Adolf Hitler, who rolled into Freud's home city of Vienna on March 14, 1938, preceded by thousands of troops, was no surprise to Sigmund Freud. Nor would the many forms of tyrannical fundamentalism that have grown up in Hitler's wake and have extended into the 21st century have shocked him very much. In books like "Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego" and "Totem and Taboo," Freud predicted Hitler and his descendants almost perfectly. Now, in an age threatened by fundamentalisms of many sorts, Freud's thinking may be more usefully illuminating than ever before ...

For Freud, we might infer, a healthy body politic is one that allows for a good deal of continuing tension. A healthy polis is one that it doesn't always feel good to be a part of. There's too much argument, controversy, difference. But in that difference, annoying and difficult as it may be, lies the community's well-being. When a relatively free nation is threatened by terrorists with totalitarian goals, as ours is now, there is, of course, an urge to come together and to fight back by any means necessary. But the danger is that in fighting back we will become just as fierce, monolithic and, in the worst sense, as unified as our foes. We will seek our own great man; we will be blind to his foibles; we will stop questioning, stop arguing. When that happens, a war of fundamentalisms has begun, and of that war there can be no victor. NYT Magazine (reg/req)

The situation is at a "crucial stage" and all parties should "exercise restraint," Chinese officials say. 

The comments come the day before the head of the UN's nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, is to report on whether Iran has suspended its uranium enrichment work. BBC

Jumah al-Dossari, 33, claims he has been repeatedly beaten and suffered intense psychological abuse during his years of incarceration at the US prison camp in Cuba. He says he has watched US guards abuse the Koran, that he has been sexually humiliated and regularly kept in isolation.

His 12 attempts to take his life - either by hanging, slitting his wrists or a combination of both - account for a third of all the suicide attempts by prisoners at Guantanamo Bay reported by the US authorities. The most recent was in March. The Independent

"What can we offer them as 25-year-old new workers that might interest them enough to pick up sheets of paper and examine them for several minutes a day?" ... "I don't think you'll ever see another 'Calvin & Hobbes,' 'Bloom County' or 'Doonesbury' again," says Breathed, 48, who received the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning in 1987. "The popularity of those strips was built on a young audience — great comic strips are not built on the backs of aging readers."

Part of the problem, Breathed and other cartoonists say, is that newspapers, when choosing their comic strip lineup, put too much emphasis on the opinions of aging readers. As a result, stalwart strips such as "Peanuts," which continues to run as a reprint since the death of Charles M. Schulz in 2000, and "Blondie," which was created in 1930 by Chic Young, tend to remain entrenched on comics pages. LA Times

During a luncheon speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors conference here, Carroll, who serves as a guest lecturer at the Shorenstein Center at Harvard University, told a roomful of editors that their business needs to defend the ideas of journalism and “rock-turning” against increased budget-cutting and bottom-line demands.

Under Carroll, the Times won a shelf of Pulitzers a few years back, but he exited the paper in the wake of Tribune Co.-ordered cutbacks. Editor & Publisher

But appearances can be deceiving. And in this case, they are.

Although Roman Catholic and mainline Protestant leaders are voicing strong support for undocumented immigrants, recent survey data suggest that their flocks are increasingly uneasy about immigration trends. And evangelicals are proving to be divided along ethnic lines.

"That Bush coalition of religious conservatives has some qualms" about establishing pathways to citizenship because they want stiff punishments for lawbreakers, says Luis Lugo, director of the non-partisan Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life in Washington, D.C. "But these folks are also being cross-pressured. There is in all of these religious traditions strong emphasis on care of the immigrant. ... That's why people are conflicted."

In a March survey by Pew: 

• 64% of white evangelicals agreed with the statement "Immigrants today are a burden on our country because they take our jobs, housing and health care." That's up from 49% in December 2004.

• 56% of white Catholics agreed with the same statement, up from 44% in December 2004. 

• 51% of white mainline Protestants agreed that "The growing number of newcomers from other countries threatens traditional American customs and values." In December 2004, 41% agreed. USA Today

In the widest insurance retreat from coastal property since Hurricane Andrew slammed Florida in 1992, insurers as far north as Long Island, N.Y., and Cape Cod, Mass., are shedding coastal homeowners policies to reduce their exposure.

In Florida alone, insurers that are undercapitalized or fearful of losses have notified the state of plans to cancel more than 500,000 homeowners policies. With $2 trillion each in coastal property, Florida and New York lead the USA in coastal exposure, followed by Texas and Massachusetts. USA Today

The fact that White House policy is now in the hands of two Jews is not seen as significant by activists in the American Jewish community. The Jerusalem Post

Shaul Mofaz said: "Of all the threats we face, Iran is the biggest. The world must not wait. It must do everything necessary on a diplomatic level in order to stop its nuclear activity."

He added: "Since Hitler we have not faced such a threat." Telegraph

In a speech to a renewable-fuels group, Mr. Bush is expected to instruct the Justice Department, the Federal Trade Commission and the Energy Department to vigorously enforce laws relating to price gouging. And the attorney general and FTC chairman will send a joint letter to all 50 state attorneys general calling on them to use their broader investigative powers to pursue illegal gouging, according to a senior administration official. They also will offer assistance to states that need it.

The steps are among several short-term measures to address energy worries that Mr. Bush is likely to discuss, as his administration confronts yet another second-term political flare-up. Wall Street Journal

The Beijing Institute of Clothing Technology said the average chest size of Chinese women had increased by nearly 1cm in the past decade. 

Measurements were taken from nearly 3,000 women over six years. BBC

The researchers studied 2,258 Medicare recipients in Manhattan who did not have dementia, recording their health status and their consumption of constituents of the Mediterranean diet: olive oil, fruits, vegetable, legumes, cereals, fish, a little alcohol and very little dairy or meat. The study appears in the Annals of Neurology in April. NYT (reg/req)

Skip to next paragraph The scene is no longer science fiction. This month, De Tijd, a Belgian financial newspaper, started testing versions of electronic paper, a device with low-power digital screens embedded with digital ink — millions of microscopic capsules the width of a human hair made with organic material that display light or dark images in response to electrical charges. NYT (reg/req)

But we do know this: The American president says publicly that for the destruction of the Iranian nuclear program, even the use of tactical nuclear weapons is legitimate. Those familiar with the Pentagon warn that the U.S. Defense Department's most recent war plans against Iran are more than routine planning for a remote possibility. Financial Times Deutschland via WatchingAmerica.com

The demonstration by the Queens-based group was monitored by the Investigative Project on Terrorism whose members noted signs including "Islam will Dominate" and a picture with an Islamic flag flying over the White House. WorldNetDaily.com 

In 2005, a total of 83 soldiers committed suicide, compared with 67 in 2004, and 60 in 2003 — the year U.S.-led forces invaded Iraq. Four other deaths in 2005 are being investigated as possible suicides but have not yet been confirmed. The totals include active duty Army soldiers and deployed National Guard and Reserve troops.

"Although we are not alarmed by the slight increase, we do take suicide prevention very seriously," said Army spokesman Col. Joseph Curtin. The AP

Officials cautioned against reading too much into the overall total. The government last year adopted a new definition of terrorism and changed its system of counting global attacks, devoting more energy to finding reports of violence against civilians.

Yet the numbers are a striking reminder that violence around the globe has dramatically increased in the more than four years of the war on terror. The AP

It has been a gleam in the eye of astronomers for nearly a decade and now they are on the verge of seeing the birth of their brainchild - a telescope that for the first time will enable us to watch other Earth-like planets orbit distant suns.

The Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) will be four times bigger than the biggest existing telescope and 10 times more powerful than the hugely successful Hubble Space Telescope. The Independent

The court papers describing the plea agreement, motions filed by the legal team representing the businessman, Philip H. Bloom, 66, and interviews with contractors and government officials in Iraq make it clear that the case is certain to expand. The court papers, focusing narrowly on Mr. Bloom's contracting work in the south-central Iraqi city of Hilla, indicate that at least three more senior Army Reserve officers are likely to be implicated. NYT (reg/req)

Some 200 extra police are to patrol the streets of Tehran confronting women who reveal ankles, sport thin headscarves or wear short or tight jackets. 

