you have buddies nearby), a mobile blogging app (including photos) from TypePad, an AP news tracker complete with videos, and an app from Major League Baseball that'll real-time (or close to it) game highlights.

Games such as Super Monkey Ball will sell for $9.99 when the App Store launches, while the other apps I just mentioned will be free.

Mobile Me
Looks like the leaks about a revamped .Mac were true. As expected, the service-now dubbed Mobile Me-automatically syncs your e-mail, Address Book contacts, iCal events, and photos over the air between iPhones and Macs. Even better, Mobile Me will support Outlook for PC users. Unfortunately, no price drop-we're still talking $99 a year, although there will be a free 60-day trial. Look for Mobile Me to arrive in early July, along with the new iPhone firmware.

Mac OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard"
Confirmed by Steve Jobs-but no other details quite yet. Stay tuned.

China quake lake

2008-06-09T13:07:00.000-07:00

CHENGDU, China (Reuters) - Chinese troops are carving a third drainage channel into the unstable dam holding back a big "quake lake", as water levels rise and aftershocks send more debris tumbling into the water, state media reported on Monday.Soldiers are also using short-range missiles and dynamite to blast apart boulders blocking the first channel, to speed up the flow of water, the official Xinhua agency said.

The Tangjiashan lake rose nearly a metre in 24 hours to Monday morning, and already stood over two metres above the drainage channel even though it only began operating on Saturday.

A spokesman for the lake relief operation said residents downstream had to beware against rising waters and landslides as flows increased but he saw no need yet for fresh evacuations.

"The overall situation remains secure and the flows are within what we are expected," the spokesman Zhou Hua, from Mianyang city downstream from Tangjiashan, said by telephone.

"The outflow is increasing so we are urging people downstream to avoid dangers and stay out of designated areas, but there's no need for additional emergency measures as this stage."

The massive barrier of rocks and mud was created in mid-May when a major quake shook China's southwestern Sichuan province, sending part of a mountainside crashing into the Tongkou river.

If the dam gives way it will create a floodwave that could threaten up to 1.3 million people downstream, many already forced from their homes by the quake.

Over 250,000 have been moved as a precaution, often to encampments close to their homes or earlier camp sites.

The arrival of China's rainy season is an additional worry. The large catchment area for the lake, the biggest of around 30 created by the quake, means that 2 millimetres of rain could cause a water level rise of 1 metre, Xinhua has said.

"If the lake level does not start to at least stabilise, and preferably fall, soon then the danger level will rise substantially. This remains a deeply worrying situation," said landslide expert David Petley, Wilson Professor at Durham University, adding that aftershocks were an on-going worry.

"A large slide into the lake could cause an instant over-top situation. The dam is unlikely to survive this intact," he added in a Internet posting about the dam.

Soldiers are working long shifts on a diet of biscuits and instant noodles, with bulldozers and heavy machinery flown into the cut-off area by helicopter. A string of powerful aftershocks on Sunday and Monday have made the work even more challenging.

"Yesterday's rain and aftershock disrupted our work, but we are working against time to make up for it," Xu Qiangguo, an officer with a hydropower division of China's armed police, was quoted saying on Monday.

The government also airlifted two drilling machines to the dam in a bid to get more information on the area's geology.

Separately, the State Council Information Office said the death toll from the 7.9 magnitude quake had risen slightly to 69,142 as of midday Monday, with 17,551 others still reported missing. Some 374,065 people had been injured.

Obama hammers McCain, Bush on economy, gas prices

2008-06-09T13:01:00.000-07:00

RALEIGH, N.C. - The presidential campaign turned to the economy Monday, with record gasoline prices and a spike in job losses putting Republican John McCain at a distinct disadvantage.
Democrat Barack Obama seized on the issue by launching a two-week economic tour meant to highlight his differences with McCain on taxes, spending priorities and other matters. At every turn he is tying McCain to President Bush, whose approval ratings are consistently low.

McCain pushed back, saying Obama's bid to end the Bush administration's tax cuts for upper-income Americans would only worsen the already struggling economy. He is airing TV ads in key states on the Iraq war, which he sees as a better issue this fall. But he took questions on the economy from donors in Virginia on Monday, and planned a speech Tuesday to small business owners in Washington.

With many voters blaming Bush for the economic woes, Republican candidates for federal and state offices are scrambling to distance themselves from the bad news without abandoning core principles such as low taxes and modest government intervention in activities like banking and lending.

