A former CIA officer who became a key player in the debate over waterboarding as an interrogation technique was indicted on charges he leaked classified secrets to journalists, including the role of an associate who participated in a covert mission to track down a top al-Qaida figure.
The indictment of John Kiriakou, returned by a federal grand jury on Thursday, is part of an aggressive justice department crackdown on leakers and is one of a half-dozen such cases opened during the Obama administration.
US justice department indicts former CIA officer over leaks to journalists
Scientists unveil solar cells the width, flexibility of spider silk
Austrian and Japanese researchers on Wednesday unveiled solar cells thinner than a thread of spider silk that are flexible enough to be wrapped around a single human hair.
“You could attach the device to your clothes like a badge to collect electricity (from the sun)… Elderly people who might want to wear sensors to monitor their health would not need to carry around batteries,” Sekitani told AFP.
Former CIA officer indicted on charges of leaking classified information to journalists
A former CIA officer who expressed public doubts over the use of waterboarding as an interrogation technique was indicted Thursday on charges that he leaked classified secrets to journalists, including the role of an associate who worked with him on a covert mission to track down and capture a top al-Qaida figure.
Kiriakou received public attention for his statements on waterboarding, which he called an “unnecessary” form of interrogation during a 2007 interview with ABC. Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times.
Fracking Exposed: Shocking New Report Links Drilling With Breast Cancer and Women's Violence
Hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," has generated widespread media attention this year, but little has been reported on the ways in which fracking may have unique impacts on women.
Chemicals used in fracking have been linked to breast cancer and reproductive health problems, and there have been reports of rises in crimes against women in some fracking "boom" towns, which have attracted itinerant workers with few ties to the community.
Finance expert says speculators are behind high oil and gasoline prices
Financial speculators are gambling on oil the same way they gambled on the housing market a few years ago — a frightening prospect for the fragile economy, a Democratic congressional committee was told Wednesday.
"It is similar to the gambling Wall Street did on whether or not people would pay their subprime (below-market rate) mortgages in the mortgage meltdown," said Michael Greenberger, a law professor at the University of Maryland and a former federal regulator of financial markets. "Now they are betting on the upward direction of the price of oil."
Prairie2: High Noon
The first problem with this “news” was that the real numbers don’t come out until Friday, this was just an estimate from a private payroll service company that has become notorious for being wrong.
Doctor Panels Recommend Fewer Tests for Patients
In a move likely to alter treatment standards in hospitals and doctors’ offices nationwide, a group of nine medical specialty boards plans to recommend on Wednesday that doctors perform 45 common tests and procedures less often, and to urge patients to question these services if they are offered. Eight other specialty boards are preparing to follow suit with additional lists of procedures their members should perform far less often.
The recommendations represent an unusually frank acknowledgment by physicians that many profitable tests and procedures are performed unnecessarily and may harm patients. By some estimates, unnecessary treatment constitutes one-third of medical spending in the United States.
T. rex relative is biggest ever feathered animal
A newly described relative of Tyrannosaurus rex is the largest known feathered animal - living or extinct. The feathered meat-eating dinosaur lived about 125 million years ago and is estimated to have weighed a whopping 1,400kg as an adult.
The new species, known as Yutyrannus, has been identified from three fossils found in north-eastern China. The finds, detailed in Nature journal, challenge current theories about the evolution of T.rex and its relations.
Turnbull laments state of US politics
MALCOLM Turnbull has sharply criticised the corrupting power of money in the US and described America as looking ''like a country that is barely governed''.
He attacks the Republican idea that the budgetary situation can be improved by cutting the taxes of the wealthy as ''just bizarre'', and describes the right-wing Tea Party as extreme, reactionary and radical.
Author Robert Manne writes: ''He thinks that American voluntary voting encourages Republican extremism and the search for 'hot-button issues', like abortion or guns or gay marriage or Obama as a secret Muslim.
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