Those found to be in breach of Iran's Islamic dress code could face instant penalty fines. 

The move is part of a blitz against anti-social behaviour, also targeting drugs and people who play loud music. 

People walking pets or men sporting outlandish hairstyles could also face fines, of up to $55 (£31), said Tehran's police chief, Mortaza Talai. 

Iran's clerical establishment says it wants to protect the values of the country's Islamic revolution against a corrupting Western influence. BBC

The 2% decrease, reported by the National Center for Health Statistics, came as a shock to many, because the U.S. is aging, growing in population and getting fatter. In fact, some experts said they suspect the numbers may not hold up when a final report is released later this year.

Nevertheless, center officials said the statistics, based on a review of about 90% of death records reported in all 50 states in 2004, were consistent across the country and were deemed solid enough to report.

The center said drops in the death rates for heart disease, cancer and stroke accounted for most of the decline. The AP

The study followed 1258 young people who were interviewed at ages 11, 13, 15 and 19. It found that of those who considered themselves goths, 53% had self-harmed and 47% had tried to commit suicide. The average prevalence of self-harm among young people in the UK is 7% to 14%. Self-harm includes behaviours such as cutting or burning oneself. And about 6% of young people admit suicide attempts. Some studies suggest the incidence is rising in society.

Researchers at University of Glasgow found that while most self-harmers started the practice at age 12 to 13, they did not become goths until they were a couple of years older, on average. 

“One common suggestion is they may be copying subcultural icons or peers [when they self-harm], but our study found that more young people reported self-harm before, rather than after, becoming a goth. This suggests that young people with a tendency to self-harm are attracted to the goth subculture,” says Robert Young, who led the study.

“Rather than posing a risk, it's also possible that by belonging to the goth subculture, young people are gaining valuable social and emotional support from their peers.” But he cautions: “However, the study was based on small numbers and replication is needed to confirm our results.” Only 25 participants felt strongly associated with goth culture.

Self-harming, Young says, is a behaviour that people often employ as a mechanism to deal with negative emotions. “It may be used as a quick-fix. "Some physiological studies suggest, or are compatible with the theory that endorphins [brain chemicals that produce a feeling of well-being] are released after episodes of self-harm," he told New Scientist.

China is rising fast and is expected to eclipse the United States economically in the future - its gross domestic product is tipped to overtake that of America by 2045. The Independent

The July 18 exercise at National Defense University's National Strategic Gaming Center will include members of Congress and top officials from military and civilian agencies. It was scheduled in August, before the latest escalation in the conflict, university spokesman Dave Thomas said.

It's the latest example of how otherwise routine operations are helping the United States prepare for a possible military confrontation with Iran. On Tuesday, President Bush refused to rule out military action — even a nuclear strike — to stop Iran's nuclear program. USA Today

The newspaper has witnessed the departures of its publisher and not one, but two editors in chief, as well as a low-grade reporting scandal and the unexplained termination of a senior investigative reporter. 

"There are people there who are superior in this work and are just waiting to have their heads lopped off," said Sydney Schanberg, 72, the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who left The Voice in February over his objections with the new management. "Not a good atmosphere."

Now, staff members are awaiting word of a permanent editor in chief, meanwhile reading into every change a predictor of their own fortunes. Along those lines, the termination of the investigative reporter, James Ridgeway, alarmed many in the newsroom and prompted 20 journalists to sign an open letter that called the action "shameful." NYT (reg/req)

His archive, some 200 boxes now being held by George Washington University's library, could be a trove of information about state secrets, dirty dealings, political maneuverings, and old-fashioned investigative journalism, open for historians and up-and-coming reporters to see. 

But the government wants to see the documents before anyone else. 

Agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation have told university officials and members of the Anderson family that they want to go through the archive, and that agents will remove any item they deem confidential or top secret. 

The Andersons, who have not yet transferred ownership of the archive to George Washington University, are outraged. They plan to fight the FBI's request. Editor & Publisher

They say that since the US-led invasion, gays are being killed because of their sexual orientation. BBC

The Bosnian archaeologist leading the project says it resembles pyramid sites he has studied in Latin America. 

Initial excavations have revealed a narrow entrance to what could be an underground network of tunnels. 

On Friday, a team of rescue workers from a local coal mine, followed by archaeologists and geologists examined the tunnel, thought to be 2.4 miles (3.8km) long. 

The team found two intersections with other tunnels leading off to the left and right. 

Their conclusion was that it had to be man-made. 

"This is definitely not a natural formation," said geologist Nadja Nukic. 

Satellite photographs and thermal imaging revealed two other, smaller pyramid-shaped hills in the Visoko Valley, which archaeologists believe the tunnels could lead to. BBC

In a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll, nearly half of those surveyed said the United States "should mind its own business internationally and let other countries get along as best they can on their own." Three years ago, just one-third felt that way. USA Today

The White House has said it is happy with the way Mr Rumsfeld is handling his job and the situation in Iraq. 

But the backing comes as the number of retired generals calling for him to be replaced has risen to six. BBC

They are among thousands of Americans who refuse to pay part or all of their federal taxes as a protest against war and military spending. "It takes two things to fight a war: people and money," says Smith, 67, a retired math and computer science teacher. "I can't refuse anymore to go, but I certainly can refuse to send the money."

The National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee says about 10,000 people "resist" paying taxes. The group plans demonstrations in Washington and 24 states Monday against the Iraq war. USA Today

Sex.com went for a record $12 million in cash and stock to adult-entertainment company Escom in January, according to industry-trade reports and sources with knowledge of the deal, who declined to be named because of the private nature of the sale.

Sales of 5,851 domain names generated $29 million in 2005, compared with the sale of 3,813 names for $15 million in 2004, says market researcher Zetetic. And the pace is quickening: In the first three months of this year, 1,949 names have generated $14.2 million, says Domain Name Journal magazine. USA Today

Shrewd, amusing, bulky in his superb white robes, he described to me all the disasters he was certain would follow the invasion. 

The US and British troops would be bogged down in Iraq for years. There would be civil war between Sunnis and Shias. The real beneficiary would be the government in Iran. 

"And what do the Americans say when you tell them this," I asked? "They don't even listen," he said. BBC

Scientists have unearthed a set of fossils in the Ethiopian Afar region that they believe is a "missing link" between a primitive ape-like creature that lived more than 4.4 million years ago and a later ape-man who became our own ancestor.

The discovery means that the region now boasts the discovery of the fossilised remains of eight distinct species that represent different stages in the evolutionary transition from ape to anatomically modern man.

The latest fossil find belongs to a species called Australopithecus anamensis, which lived about 4.2 million years ago, between the earlier Ardipithecus ramidus and the later Australopithecus afarensis.

Professor Tim White of the University of California, Berkeley, said that the discovery filled a million-year gap in the human fossil record between our ape-man ancestors - the australopithecines - who lived 3.5 million years ago and the even more primitive Ardipithecus. "This new discovery closes the gap between the fully blown Australopithecines and earlier forms we call Ardipithecus. We now know where Australopithecus came from before 4 million years ago," Professor White said. The Independent

"I think we need a fresh start" at the top of the Pentagon, retired Army Maj. Gen. John Batiste, who commanded the 1st Infantry Division in Iraq in 2004-2005, said in an interview. "We need leadership up there that respects the military as they expect the military to respect them. And that leadership needs to understand teamwork."

Batiste noted that many of his peers feel the same way. "It speaks volumes that guys like me are speaking out from retirement about the leadership climate in the Department of Defense," he said ... Washington Post (reg/req)

Mr. Beltram, a casino executive, is the point man in a high-technology experiment that could alter the face of slot machines, and their insides, too. 

With a few clicks of his computer mouse, Mr. Beltram can reprogram the 1,790 slot machines on the casino floor, adjusting the denominations required to play, payback percentages, even game themes.