Democrats are trying to cut off any escape routes.

The centerpiece of McCain's economic plan "amounts to a full-throated endorsement of George Bush's policies," Obama told about 900 people in Raleigh.

North Carolina is not a state ordinarily pursued by Democratic presidential nominees. But it gave Obama a crucial victory in his primary battle against Hillary Rodham Clinton, and he hopes to put it in play this fall — or at least force McCain to spend time and money here.

In the audience was former presidential rival John Edwards, who lives nearby. His wife, Elizabeth Edwards — who refrained from endorsing Obama when her husband did so last month — also attended.

Obama offered no new policies in his speech, which he read from teleprompters. Rather, he used the occasion to emphasize his economic differences with McCain and to summarize earlier proposals. They include raising income taxes on wealthy Americans, granting a $1,000 tax cut to most others, winding down the Iraq war, tightening credit card regulations and pumping more money into education, alternative fuels and infrastructure such as roads and bridges.

Obama took part of his speech from headlines across the nation, noting that the average price of gas just hit $4 a gallon for the first time. The news followed an unusually sharp spike in the unemployment rate on Friday.

Repeatedly linking McCain to Bush, Obama said, "our president sacrificed investments in health care, and education, and energy, and infrastructure on the altar of tax breaks for big corporations and wealthy CEOs."

Obama criticized McCain for originally opposing Bush's first-term tax cuts but now supporting their continuation. He said he would place a windfall profits tax on oil companies while McCain would reduce their taxes.

"At a time when we're fighting two wars, when millions of Americans can't afford their medical bills or their tuition bills, when we're paying more than $4 a gallon for gas, the man who rails against government spending wants to spend $1.2 billion on a tax break for Exxon Mobil," Obama said. "That isn't just irresponsible. It's outrageous."

In a conference call with reporters, Doug Holtz-Eakin, an economic adviser to McCain, said of the claim: "I presume that they're attributing that to the basic, across-the-board corporate rate cut that's necessary to keep the American corporate sector competitive in the global economy and jobs in America."

At a fundraiser in Richmond, Va., McCain noted that he supports a temporary suspension of the federal tax on gasoline, which Obama dismisses as a gimmick that will not bring down prices.

"Talk to somebody who owns a couple of trucks and makes a living with those trucks," McCain said. "Ask them whether they'd like to have some relief -- 18 1/2 cents per gallon for gasoline and 24 1/2 cents for diesel. They say it matters."

The two differed somewhat on energy production as well. Obama called for greater government investments "in a renewable energy policy that ends our addiction on foreign oil, provides real long-term relief from high fuel costs, and builds a green economy that could create up to five million well-paying jobs that can't be outsourced."

He did not mention nuclear power, although in the past he has said he would not rule out a greater role for nuclear energy.

McCain was more gung-ho about nuclear power and expanded domestic drilling for oil and natural gas. When a donor in Richmond summed up his advice as, "nuclear, and drill wherever we've got it," McCain responded: "You just gave my speech. Thank you, my friend."

McCain added, "Long-term, we've got to become used to nuclear, wind, solar, tide, all of the alternate energy, including a battery that will take a car 100 miles or 200 miles" before being recharged.

"Nuclear power, for all kinds of reasons, needs to be part of the solution," McCain said.

Obama said he would pay for all of his new proposals from sources including the higher taxes on wealthy Americans and an end to the Iraq war. His aides said he will provide more details as the campaign goes on.

The AFL-CIO, the nation's largest labor organization, plans to help Obama by having its members protest Bush and McCain at gas stations around the country. Starting in Indianapolis, union members will hold signs saying "Bush & McCain Love Big Oil" and complain about a McCain tax proposal they say would give the five largest oil companies $3.8 billion in tax breaks.

