Saturday, Nov 22nd
Last update09:21:52 AM GMT
Dwarf galaxies gobbled up by our own Milky Way make up about a quarter of the 160 star-packed "globular clusters" littering the galaxy, astronomers report Tuesday.Facing mounting inflation and the escalating cost of the Vietnam War, President Richard Nixon, on August 15, 1971, took the United States off the gold standard, which had been in place since 1944 and required that the Federal Reserve back all dollars in circulation with gold. The move amounted to a made-in-America double-digit devaluation, shocking the country's foreign creditors.
Nearly 40 years later, the dollar still dominates world trade. At the height of the financial crisis in 2008, investors fled to the dollar as a temporary safe haven. But the dollar has been falling steadily since 2002, and as the world economy recovered last year, dollar selling resumed, reviving doubts about how long it could remain the world's unrivaled reserve currency.
A U.S. judge in Washington Tuesday refused to dismiss a whistle-blower suit against the Japanese manufacturer of bulletproof vest material. The suit claims manufacturer Toyobo Ltd. and U.S. company Second Chance Body Armor Inc. conspired to sell defective body armor to law enforcement.
Supplied by Toyobo with a bulletproof material called "Zylon," "Second Chance sold over 66,000 vests between 1998 and 2004 to law enforcement agencies throughout the United States, including over 40,000 to the United States government.
Sepsis and pneumonia caused by hospital-acquired infections killed 48,000 people and led to $8.1 billion in increased health care costs in the United States in 2006, says a new study by a project called Extending the Cure.
The project examining antibiotic resistance is based at the Washington, D.C. think-tank Resources for the Future.
Researchers analyzed 69 million discharge records from hospitals in 40 states to assess the impact of preventable infections. They found that a patient who developed sepsis -- a life-threatening immune response to infection -- after surgery stayed in the hospital 11 days longer and cost an extra $33,000 to treat.
The Vatican's top bioethics official on Monday dismissed calls for his resignation following an uproar over his defense of doctors who aborted the twin fetuses of a 9-year-old child who was raped by her stepfather.
Monsignor Renato Fisichella told The Associated Press he refused to respond to five members of the Vatican's Pontifical Academy for Life who questioned his suitability to lead the institution.
Fisichella wrote an article in the Vatican's newspaper in March saying the Brazilian doctors didn't deserve excommunication as mandated by church law because they were saving the girl's life. The call for mercy sparked heated criticism from some academy members who said it implied the Vatican was opening up to so-called "therapeutic abortion" to save the mother's life.
At a closed briefing in 2003, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee raised no objection to a C.I.A. plan to destroy videotapes of brutal interrogations, according to secret documents released Monday.
The senator, Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, also rejected a proposal to have his committee conduct its own assessment of the agency’s harsh interrogation methods, which included wall-slamming and waterboarding, the documents say.
Assailants burst into the home of an Iraqi campaign volunteer before dawn Monday, fatally shooting the man before they stabbed his pregnant wife and their five daughters to death, relatives and authorities said. A sixth child, the only son, was found hanging from a ceiling fan with key arteries severed, a cousin said.
Over the last week and despite warnings that it was too dangerous, 47-year-old Hussein Majeed Marioush had been hanging campaign posters in the volatile mixed-sect district of Zafaraniya, a semi-rural area on the outskirts of southern Baghdad.
Here's a war game involving Iran, Israel and the U.S. that shows how unintended consequences can spin out of control:
With diplomacy failing and precious intelligence just received about two new secret Iranian nuclear facilities, Israel launches a pre-emptive strike against Tehran's nuclear complex. The strike is successful, wiping out six of Iran's key sites and setting back its suspected quest for a bomb by years.
Late Friday, the Department of Justice issued it's long awaited report on the actions of the DOJ lawyers who authored the infamous legal memos authorizing torture. The report consists of two parts: the first is a 300-page report from the DOJ's Office of Professional Responsibility finding that the attorneys, specifically John Yoo and Jay Bybee, engaged in "professional misconduct." The second is a 69-page cover letter from career DOJ staffer David Margolis finding that the lawyers exercised "poor judgment." The OPR finding would under normal circumstances require transmittal to the state bar for disciplinary proceedings. However, Mr. Margolis, a 17-year employee of the DOJ who was in a supervisory position when the legal memos were written, has specifically refused to allow the OPR report to be transmitted. However, he did state that "[t]he bar associations in the District of Columbia or Pennsylvania can choose to take up this matter, but the Department will make no referral."
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