Las Vegas is constantly tinkering with its slot machines, which generate more than $7 billion annually in Nevada, roughly double that taken in by table games. Despite their growing popularity and an increase in overall gambling proceeds in recent years, casino operators want to win back more of the money their customers are now spending elsewhere — on food, lodging and other entertainment, or at Indian casinos or for online gambling. 

In the past, changing out a slot machine was a complicated operation and entailed opening it, replacing the computer chip inside, then changing the glass display that markets the game's theme. The alteration usually took a day and could cost thousands of dollars, from ordering parts to modifying the machine.

"Now, I just come to my office, and select the program," said Mr. Beltram, the 28-year-old executive director for slots at Treasure Island, which is owned by the MGM Mirage. "With the technology, it takes 20 seconds." NYT (reg/req)

The government is considering issuing identity cards to families with children which would give discounts at stores cooperating with the program, the Yomiuri Shimbun daily said on Thursday.

The size of the discounts would be decided by the stores, which would also be expected to fund the system in return for favorable publicity surrounding the plan, the Yomiuri said.

The government is also considering tax rebates as a way of reducing the economic burden on parents of young children, which is seen as one reason for the declining birth rate.

Japan's fertility rate -- the average number of children a woman bears in her lifetime -- fell to a postwar low of just under 1.29 in 2004. Demographers say a rate of 2.1 is needed to keep a population from declining.

The nation's population shrank in the year to October for the first time since 1945. Reuters

"We have asked to meet the editors of Playboy today so we can reach an agreement to delay the publication of the second edition .... so it will not trigger more reaction," said Gen. Firman Gani. 

Playboy representatives were not immediately available for comment. 

Previously police and government officials have said that there were no laws to ban the magazine, which does not feature any nudity and is no more risque than scores of other local and foreign publications already for sale. 

Gani also said police were investigating an attack by rock-throwing Muslim hardliners yesterday on the building that housed the magazine's offices in South Jakarta.

A sign on the door of the building today said the magazine was no longer based there. 

So far protests have remained small against the magazine, which was launched last week. But they could get larger, leaving authorities in a difficult position given the fact they cannot ban the publication. The AP

With the rise of blogs, reality TV, camera phones and other types of instant media, one can see a day when anyone, anywhere could become the subject of salacious journalism. And as gossip journalism spreads, so do the shoddy standards that accompany it. I'm not talking about bribes or extortion. One hopes that's a rare practice. But consider what the New York Times reported about the way business is done at Page Six: "Keeping a list of reliable sources, of course, means having a list of people who need to be protected somewhat. Those who cooperate--called 'friends of the column,' according to people who work with and at Page Six--are rewarded; those who fight back are punished." Wall Street Journal

We were reminded of this 1994 book by Dennis W. Mazzocco while watching the ABC Evening News last night. They ran a seemingly gratuitous story about extravagant tax breaks - how this billionaire wrote off this, and how that billionaire wrote off that.

ABC ended the short piece by reporting on how some people living in the Washington, DC area donated the facades of their historic homes to a local historical preservation group, and got to write a little something off for that.

As an example, ABC cited the home of DC- based journalist Seymour Hersh, whose recent piece in The New Yorker has caused quite an international stir, and begins thusly: “The Bush Administration, while publicly advocating diplomacy in order to stop Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapon, has increased clandestine activities inside Iran and intensified planning for a possible major air attack. Current and former American military and intelligence officials said that Air Force planning groups are drawing up lists of targets, and teams of American combat troops have been ordered into Iran, under cover, to collect targeting data and to establish contact with anti-government ethnic-minority groups. The officials say that President Bush is determined to deny the Iranian regime the opportunity to begin a pilot program, planned for this spring, to enrich uranium.”

We were happy to discover, that even with Peter Jennings gone, we can still learn a lot by watching ABC News.

In a small-scale study presented at a meeting of the American Educational Research Association here this week, researchers surveyed 65 girls ages 15-18 in an upscale Sacramento suburb in 2004 and found that self-identified female bullies most often text-messaged harassment by cellphone, preferring it nearly 2 to 1 over e-mail, websites and instant messaging. About 45% had been victims of cyber-bullying.

The findings are by no means universal but do point to what could be a troubling trend, says researcher Juliana Raskauskas of Massey University in New Zealand: Vulnerable children have virtually no refuge from harassment. "It's a non-stop type of harassment and it creates a sense of helplessness."

She notes a recent case in New Zealand in which a teenager committed suicide after being inundated with dozens of harassing, insulting text messages. USA Today

The telescope is the first to be developed solely to search the skies for light pulses from aliens and will be able to cover 100,000 times the amount of sky covered by current equipment, its developers said.

"The opening of this telescope represents one of those rare moments in a field of scientific endeavor when a great leap forward is enabled," said Bruce Betts, project director at The Planetary Society, a group in Pasadena, California, that advocates space exploration and funded the telescope's development.

"Sending laser signals across the cosmos would be a very logical way for E.T. to reach out, but until now, we have been ill-equipped to receive any such signal," he said.

Researchers say alien civilizations may be as likely to use light signals to communicate as radio transmissions. Visible light can form tight beams and could potentially convey information more efficiently, Betts said. Reuters

Burkle taped his meetings with Stern and contacted the FBI, and as a result, the fedora-capped, bow-tied, 35-year-old Stern might be going to jail, where fedora-capped, bow-tied people don't traditionally thrive. While others believe Stern's mistake was extortion, I see it as a matter of mispricing.

As a fellow newspaper columnist, I figured it was important to understand my potential value as an extortionist in case things ever got drastic and I needed to pay for a life-saving operation for my mother, or the finance payments on a really nice Porsche.

I contacted Steven Levitt, an economics professor at the University of Chicago and co-author of "Freakonomics." He told me that, as I suspected, Stern's price was way off. "You can supposedly hire a hit man for $10,000," Levitt said. "Most reported cases of bribery and corruption are much less. Dan Rostenkowski was taken down for stamps and office furniture." LA Times 

But now White House officials, and specifically President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, have been pitched back into the center of the nearly three-year controversy, this time because of a prosecutor's court filing in the case that asserts there was "a strong desire by many, including multiple people in the White House," to undermine Mr. Wilson.

The new assertions by the special prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, have put administration officials on the spot in a way they have not been for months, as attention in the leak case seems to be shifting away from the White House to the pretrial procedural skirmishing in the perjury and obstruction charges against Mr. Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby Jr.

Mr. Fitzgerald's filing talks not of an effort to level with Americans but of "a plan to discredit, punish or seek revenge against Mr. Wilson." It concludes, "It is hard to conceive of what evidence there could be that would disprove the existence of White House efforts to 'punish Wilson.' "

With more filings expected from Mr. Fitzgerald, the prosecutor's work has the potential to keep the focus on Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney at a time when the president is struggling with his lowest approval ratings since he took office. NYT (reg/req)

"Would you like your Coke and orange juice medium or large?" Ms. Vargas said into her headset to an unseen woman who was ordering breakfast from a drive-through line. She did not neglect the small details —"You Must Ask for Condiments," a sign next to her computer terminal instructs — and wished the woman a wonderful day. 

What made the $12.08 transaction remarkable was that the customer was not just outside Ms. Vargas's workplace here on California's central coast. She was at a McDonald's in Honolulu. And within a two-minute span Ms. Vargas had also taken orders from drive-through windows in Gulfport, Miss., and Gillette, Wyo.

Ms. Vargas works not in a restaurant but in a busy call center in this town, 150 miles from Los Angeles. She and as many as 35 others take orders remotely from 40 McDonald's outlets around the country. The orders are then sent back to the restaurants by Internet, to be filled a few yards from where they were placed. NYT (reg/req)

The 1.3 ton Venus Express took off on a Soyuz rocket from Baikonur in Kazakhstan last November, traveling 250 million miles through space to a mission scheduled to last 486 days.

"Everything went as it was planned, clearly, without difficulties," Gaele Winters, European Space Agency (ESA) director of operations, told a news conference. "This is a great success," he said.