The Death of the SUV

2008-06-06T09:40:00.000-07:00

Dearly beloved. We gather here today to mourn the demise of the sport utility vehicle, or "SUV" as its friends liked to call it.
The gas-guzzler lived a full life, driving in the fast lane from the 1990s to the mid-2000s. Alas, it fell ill a few years ago and never recovered. And really, we can't say the death came as a surprise. For years, folks complained about the environmental impact of low-mileage vehicles. Over time, those voices grew louder, but still the SUV fought on, proudly taking up two parking spaces and scaring hybrids from its lane.
But then, gas prices soared and the SUV's vital signs plummeted. As much as people love large cars, the costs to keep fuel in the tank proved too much to take. As the New York Times reported, it now costs $100k to own and keep a similarly inefficient full size pickup running for five years. And so people pulled the plug on their trucks and SUVs, taking the beleaguered vehicles off life support and into the museum of dead car fads.
U.S. News and World Report has written a thoughtful and compelling obit on the yuppie chariot. Read it and remember the SUV's positive qualities as well as its faults. It's what it would have wanted.

Bus bombing in Sri Lanka kills 21

2008-06-06T09:35:00.000-07:00

At least 21 people were killed and 47 others wounded on Friday in the latest in a string of suspected Tamil Tiger attacks against civilians in the Sri Lankan capital, officials said.
The attack saw a packed state-run bus travelling just south of Colombo hit by a powerful fragmentation mine placed on the roadside and peppered with red-hot shrapnel.
"Twenty-one people have been killed, eight of them are women," police spokesman Ranjith Gunasekera told AFP.
Military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara blamed the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). He said it was a "cowardly attack" by a "ruthless organisation."
Survivors said the bus was knocked over by the force of the explosion.
"I was standing in the middle of the bus when there was a loud noise and the whole bus toppled to the side," said 21-year-old office worker Shanika Priyadharshani while being bandaged up in hospital.
"I blacked out for a while. There was black smoke, people were dead around me. I shouted for help and someone pulled me out," she told AFP.
The defence ministry immediately sealed off the area, although no arrests have been reported. Police did, however, discover and diffuse another Claymore-type mine near the scene of the blast.
The attack was the third targeting commuters in and around Colombo in less than two weeks.
On Wednesday, 18 people were hurt when suspected Tiger rebels set off a bomb alongside a packed commuter train.
And on May 26, another attack on a commuter train - also blamed on the LTTE - killed nine people and wounded 84 others.
Each of the attacks came after the LTTE complained that government commandos, who operate in small groups known as "deep penetration units", have killed civilians in roadside bombings inside Sri Lanka's rebel-held north.
The LTTE said two civilians were killed late Thursday by a roadside mine in the north by an army unit, and that six civilians died in a similar attack on Monday night.
Last month, the rebels accused government commandos of killing 19 people in mine attacks.
Sri Lanka's military refuses to comment on its covert operations in the north.
Hostilities have escalated sharply since the start of the year when the government pulled out of a truce with the Tamil Tigers, who are fighting to carve out a separate Tamil state within the Sinhalese-majority island.
Since then, both sides have traded allegations that each others' forces are deliberately targeting civilians.
Casualty figures in the north are impossible to verify as journalists are barred from visiting front line areas or crossing into rebel-held territory.
The Sri Lankan government says that it now has the upper hand in the long-running conflict, with the defence ministry reporting that 4,081 Tamil Tigers have been killed so far this year.

