Archive - 2008 - blog

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The U.S. Department of the Interior Wednesday listed the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) of 1973 based on evidence that the animal's sea ice habitat is shrinking and is likely to continue to do so over the next several decades. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, however, made clear several times during a press conference announcing the department's decision that, despite his acknowledgement that the polar bear's sea ice habitat is melting due to global warming, the ESA will not be used as a tool for trying to regulate the greenhouse gas emissions blamed for creating climate change.

The decision was based on evidence that sea ice is vital for polar bear survival, that this sea ice habitat has been reduced, and that this process is likely to continue; if something is not done to change this situation, the polar bear will be extinct within 45 years, Kempthorne said. He pointed to computer models he and his colleagues studied that project a 30 percent decline in sea ice by 2050.  read more »

Original Source: Reuters and CBS News

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As the race for the Democratic nomination for U.S. president wears on, Republican Jack Schmidt is thinking the same thing many conservatives are -- this is good for Republicans.

"They are beating themselves up to McCain's advantage," said Schmidt, 79, a retired broker, referring to presumptive Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain. "He's got some baggage too, but no one is paying attention to that."

"The longer they drag it out, the better for our candidate. The longer they beat each other up the less they're beating up our candidate. It's totally to our advantage and it's great," said Chelsea Chapman, an oil and gas accountant and the president of the Houston young Republicans.

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(AP) Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton should stop beating up on each other in the remaining Democratic contests and focus their ire on the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, George McGovern said Tuesday.

In a letter published in the New York Times and at a news conference in Sioux Falls, the former Democratic senator from South Dakota and 1972 presidential nominee outlined what he called a formula to unify the party and defeat Sen. John McCain.

"We can reduce the danger of Sen. Clinton and Sen. Obama criticizing each other for the next month and giving McCain a free ride," said McGovern, 85. "They are constantly pointing out weaknesses in the opposing candidate, which is what politicians do when they run for office. You can't blame them for that. But meanwhile, McCain is free to go around the country talking about motherhood and the flag and all those non-controversial things and looking like a statesman who is above the hurly-burly of politics."

McGovern's proposal is for Obama, the front runner, and Clinton to appear together at least once in each of the five remaining primaries in Kentucky, Oregon, Puerto Rico, Montana and South Dakota. The plan also could be used in Michigan and Florida if the party reconsiders its decision not to count those states' delegates, he said.

"One of them is going to lose and this would send them out in harmony and place the party and country's interests above their own," he said.

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Photos courtesy of AP and National Ledger

Original Source: BBC News

"Exposure to small particulates - tiny chemicals caused by burning fossil fuels - is known to increase the chances of heart disease and stroke. But the Harvard School of Public Health found it also affected development of deep vein thrombosis - blood clots in the legs - in a study of 2,000 people.

Researchers said the pollution made the blood more sticky and likely to clot. The team looked at people living in Italy - nearly 900 of whom developed DVT. Blood clots which form in the legs can travel to the lungs, where they can become lodged, triggering a potentially fatal pulmonary embolism."

Images courtesy of eNews 2.0 and Ontario Now

Original Source: Los Angeles Times

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Quietly, largely under the radar of most people, the forces of Rep. Ron Paul have been organizing across the country to stage a public revolt against Sen. John McCain when Republicans gather for their national convention in Minnesota at the beginning of September.

In the last three months, Paul's forces, who donated $34.5 million to his White House effort and upward of a million total votes, have, as The Ticket has noted, been fighting a series of guerrilla battles with party establishment officials at county and state conventions from Washington and Missouri to Maine and Mississippi. Their goal: to take control of local committees, boost their delegate totals and influence platform debates.

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Paul, for instance, favors a drastically reduced federal government, abolishing the Federal Reserve, ending the Iraq war immediately and withdrawing U.S. troops from abroad.