Priced at a relatively modest 220 million euros ($265 million) and built by firms from 14 countries, the Venus Express underlines the ambition of European scientists to be at the cutting edge of exploring the scope and origins of the universe.

"It all comes back to the basic question that I'm sure just about everybody has asked --- how did we turn up here out of all that?" said David Southwood, director of science at ESA. Reuters

The report, 10 pages of briefing points titled "Provincial Stability Assessment," underscores the shift in the nature of the Iraq war three years after the toppling of Saddam Hussein. Warnings of sectarian and ethnic frictions are raised in many regions, even in those provinces generally described as nonviolent by American officials. 

There are alerts about the growing power of Iranian-backed religious Shiite parties, several of which the United States helped put into power, and rival militias in the south. The authors also point to the Arab-Kurdish fault line in the north as a major concern, with the two ethnicities vying for power in Mosul, where violence is rampant, and Kirkuk, whose oil fields are critical for jump-starting economic growth in Iraq.

The patterns of discord mapped by the report confirm that ethnic and religious schisms have become entrenched across much of the country, even as monthly American fatalities have fallen. Those indications, taken with recent reports of mass migrations from mixed Sunni-Shiite areas, show that Iraq is undergoing a de facto partitioning along ethnic and sectarian lines, with clashes — sometimes political, sometimes violent — taking place in those mixed areas where different groups meet. 

The report, the first of its kind, was written over a six-week period by a joint civilian and military group in Baghdad that wanted to provide a baseline assessment for conditions that new reconstruction teams would face as they were deployed to the provinces, said Daniel Speckhard, an American ambassador in Baghdad who oversees reconstruction efforts. NYT (reg/req)

American and European intelligence agencies, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (I.A.E.A.), agree that Iran is intent on developing the capability to produce nuclear weapons. But there are widely differing estimates of how long that will take, and whether diplomacy, sanctions, or military action is the best way to prevent it. Iran insists that its research is for peaceful use only, in keeping with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and that it will not be delayed or deterred.

There is a growing conviction among members of the United States military, and in the international community, that President Bush’s ultimate goal in the nuclear confrontation with Iran is regime change. Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has challenged the reality of the Holocaust and said that Israel must be “wiped off the map.” Bush and others in the White House view him as a potential Adolf Hitler, a former senior intelligence official said. “That’s the name they’re using. They say, ‘Will Iran get a strategic weapon and threaten another world war?’ ” The New Yorker

The world is mistakenly focusing on oil reserves when the problem is capacity to produce oil, M de Margerie said in an interview with The Times. Forecasters, such as the International Energy Agency (IEA), have failed to consider the speed at which new resources can be brought into production, he believes. 

"Numbers like 120 million barrels per day will never be reached, never,” he said. The Times

The people who escaped from collapsed or damaged buildings on Sept. 11, 2001, were several times as likely to suffer from breathing problems or psychological trauma if they were caught in the cloud of trade center dust and debris that covered lower Manhattan, researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. The AP

Economists take pride in the sophisticated statistical techniques on which they rely to analyze phenomena such as growth, inflation, unemployment, trade, and even the long-term effects of abortion on crime rates. Many are convinced that their methods are more rigorous than those of all other social sciences and dismiss research that does not rest on quantitative methods as little more than “storytelling” or, worse, “glorified journalism.” Anthropologists, some economists jest, believe that the plural of anecdote is “data.”

A survey published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives found that 77 percent of the doctoral candidates in the leading departments in the United States believe that “economics is the most scientific of the social sciences.” It turns out, however, that this certitude does not stem from how well they regard their own discipline but rather from their contempt for the other social sciences. Although they were nearly unanimous about the relative superiority of their profession, only 9 percent of the respondents were convinced that economists agree on fundamental issues.

And they are right. Economists today are still grappling with basic questions for which they have no answers. Much more than fodder for academic squabbles, this uncertainty often has serious consequences. When economists err in theory, people suffer in practice. Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Brazil’s former president, recalls that in the midst of his country’s financial crisis, he received calls from experts at the International Monetary Fund, several Nobel laureates in economics, and other superstars in the economics firmament. Each offered different advice, and each sounded convinced that his or her recommendation was the only correct one. A distinguished sociologist, Cardoso managed to employ his considerable talents and experience to steer Brazil out of the crisis, ignoring the recommendations of several celebrity economists—some of whom had even urged him to adopt a fixed exchange-rate regime just like the one that Argentina’s recent crash has now discredited.

“We do not really know what causes economic growth,” admits François Bourguignon, the chief economist at the World Bank. “We do have a good sense of what are the main obstacles to growth and what are the conditions without which an economy can’t grow. But we are far less sure about what are the other ingredients needed to create and sustain growth.” FOREIGN POLICY

Television news in particular has struggled to find its way, wounded by the “60 Minutes” debacle and forced resignation of Dan Rather on CBS, the retirement of NBC’s Tom Brokaw and the loss of ABC’s Peter Jennings. To add to the TV news woes, Fox has shown that partisan, preaching-to-the-choir news is both cheap to produce and popular. Meanwhile “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” have demonstrated that so-called “fake news” is often more revealing about the day’s events, and more emotionally satisfying.

Into this gap between the lassitude of the nightly news and the edginess of Jon Stewart has stepped an unlikely figure: Lou Dobbs. I used to watch Dobbs for what are called surveillance purposes; how do right-leaning, pro-business types report and spin the news? Now, I try not to miss Dobbs, in part because he seems to be deliberately crafting a new kind of anchor persona—that of the outraged everyday American, the one who is indeed “mad as hell and not gonna take it anymore.” He expresses his incredulity over Bush pronouncements and policies in his give-and-take with CNN reporters, addresses the audience directly with sarcastic rhetorical questions and has abandoned the more neutral, objectivity-adhering stylings of news anchors. He has also been walking an interesting political line, conservative about some issues, especially American immigration policy, populist about others, including corporate giveaways and the privileging of business interests over national security. And you won’t find soft news stories about puppies or diets here. In the process, Dobbs is showing how you might do a version of “The Daily Show” straight. In These Times

The question is important because it might help us understand why Americans—members of the media as well as the ordinary citizen—rushed to declare their support as the President was sending troops halfway around the world to Iraq.

A small example of the innocence (or obsequiousness, to be more exact) of the press is the way it reacted to Colin Powell’s presentation in February 2003 to the Security Council, a month before the invasion, a speech which may have set a record for the number of falsehoods told in one talk. In it, Powell confidently rattled off his “evidence”: satellite photographs, audio records, reports from informants, with precise statistics on how many gallons of this and that existed for chemical warfare. The New York Times was breathless with admiration. The Washington Post editorial was titled “Irrefutable” and declared that after Powell’s talk “it is hard to imagine how anyone could doubt that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction.”

It seems to me there are two reasons, which go deep into our national culture, and which help explain the vulnerability of the press and of the citizenry to outrageous lies whose consequences bring death to tens of thousands of people. If we can understand those reasons, we can guard ourselves better against being deceived.

One is in the dimension of time, that is, an absence of historical perspective. The other is in the dimension of space, that is, an inability to think outside the boundaries of nationalism. We are penned in by the arrogant idea that this country is the center of the universe, exceptionally virtuous, admirable, superior. 
The Progressive

Over at the Cincinnati Enquirer's online site, Cincinnati.com, there's a blog about Iraq written by military staffer whose job is to generate positive news about U.S. efforts to rebuild Iraq.

Grandma in Iraq is the title of the blog, written by Suzanne M. Fournier, a Public Affairs Officer for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The posts are largely upbeat. "Everytime [sic] an Iraqi contractor bids on a reconstruction project. . . it is a sign that democracy is winning here," reads one. "I am confident we'll have another banner year of success for the benefit of the people of Iraq and democracy in the Middle East," another says.