Oil rises jump almost $7, closing in on record

2008-06-06T09:25:00.000-07:00

NEW YORK - Oil prices shot up nearly $7 a barrel Friday, extending big gains from the previous day and racing toward an all-time high after a Morgan Stanley analyst predicted prices could hit $150 by the Fourth of July.
A further weakening of the dollar helped keep prices high by enticing overseas buyers armed with stronger currencies and other investors looking for a hedge against the greenback.
Light, sweet crude for July delivery jumped as much as $6.96 to $134.75 on the New York Mercantile Exchange, before easing slightly to trade at $134.40, up $6.61.
Prices pushed sharply higher Friday after Morgan Stanley analyst Ole Slorer said he expected strong demand in Asia could drive prices to $150 by Independence Day, when millions of Americans are expected to take to the roads. Shipments from the Middle East are mimicking patterns seen in the third quarter last year, when Morgan Stanley based its "oil price spike" predictions on falling supplies in the Atlantic, he said.
"We made the same call using the same parameters, but now we are starting from much lower inventory levels," Slorer said.
Friday's surge builds on a $5.49 gain Thursday, which was the biggest single-day price increase in the history of the Nymex crude contract. That spike came as the dollar fell after the European Central Bank suggesting it could raise interest rates.
"We had a rally of something like $12 in about 24 hours. It makes no fundamental sense," said Stephen Schork, an analyst and trader in Villanova, Pa. "With oil pushing back up to the mid-$130s, it's the make it or break it point. If we go past that, we set the course for uncharted waters and head up toward $150."
Meanwhile, U.S. gas prices at the pump continued to hover just shy of an average $4 a gallon, easing only 0.3 cent from Thursday's record.
Drivers are now paying an average of $3.99 for a gallon of regular gas nationwide, according to AAA and the Oil Price Information Service; in many parts of the country, consumers are already paying well over $4. Retail diesel slipped a penny overnight to $4.76.
Pump prices are bound to rise even further if oil sustains its advance. James Cordier, president of Tampa, Fla.-based trading firm Liberty Trading Group, predicted prices could rise to $4.25 as early as the end of the month.
"Unfortunately, drivers cutting back isn't going to lower the price of gasoline any time soon," he said.
The dramatic reversal in what had been a weakening oil market began Thursday after ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet suggested the bank could raise interest rates and the euro climbed against the dollar. When interest rates rise in Europe, or fall in the U.S., the dollar tends to weaken against the euro.
Many investors tend to buy commodities such as oil as a hedge against inflation when the dollar is falling. Also, a weaker dollar makes oil less expensive to investors dealing in other currencies. Analysts believe the dollar's protracted decline has been a major reason why oil prices have nearly doubled in the past year.
The euro strengthened further against the greenback Friday. A Labor Department report showing the U.S. unemployment rate jumped half a percentage point to 5.5 percent last month — its biggest monthly increase since 1986 — could drag the greenback even lower in the days ahead.
"Unemployment jumping as it did today will be in the market for a long time and will continue to pressure the U.S. dollar," Cordier said.
Growing tensions in the Middle East may also have helped prop up oil prices. Israel sent aircraft, tanks and ground troops into the Gaza Strip on Friday, and a Cabinet minister hoping to replace embattled Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was quoted as saying Israel will attack Iran if it doesn't abandon its nuclear program.
In other Nymex trading, heating oil futures rose 21.54 cents to $3.8962 a gallon while gasoline prices rose 12.32 cents to $3.4577 a gallon. Natural gas futures rose 24.8 cents to $12.767 per 1,000 cubic feet.
In London, July Brent crude shot up $5.65 to $133.19 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange.

US unemployment rate jumps to 5.5 percent in May WASHINGTON (AFP)

2008-06-06T09:05:00.000-07:00

A job seeker searches for employment opportunities in Arlington Heights, Illinois in 2004. The US economy lost 49,000 jobs in May, almost twice the number the prior month, pushing the unemployment rate up a half point to 5.5 percent.

The US economy lost 49,000 jobs in May, almost twice the number the prior month, pushing the unemployment rate up a half point to 5.5 percent, the Labor Department said Friday.

The 5.5 percent rate was the highest in nearly four years and the economy shed jobs for the fifth consecutive month.

The sharp rise in joblessness exceeded market expectations of a 5.1 percent rate. Unemployment hit its highest level since October 2004, and the increase was the strongest since February 1986.

Health Buzz: Arthritis Drug Safety and Other Health News

2008-06-05T13:13:00.000-07:00

The Food and Drug Administration is reviewing the safety of a class of drugs called tumor necrosis factor blockers, currently used to treat autoimmune conditions such as adult and juvenile rheumatoid arthritis and Crohn's disease. Among the concerns is whether these medicines are linked to cancer risk, particularly lymphoma in kids and young adults. The FDA is looking into about 30 reports of cancer among younger people submitted between 1998—when the first TNF blocker was approved—through April of this year. The drugs are also tied to an increased risk of infection.

Obama Clinches Democratic Nomination

2008-06-05T12:13:00.000-07:00

Sen. Barack Obama achieved the 2,118 needed to clinch the Democratic nomination for president last night and made history by becoming the first African American to win a major party's presidential nomination.

Obama, D-Ill., locked up one of the longest and most closely fought Democratic nomination fights in recent history.

"Tonight we mark the end of one historic journey with the beginning of another -- a journey that will bring a new and better day to America. Because of you, tonight I can stand before you and say that I will be the Democratic nominee for president of the United States,"Obama told 30,000 thrilled supporters at an arena in St. Paul, Minn.

"This is our time. This is our moment," he said.

He graciously praised Cllinton, despite the sometimes bitter exchanges the two had during the campaign.