Paul’s supporters hope to demonstrate their disagreements with McCain vocally at the convention through platform fights and an attempt to get Paul a prominent speaking slot. Paul, who's running unopposed in his home Texas district for an 11th House term, still has some $5 million in war funds and has instructed his followers that their struggle is not about a single election, but a long-term revolution for control of the Republican Party. Paul's supporters have driven his new book, "The Revolution: A Manifesto," to the top of several bestseller lists.

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Photos courtesy of AP and RonPaul.com

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The world food crisis has two faces. Here in the United States, shoppers stare in disbelief at the rising price of milk, meat, and eggs. But elsewhere on the globe, anguish spills into the streets, as in Somalia last week when tens of thousands of rioters converged on the capital to protest for food.

The strain on U.S. consumers, grappling with the sharpest increase in grocery prices in years, is small compared with the starvation that toppled Haiti's government, ignited riots around the world, and is deepening the tragedy of Myanmar's cyclone survivors. And yet the connection between the developed and developing worlds will be crucial to solving what one United Nations official has called a "silent tsunami" of food prices that has plunged 100 million people deeper into poverty. To stem the misery, relief officials are calling both for emergency aid and for changes in policy worldwide.

...Among the proposed solutions:  read more »

• Take a Pause on Biofuels
• Improve Food Aid
• Produce Higher Yields
• Grow Better Crops
• Curb the Speculators
• Break Down Trade Barriers
• Eat Less Meat
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Original Source: The Standard

"The death toll from the massive earthquake that struck central China yesterday killing at least 8,533 people in Sichuan alone is likely to rise sharply as rescuers face a desperate race against time to save victims, including nearly 900 students buried under the rubble of their school. In Beichuan county, just east of the epicenter, 80 percent of the buildings had collapsed and some 10,000 people were injured on top of the 3,000 to 5,000 killed in the district, Xinhua News said. The situation in at least two other counties remains unclear.

The 7.8-magnitude earthquake, the most devastating in three decades, struck in the middle of the afternoon when classrooms and office towers were full 92 kilometers northwest of Sichuans capital Chengdu. Eight schools in the region completely or partially collapsed. The quake emptied office buildings more than 1,500 kilometers away in Beijing; could be felt as far away as Vietnam; crashed telephone networks; and hours later, left parts of Chengdu, a city of 10 million, in darkness. Beijing mobilized more than 5,000 soldiers and police to help rescue efforts in Sichuan and put the province on the second-highest level of emergency footing.

The earthquake rattled buildings in Beijing 1,500 kilometers to the north. People ran screaming into the streets in other cities, where many residents said they had never felt an earthquake. In Shanghai, skyscrapers swayed and office occupants went rushing into the streets. In Beijing, where hundreds of thousands of visitors are expected for the Olympics, which start on August 8, venues for the Games were undamaged.

The quake appears to be the deadliest since the most devastating in modern history, which killed 240,000 people in the city of Tangshan in 1976."

Photos courtesy of Reuters and AFP

Original Source: Star Bulletin

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"As I was revolving these matters in my mind, while the war was still in progress, I was visited by a sudden feeling of the cruel and unnecessary character of the contest. It seemed to me a return to barbarism, the issue being one which might easily been settled without bloodshed."

This quote from Julia Ward Howe is cited as the background for the initial Mother's Day Proclamation in 1870, born of her call to women to "take counsel with each other (so that) the great human family can live in peace."

Over the decades, the initial focus morphed through pacifism, workers' rights and finally fused itself on the role of the mother as the nurturer of new life, the bond of solidarity in the family and the one whose voice should always cry for peace and justice.

In 1908, Anna Jarvis took up the cause of her mother, Ann, who had organized women to campaign for sanitation and medical care for both sides during the Civil War. The daughter publicized Mother's Day with a celebration in Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church, Grafton, W.Va., attended by more than 400 children with their mothers.

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Mostly Mother's Day celebrates the gift of life and its continuity, making it the annual event of reflection. We are born, we grow, we appreciate and we reflect. Most of all we harbor that spark of life which the next generation carry, torchlike, into a still troubled world where no mother wants her child to be fodder for war.

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Photos courtesy of AP