Cincinnati.com identifies "Grandma" as "Suzanne Fournier of Alexandria, grandmother of 15, [who] posts from Iraq, where she is stationed with the U.S. Army Corp. [sic] of Engineers." It makes no mention she's a flack.  TPM Muckraker.com

The plan calls for the most sweeping realignment and modernization of the nation's massive system of laboratories and factories for nuclear bombs since the end of the Cold War. LA Times

The findings, to be reported Thursday in the scientific review Nature, push back the dawn of dentistry by 4,000 years to around 7000 B.C. The drilled molars come from a sample of 300 individuals buried in graves at the Mehrgarh site in western Pakistan, believed to be the oldest Stone Age complex in the Indus River valley. NYT (reg/req)

He considers himself lucky. The tab could have topped $1,000.

Anderson, 41, of Los Angeles, experienced the downside of one of the technological wonders of today's automotive world — newfangled keys and fobs packed with remote-control features. USA Today

In a new, math-heavy paper titled "Media Bias and Reputation," the two economists leapfrog over the usual analysis about the media's liberalness or conservativeness to construct a new model of media bias. They assume, logically enough, that media firms seek to establish reputations as purveyors of accurate information because such reputations increase demand for their products.

If news consumers can't easily evaluate the quality of a news story, they will tend to grade it based on their previous observations of the media outlet. No surprises so far. But the article, which will appear in the April issue of the Journal of Political Economy, goes on to present findings that are sure to appall and delight students of press bias. Gentzkow and Shapiro find that:

1) If a media outlet cares about its reputation for accuracy, it will be reluctant to report anything that counters the audiences' existing beliefs because such stories will tend to erode the company's standing. Newspapers and news programs have a visible incentive to "distort information to make it conform with consumers' prior beliefs." 

2) The media can't satisfy their audiences by merely reporting what their audience wants to hear. If alternative sources of information prove that a news organization has distorted the news, the organization will suffer a loss of reputation, and hence of profit. The authors predict more bias in stories where the outcomes aren't realized for some time (foreign war reporting, for example) and less bias where the outcomes are immediately apparent (a weather forecast or a sports score). Indeed, almost nobody accuses the New York Times or Fox News Channel of slanting their weather reports.

3) Less bias occurs when competition produces a healthy tension between a news organization's desire to conform to audience expectations and maintaining its reputation. 

The Gentzkow-Shapiro model helps explain Fox News Channel's success. Because folks tend to become more politically conservative as they age, and because older folks spend more time in front of their televisions than young folks, it stands to reason that the first network to coddle this underserved audience would profit. Slate

In the largest study to examine the effects of this profoundly personal activity, researchers found that asking strangers to pray for heart-bypass patients had no effect on their recovery. In fact, patients who were told that study volunteers were praying for them were actually more likely to suffer a medical complication. USA Today

Research published in the U.S. journal Science says the warming is seen across the whole of the continent and much of the Southern Ocean. 

The study questions the reliability of current climate models that fail to simulate the temperature rise. BBC

But Ms Rice's trip to north-west England reached the realms of fiasco yesterday when a mosque withdrew its invitation to her, a headteacher fielded complaints about her visit to his school and anti-war protesters geared up for hostilities. The Independent

In a similar Pew survey in 1998, just 42 percent of white American adults said they used the Internet while only 23 percent of African-American adults did so. Forty percent of English-speaking Hispanic-Americans said they used the Internet.  NYT (reg/req)

With speculation mounting that Tribune could be the newspaper industry's next takeover play, the media company faces increasing pressure to do something.

Tribune's stock price has slumped to multiyear lows, Wall Street analysts have slapped the company with rare "sell" ratings, and the company's strategy of corralling advertisers by owning newspapers and television stations in the same markets seems to have flopped. Wall Street Journal

Flight FR9884 from Liverpool touched down at Ballykelly military airstrip, five miles short of the intended destination, City of Derry airport. The 39 passengers at first laughed, thinking the pilot was joking, when he announced: "Ladies and gentlemen, we have landed at the wrong airport. I would ask you to be patient."

One passenger said: "I looked out and saw army officers everywhere. It was just unbelievable. I think the army officers were actually shocked themselves and started taking photos." The Independent

According to the lead investigators of the study, John Cacioppo, the Tiffany & Margaret Blake Distinguished Service Professor in Psychology, and Louise Hawkley, Senior Research Scientist with the Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience, the result is equivalent to the difference between a normal blood pressure of 120 and a level of 150, which signifies Stage--1 hypertension. 

The point differences resulted, even when other factors such as depressive symptoms or perceived stress were taken into account. The differences were smallest at age 50 and greatest among the oldest adults tested, those at retirement age. The University of Chicago Chronicle

The Army will now allow new recruits and all its current soldiers to have tattoos on their hands and back of their necks as long as they are not "extremist, indecent, sexist or racist," Army officials said on Wednesday. Reuters

Nick Berg, who was pro-Bush and a supporter of the Iraq war, was, in his father's words, a "marine wannabe" and a devoutly religious Jew. Michael Berg has been a pacifist and an atheist most of his life.

But Michael Berg says he and Nick shared a belief in taking a principled stand. It is this belief that Mr. Berg says inspired his Green Party bid for Delaware's only Congressional seat in the wake of Nick's kidnapping and killing in Iraq two years ago.

"Nick stood by what he thought was right," said Mr. Berg, a 61-year-old former teacher who is trying to unseat a seven-term Republican, Michael N. Castle. "I plan on doing the same."

The videotaped beheading of Nick Berg, a 26-year-old freelance radio-tower repairman, shocked a world audience after it was broadcast on the Internet. NYT (reg/req)

"After the fact, someone went in and made the scene look different from what it was. There's been huge misinformation," Lieutenant General Peter Chiarelli, the second-ranking U.S. commander in Iraq, said. Reuters

It is the first time the Americans have directly intervened in the furious debate over the country's top job, the politicians said, and it is inflaming tensions between the Americans and some Shiite leaders. NYT (reg/req)

The report, published in December last year, compared the accuracy of online offerings from Encyclopaedia Britannica and Wikipedia. 

Nature found that both were about as accurate as each other on science.

Encyclopaedia Britannica has hit back at the findings, calling for the paper to be retracted. 

In a document on its website, Encyclopedia Britannica said that the Nature study contained "a pattern of sloppiness, indifference to basic scholarly standards, and flagrant errors so numerous they completely invalidated the results."

The scholarly slanging match prompted an equally robust response from Nature. 

"We reject those accusations, and are confident our comparisons are fair," it said in a statement. 

Nature said it did not intend to retract the original article. BBC

Started less than a decade ago in a Stanford dorm room, Google has evolved into a multibillion-dollar business, its search engine ubiquitous on the Internet. Its sprawling growth, fueled by a public stock offering in August 2004 that created a market behemoth, has now thrust it into the glare of Washington.

As lawmakers and regulators begin eyeing its ventures in China and other countries and as its Web surfers worry about the privacy of their online searches, Google is making adjustments that do not fit neatly with its maverick image.

It has begun ramping up its lobbying and legislative operations after largely ignoring Washington for years, in a scramble to match bases long established here by competitors like Yahoo and Microsoft, as well as the deeply entrenched telecommunication companies. NYT (reg/req)

Once 314km up, the Hyshot III fell back to Earth, reaching speeds analysts hope will have topped Mach 7.6 (9,000km/h). It is hoped the British-designed Hyshot III will pave the way for ultra fast, intercontinental air travel.BBC

The effort lasted a year before falling victim to the demands of modern life. But the commercial craziness of the Christmas season brought the group back together a few months ago.