"Senator Hillary Clinton has made history in this campaign, not just because she's a woman who has done what no woman has done before, but because she's a leader who inspires millions of Americans with her strength, her courage, and her commitment to the causes that brought us here tonight," Obama said.

"Our party and our country are better off because of her, and I am a better candidate for having had the honor to compete" with her, he said.

The presumptive Democratic nominee locked up the nomination even before the votes were counted in the party's final two primaries in South Dakota and Montana last night.

Obama went on to easily win Montana last night by a margin of 57 percent to Sent. Hillary Clinton's 42 percent. But Clinton, D-NY, snatched one last upset victory in South Dakota, with a 55-44 percent win.

Nevertheless, Obama picked up enough delegates from those states to pad his margin of victory and saw additional superdelegates rally to his side.

Later, the candidates played some phone tag, ABC's Sunlen Miller reports. A little after 11 pm, Obama left Clinton a message on an aide's cell phone, congratulating Clinton on her South Dakota win and asking that she return the call.

ABC's Eloise Harper reports that some time later, Clinton returned Obama's call. The two spoke very briefly and then the cell phone call dropped out. Clinton called him back and got his voice mail.

Alleged 9/11 mastermind asks for death sentence

2008-06-05T11:32:00.000-07:00

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba -- Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the confessed mastermind of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, told the Pentagon's war-crimes court today that he wants to be put to death and become a martyr.

Mohammed also told the judge hearing the death penalty case of five accused architects of the terrorist strikes that he regarded the military proceedings against them as "an inquisition, not a trial," and that he rejected all U.S. laws as "evil."
Marine Col. Ralph Kohlmann, chief military judge for the tribunal, told Mohammed the charges against him could result in a death sentence if he is convicted by a panel of military officers, to which the bearded defendant known as KSM replied: "This is what I wish. I wanted to be a martyr for a long time."

Mohammed rejected representation by Navy Capt. Prescott Prince, saying he wore the uniform of his American enemies and had pledged allegiance to President Bush, "who wages systemic war against the Islamic world."

Alternating chanted Koran verses with stated English translations, Mohammed told the high-security courtroom packed with lawyers, clerks and guards that he would represent himself at a trial the prosecution proposes to start in September.

He also disputed the judge's assurances that the lawyers were provided for his benefit, saying that "after five years of torturing . . . you transfer us to Inquisition Land in Guantanamo."

Kohlmann rejected numerous appeals from the defendants' military and civilian lawyers to postpone the arraignment until they had more time to convince the men that they should accept professional counsel. Kohlmann also repeatedly interrupted capital trial lawyers David Nevin and Thomas Durkin and told them to sit down, an action Mohammed said showed the trials were designed to convict them.

"Evil laws are not the laws of God, laws allowing same-sexual marriage," he told the court. "I consider all American laws under the Constitution to be evil."

Kohlmann ordered the military attorneys to remain on the defendants' cases as standby counsel, in case the men change their mind and want advice during the proceedings. He declined to make that designation for the civilian attorneys, which means they will not be allowed to meet with the prisoners. Kohlmann said depriving the defendants of the services of the civilian attorneys would be an added inducement to their accepting military representation.

Under the John Adams Project of the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Assn. of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Mohammed has been provided the services of capital case experts David Nevin and Scott McKay "to supplement the under-resourced military defense teams," the ACLU said in a statement criticizing the tribunal for ramming through the arraignments before the defendants could adequately consult with the attorneys.

"At every step of the way, these commissions have denigrated our country's historic commitment to the principle of due process and compromised America's reputation in the eyes of the world," said Anthony D. Romero, the ACLU executive director observing the proceedings here. He again appealed for moving the war-crimes trials to U.S. federal courts or military courts martial "where constitutional guarantees still apply."

Under questioning by Kohlmann as to his need for a translator, Mohammed replied that his English was "not bad," but said he wanted the help of a professional linguist because he had been mistranslated during his initial hearing last year.

"They were putting many words in my mouth," Mohammed said of the English transcript of his Combatant Status Review Tribunal in March 2007 in which he reportedly confessed to masterminding the Sept. 11 plot and personally beheading Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

Mohammed chatted amiably with his four co-defendants before and during the arraignment, passing messages one from another at the end of each of five long defense tables where they were seated. He gave the judge a thumbs-up confirmation that his translation headset was working and unleashed several one-liners about how his translations were better than those provided by the court.