Only now they're not toiling in relative anonymity. A whiff of media interest over the past month has turned their tool-sharing, library-going, thrift-store-shopping band into a full-fledged cultural phenomenon with more than 700 members joining through their Yahoo website. Groups are meeting in Maine, Alabama, Texas, Oregon and Wisconsin, and satiated consumers in Japan and Brazil are making inquiries. USA Today

At the same time, the 9/11 attacks jolted Muslims into realizing that they needed to make themselves known to their neighbors and heard by their government. They are voting, running for office and getting more involved in civic and political life at every level, from PTAs and school boards to town councils and state legislatures. At least two — Texas Republicans Amir Omar and Ahmad Hassan — are running for U.S. Congress. USA Today

Considering the politics of our own day, we really are there. But even with the current upheaval in the States over the Bush junta's flagrant wiretapping and injudicious and childish "with us or against us" prattle, Clooney's film points to an even more alarming failure in contemporary America's body politic: the absence of an independent, critical media — something that existed in the early days of television. The Prague Post

At the current rate of rising temperatures, by the year 2100 Arctic summers could be as warm as they were 130,000 years ago. Back then, in a time known as the last interglacial, the oceans were 20 feet higher than they are now. The AP

It comes on the eve of the 30th anniversary of the coup, by which the military seized power in 1976. Human rights groups say up to 30,000 political opponents of the regime were kidnapped, detained and later executed during seven years of military rule. BBC

Speaking at the Global Terrorism and International Cooperation Symposium, Pace called for patience and collaboration, repeating U.S. assertions that it will be a long campaign. 

"Iraq and Afghanistan will over time become stable," he said in a keynote address. "But the war on terror will continue long after Iraq and Afghanistan have had success in standing up their own governments."

Pace also told the crowd that military action alone will not be enough. Economic growth, good education systems and solid governments also are necessary to quell terrorism. 

"We are talking about years and years to come of vigilance," said Pace, "Today's tactical victory does not guarantee tomorrow's strategic success." The AP

The 5-3 decision in a Georgia drug case that involved a feuding husband and wife drew a sharp dissent from Chief Justice John Roberts. He said the majority, led by the high court's more liberal justices, misapplied the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches and set a rule based on "random" circumstances.

The ruling, written by Justice David Souter, says that if police search a home after being invited in byone resident over the protest ofanother, the evidence that is seized cannot be used in court. Thedecision emphasized respect for privacy in the home. USA Today

The thinly disguised satire continued the show's feud with Scientologists in its 10th season premiere on Comedy Central ... [Hayes] left the show recently because of what he called the animated show's religious "intolerance and bigotry." Founders Matt Stone and Trey Parker said Hayes, a Scientologist, was mad that South Park mocked the religion in an episode last November.

A rerun of that Scientology episode was mysteriously pulled off the air last week amid published reports that actor Tom Cruise, another Scientologist, had used his clout to bury it. A Cruise spokesman denied that.

Hayes didn't participate in making Wednesday's episode; the character's lines appeared to be patched together through tapes of past dialogue. 

Chef repeatedly said he wanted to "make sweet love" to the South Park elementary school kids — it seems the "Super Adventure Club" turns its members into child molesters ... "A lot of us don't agree with the choices the Chef has made in the last few days," one of the children eulogizes him at a funeral. "Some of us feel hurt and confused that he seemed to turn his back on us. But we can't let the events of the past few weeks take away the memories of how Chef made us smile." 

"We shouldn't be mad at Chef for leaving us," the eulogy concludes. "We should be mad at that fruity little club for scrambling his brains." The AP

That's the conclusion of a panel from the National Academy of Sciences commissioned by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to assess the safety of fluoride levels in drinking water. HealthDay.com

That's because housing helped drive the economy out of the last recession. Almost four out of every 10 jobs created in the past four years were in housing-related fields. At the end of last year, a record 9.8% of U.S. workers were employed in the real estate industry, up from 8.2% a decade ago, according to Moody's Economy.com. Only the health care industry added more jobs. USA Today

The BBC News website spoke to four Iraqis and asked them for their memories of the invasion, what life has been like in the country since and what they feel the future holds. BBC

Known worldwide for its Arabic news station, Al Jazeera has been seeking an American cable, satellite or telecommunications provider for about a year but has received unsatisfactory offers, said Lindsey Oliver, commercial director for the Qatari company. 

Al Jazeera's English-language network will be available in 40 million households in Britain, France, Germany, Australia, and parts of Africa and Asia when it starts broadcasting in late May, she said.

"I know I've got distribution in the States," Ms. Oliver said, but she declined to estimate how many U.S. homes Al Jazeera would reach. 

The main sticking point is a stipulation from cable providers that Al Jazeera cannot stream its material live on the Internet. "There's an 'either/or' attitude in the cable industry," she said. The Washington Times

When the US government on Thursday began publishing captured Iraqi government documents on the Internet, Shahda eagerly began to translate the files into English and publish them on a conservative website.

''I feel a sense of duty," said Shahda, a native of Lebanon who supports President Bush's decision to invade Iraq. ''I think it's a duty for people who know Arabic to translate the documents."

US officials hope that thousands of other Arabic speakers feel the same. Goaded by Congress, Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte has begun to release millions of pages of captured files online in an unprecedented effort to harness the Internet to disseminate raw intelligence material. There, anybody with a knowledge of Arabic can download the files and translate them for the world.Boston Globe

The fax comes from the vast collection of documents recovered in postwar Afghanistan and Iraq. Up to this point, those materials have been kept from the American public. Now the proverbial dam has broken. On March 16, the U.S. government posted on the web 9 documents captured in Iraq, as well as 28 al Qaeda documents that had been released in February. Earlier last week, Foreign Affairs magazine published a lengthy article based on a review of 700 Iraqi documents by analysts with the Institute for Defense Analysis and the Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia. Plans for the release of many more documents have been announced. And if the contents of the recently released materials and other documents obtained by The Weekly Standard are any indication, the discussion of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq is about to get more interesting. 
The Weekly Standard

Although they had little in common in life, Jannetti and Cohen shared a cause of death with the estimated 90,000 people who are infected every year by the life-threatening bacteria that cling to clothing, walls, food trays, stethoscopes, catheters and other surfaces in every hospital in the country. But the main culprit is a practice condemned in the 19th century: Hospital personnel going from patient to patient without properly washing their hands. In These Times

The finding, based on data from NASA's WMAP satellite, supports a 2-decade-old physics theory called "inflation," which describes how the cosmos grew over 13.7 billion years from a subatomic flicker into a vast expanse of stars and galaxies ...

"The observations are spectacular and the conclusions are stunning," said physicist Brian Greene of Columbia University.

• The findings indicate that the universe is vastly larger than the sphere — 13.7 billion light years in radius — that can be observed from Earth.

• Normal matter, the stuff of people and planets, is only about 4% of the combined matter and energy in the universe. Dark matter, invisible and exotic physical particles, and dark energy, a gravity-defying force behind the continuing expansion of the universe, makes up the rest.

• Stars first appeared 400 million years after the universe's origin, a bit later than the team's 2003 estimate but still remarkably early.

"In our lifetime, our whole conception of the universe has changed," says physicist Max Tegmark of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The next step for cosmic microwave researchers will be to observe gravitational waves in the early universe, the signature prediction of inflation that will be considered proof of that theory. 

WMAP "is telling us that the universe is vastly bigger than we ever imagined — so big that we no longer have any reason to believe that our tiny patch of it is representative of the whole thing," said Stanford University physicist Leonard Susskind via e-mail.

"We, and all we can see, are at most a tiny dot in an unimaginably large sea of space and time," Susskind said.
USA Today

For most, the conflict has hit close to home: Six in 10 say a close friend, family member or co-worker has served in Iraq. More than one in 10 say someone close to them has been killed or wounded there.

Nearly six in 10 say the war has had a negative impact on the nation generally. USA Today

Port Authority officials have angrily accused developer Larry Silverstein of negotiating in bad faith. 

Neither side can agree on who will build on Ground Zero, how much rent will be paid, and how to divide money paid to Mr Silverstein after 9/11. BBC

Two years ago, a movie with the unpronounceable title "What the #$!%* Do We Know!?" became an underground new-age phenomenon, raking in $11 million out of midnight screenings and word of mouth, spawning an industry of books, tote bags, clothing, DVD's and "biofield" jewelry.

It purported to argue, based on the insights of modern quantum physics, that reality is just a mental construct that we can rearrange and improve, if we are enlightened or determined enough. Science and spirituality have tied the knot, and the world is your infinitely deformable apple.

This winter an expanded version, "What the Bleep, Down the Rabbit Hole," began to play to audiences who say that the movie confirms what they already thought about the cosmos, some vibe they had that it is a slippery, woo-woo-woo kind of place. The movie just finished a two-month run in New York and is to be shown in May at the Quest for Global Healing Conference, in Ubud, Bali, with luminaries like Walter Cronkite and Desmond Tutu attending.

Like its predecessor, this film features a coterie of talking heads: physicists with real Ph.D.'s, biologists, philosophers and a woman who claims to be channeling a 35,000-year-old spirit warrior from Atlantis. It tells the story of a sourpuss photographer played by Marlee Matlin who learns to love herself and take a chance on life.

Like its predecessor, the film touts the alleged power of meditation to affect the crystalline structure of water, as revealed in photographs by Masaru Emoto, a doctor of alternative medicine in Japan. Love and gratitude make for symmetrical and intricate crystals, according to the film, while hatred produces an ugly mess. NYT (reg/req)

The scientists provide powerful new evidence for a 30-year-old theory, proposed in a classic paper from Mary-Claire King and Allan Wilson of Berkeley. That 1975 paper documented the 99-percent similarity of genes from humans and chimps and suggested that altered gene regulation, rather than changes in coding, might explain how so few genetic changes could produce the wide anatomic and behavioral differences between the two. The University of Chicago Medical Center 

His comments, while linked to the holy celebration, came as sectarian violence spiked again in Iraq, with the execution-style killings of at least 87 people, including about 29 bodies piled in a mass grave in a Baghdad neighborhood. Hundreds of people have been killed since the Feb. 22 bombing of a Shiite mosque in Samarra, creating concern that the country may be tipping toward civil war. The AP

Benjamin C. Bradlee, the Post editor who guided Mr. Woodward's Watergate reporting, is quoted in the article about the leak investigation in the April issue of Vanity Fair as saying, "That Armitage is the likely source is a fair assumption."

The assertion attributed to Mr. Bradlee added the weight of one of the country's best-known editors to months of speculation that Mr. Armitage could be Mr. Woodward's source.

Mr. Armitage has not commented on the matter. On Tuesday, he did not return a reporter's phone call. NYT (reg/req)

[Editor's Note: Richard Armitage also stands accused of heroin trafficking in the mid-1970s to fund covert CIA operations in Laos and Cambodia. These allegations, made by Lt. Col. James "Bo" Gritz in his 1989 book, A Nation Betrayed, have never been seriously investigated. See our Chicago Tribune feature story on Gritz, published in 1999, here.]

Hayes, 63, who is the voice of the lustful Chef, has been a regular on the show since its US TV debut in 1997. 

But co-creator Matt Stone said Hayes had "never had a problem" until the Scientology Church, to which Hayes belongs, was parodied. BBC

To David Haig, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard, these grim statistics raise a profound puzzle about pregnancy.

"Pregnancy is absolutely central to reproduction, and yet pregnancy doesn't seem to work very well," he said. "If you think about the heart or the kidney, they're wonderful bits of engineering that work day in and day out for years and years. But pregnancy is associated with all sorts of medical problems. What's the difference?"

The difference is that the heart and the kidney belong to a single individual, while pregnancy is a two-person operation. And this operation does not run in perfect harmony. Instead, Dr. Haig argues, a mother and her unborn child engage in an unconscious struggle over the nutrients she will provide it. NYT (reg/req)

John Sawers, Blair's envoy in Baghdad in the aftermath of the invasion, sent a series of confidential memos to Downing Street in May and June 2003 cataloguing US failures. With unusual frankness, he described the US postwar administration, led by the retired general Jay Garner, as "an unbelievable mess" and said "Garner and his top team of 60-year-old retired generals" were "well-meaning but out of their depth."

That assessment is reinforced by Major General Albert Whitley, the most senior British officer with the US land forces. Whitley, in another memo later that summer, expressed alarm that the US-British coalition was in danger of losing the peace. "We may have been seduced into something we might be inclined to regret. Is strategic failure a possibility? The answer has to be 'yes'," he concluded.

The memos were obtained by Michael Gordon, author, along with General Bernard Trainor, of Cobra II: the Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq, published to coincide with the third anniversary of the invasion.Mail amp Guardian

Addressing a gathering of pilots and air force commanders of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), the IRGC's Commander, Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi, said "The U.S. will get nowhere by putting more pressure on Iran."

Noting that Washington's unilateral policy has failed all over the world, the commander noted that the U.S. plans to make a unipolar world and a greater Middle East have been defeated. Islamic Republic News Agency via the Tehran Times

In a case that advocates fear is directly linked to Bush's announcement, the government has jailed two Iranians who traveled outside the country to attend what was billed as a series of workshops on human rights. Two others who attended were interrogated for three days. Washington Post (reg/req)

In a meeting last week with Karl Rove, the president's senior adviser, the druggists said many independent pharmacies might have to shut their doors because they were not being paid adequately or promptly under Medicare. In the last two months, they said, pharmacists have given away millions of dollars' worth of medications for which Medicare drug plans should have paid.

The pharmacists who visited the White House were all from Texas. Several have close ties to Mr. Rove and President Bush. But their concerns are shared by retail pharmacists across the country, who said that Medicare drug plans were paying them less than it cost to fill prescriptions for the beneficiaries. NYT (reg/req)

On Feb. 17, Ms. Elkins, a 64-year-old retiree who lives in Georgetown, Tex., returned to her pharmacy for a refill. This time, following a huge increase in the wholesale price of the drug, the cost was $548.01. NYT (reg/req)

But we also have less reporting.

Hundreds of cable and radio commentators, and millions of bloggers, can sound off about the news in real time. But the number of old-fashioned fact-gatherers is dwindling, and will almost certainly continue to shrink. Washington Post/Media Notes (reg/req)

It also asserts that at many old media companies “the decades-long battle at the top between idealists and accountants is now over. The idealists have lost. The troubles of 2005, especially in print, dealt a further blow to this fight for journalism in the public interest.” The report quotes an editor a major paper: “If you argue about public trust today, you will be dismissed as an obstructionist and a romantic.”

In a surprising finding, the report states that the audience for online news appears to have leveled off. The growth now is not in how many people get news online, “but how often they do so.”

The 700-page report, from the Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ), reveals that newspapers are expected to have lost about 1,500 jobs in 2005. That represents a drop of about 3,800 jobs, or about 7% since 2000. Since 1990, circulation will have fallen nearly 15% or more than 9 million, on weekdays. Editor & Publisher

Clarke, a former U.S. terrorism czar, offers the ultimate insider's account into the nation's security apparatus, featuring a cast of power brokers that includes President Bush, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld and himself.

The book was published by Free Press in March 2004 and hit No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list, fueling intense criticism over the administration's security failures and its decision to go to war with Iraq. Reuters/Hollywood Reporter

Senior Bush administration figures have asked British officials for advice on how to hand alleged terrorists over to regimes with a reputation for torture and extra-judicial killings, such as Saudi Arabia, Algeria and Pakistan.
The Independent

The latest results show only 36% of those polled saying they "approve" of the way Bush is handling his job. Bush's previous low was 37%, set last November. USA Today

Anyone who can qualify for a subscription to one of the online services that compile public information also can learn that she is a CIA employee who, over the past decade, has been assigned to several American embassies in Europe.

The CIA asked the Tribune not to publish her name because she is a covert operative, and the newspaper agreed. But unbeknown to the CIA, her affiliation and those of hundreds of men and women like her have somehow become a matter of public record, thanks to the Internet.

When the Tribune searched a commercial online data service, the result was a virtual directory of more than 2,600 CIA employees, 50 internal agency telephone numbers and the locations of some two dozen secret CIA facilities around the United States.

Only recently has the CIA recognized that in the Internet age its traditional system of providing cover for clandestine employees working overseas is fraught with holes, a discovery that is said to have "horrified" CIA Director Porter Goss. Chicago Tribune (reg/req)

Not if you're a Ritalin-taking, overweight, Generation Y couch potato — or some combination of the above. As for that fashionable "body art" that the military still calls a tattoo, having one is grounds for rejection, too.

With U.S. casualties rising in wars overseas and more opportunities in the civilian workforce from an improved U.S. economy, many young people are shunning a career in the armed forces. But recruiting is still a two-way street — and the military, too, doesn't want most people in this prime recruiting age group of 17 to 24. The AP

Allen rose steadily through the Republican political ranks. From congressional campaign aide, to Senate staffer, state Cabinet secretary, federal appeals court nominee and the upper reaches of the Bush administration -- all by age 45.

But Allen's once-soaring career has taken a bizarre turn with his arrest Thursday on theft charges for allegedly ripping off two department stores in a phony refund scheme. Washington Post (reg/req)

The Iraqi leader was determined to make his escape before more checkpoints were set up around the capital. Saddam had not anticipated the fall of the city, and his plan was simple: Drive west toward Ramadi, where there were few American forces.

In an examination of Iraq's military strategy, the U.S. Joint Forces Command prepared a day-by-day reconstruction of Saddam's movements, which shows that his escape was desperate and improvised. The study also indicates that American intelligence knew little about his whereabouts during the war and that Saddam was nowhere near the site of two failed bombing raids intended to kill him. International Herald Tribune 

DVT occurs when a clot forms in leg veins during periods of sedentary activity. The clot can then migrate to the heart, lung or brain, sometimes days or weeks later, and inflict a heart attack or stroke...( measures to help prevent ) ... include cutting out alcohol on a flight, stretching one's legs, taking an aspirin and wearing compressive stockings that improve blood circulation. Agence France-Presse

The experts, from seven nations, said physicians at the prison had to respect inmates' right to refuse treatment.

The letter, in the medical journal The Lancet, said doctors who used restraints and force-feeding should be punished by their professional bodies. BBC

The prison on the outskirts of western Baghdad was infamous under Saddam as a place where political prisoners and other inmates were tortured and executed. But after the US took control it gained worldwide notoriety with the emergence of thousands of graphic photographs showing US troops abusing, torturing, and in some cases apparently killing Iraqi prisoners, leaving a permanent black mark on the reputation of America.

"We will transfer operations from Abu Ghraib to the new Camp Cropper once construction is completed there," Lieutenant-Colonel Keir-Kevin Curry, said. "No precise dates have been set, but the plan is to accomplish this within the next two to three months." The Independent

The agents, both stationed in the Imperial Valley, released apprehended illegal immigrants in exchange for cash, pulling in about $300,000, according to a federal indictment unsealed Thursday. LA Times

Officials say the aim of the campaign is to make clear that women are not sexual objects. President Vicente Fox acknowledged on Wednesday that Mexico has to do more to overcome widespread machismo. BBC

It also singles out China, North Korea, Burma, Iran, Zimbabwe, Cuba and Belarus as being among the worst offenders. The document analyses all the world's nations except the US ... BBC

At the same time, it's ratcheting up objections to a White House-backed proposal that would allow a company based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, to manage six American ports.

That divergence, analysts say, reflects a political dynamic of the war on terror: Neither Congress nor the White House wants to be seen as impeding national security. Christian Science Monitor

During 2005, 21 airmiss , or near-accident, cases involving commercial aircraft were reported, an increase of almost 33 percent over the previous year.

What is more alarming is that of the 21, two incidents where a "near-collision was avoided" could have been disastrous, involving about 500 passengers, sources said. Indo-Asian News Service via DailyIndia.com

Senior Pentagon officials and military officers say the effort is part of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's two-year drive to give the military a more active intelligence role in the campaign against terrorism. But it has drawn opposition from traditional intelligence agencies like the C.I.A., where some officials have viewed it as a provocative expansion into what has been their turf. NYT (reg/req)

A US-led team found the animal last year in waters 2,300m (7,540ft) deep at a site 1,500km (900 miles) south of Easter Island, an expert has claimed. BBC

Ambien, the nation's best-selling prescription sleeping pill, is showing up with regularity as a factor in traffic arrests, sometimes involving drivers who later say they were sleep-driving and have no memory of taking the wheel after taking the drug. 

In some state toxicology laboratories Ambien makes the top 10 list of drugs found in impaired drivers. Wisconsin officials identified Ambien in the bloodstreams of 187 arrested drivers from 1999 to 2004. NYT (reg/req)

Since fall 2003, 4,387 Army soldiers, 3,454 Navy sailors and 82 Air Force personnel have deserted. The Marine Corps does not track the number of desertions each year but listed 1,455 Marines in desertion status last September, the end of fiscal 2005 ... USA Today

The survey found that 80 percent believe that recent sectarian violence makes civil war in Iraq likely, and more than a third say such a conflict is "very likely" to occur. These expectations extend beyond party lines: More than seven in 10 Republicans and eight in 10 Democrats and political independents say they believe such a conflict is coming. Washington Post (reg/req)

Using a new model that takes into account what happens under the sun's surface and data about previous solar cycles, astronomers offered a long-range forecast for solar activity that could start as soon as this year or as late as 2008.

They offered no specific predictions of solar storms, but they hope to formulate early warnings that will give power companies, satellite operators and others on and around Earth a few days to prepare. 

"This prediction of an active solar cycle suggests we're potentially looking at more communications disruptions, more satellite failures, possible disruptions of electrical grids and blackouts, more dangerous conditions for astronauts," said Richard Behnke of the Upper Atmosphere Research Section at the National Science Foundation. Reuters

The genes that show this evolutionary change include some responsible for the senses of taste and smell, digestion, bone structure, skin color and brain function.

Many of these instances of selection may reflect the pressures that came to bear as people abandoned their hunting and gathering way of life for settlement and agriculture, a transition well under way in Europe and East Asia some 5,000 years ago.

Under natural selection, beneficial genes become more common in a population as their owners have more progeny. 

Three populations were studied, Africans, East Asians and Europeans. In each, a mostly different set of genes had been favored by natural selection. The selected genes, which affect skin color, hair texture and bone structure, may underlie the present-day differences in racial appearance.

The study of selected genes may help reconstruct many crucial events in the human past. It may also help physical anthropologists explain why people over the world have such a variety of distinctive appearances, even though their genes are on the whole similar, said Dr. Spencer Wells, director of the Genographic Project of the National Geographic Society.

The finding adds substantially to the evidence that human evolution did not grind to a halt in the distant past, as is tacitly assumed by many social scientists. Even evolutionary psychologists, who interpret human behavior in terms of what the brain evolved to do, hold that the work of natural selection in shaping the human mind was completed in the pre-agricultural past, more than 10,000 years ago.

"There is ample evidence that selection has been a major driving point in our evolution during the last 10,000 years, and there is no reason to suppose that it has stopped," said Jonathan Pritchard, a population geneticist at the University of Chicago who headed the study. NYT (reg/req)

Uzbekistan, Yemen, Algeria and Syria are also among the countries to which detainees do not want to return. The inmates have told military tribunals that they or their families could be tortured or killed if they are sent back. The AP

Nearly half of the children in North and South America will be overweight by 2010, up from what recent studies say is about one-third, according to a report published by the International Journal of Pediatric Obesity. 

In the European Union, about 38% of all children will be overweight if present trends continue — up from about 25% in recent surveys, the study said. 

"We have truly a global epidemic which appears to be affecting most countries in the world," said Dr. Philip James, chairman of the International Obesity Task Force and author of an editorial in the journal warning of the trend. The AP

It has about $3,800 in the bank. No one has a retirement account, and the neighbors who do only have about $35,000 in theirs. Mutual funds? Stocks? Bonds? Nope. The house is worth $160,000, but the family owes $95,000 on it to the bank. The breadwinners make more than $43,000 a year but can't manage to pay off a $2,200 credit card balance.

That is the portrait of the median American household as painted by the Federal Reserve Board's Survey of Consumer Finances. The survey, which does not distinguish between sizes of families, nevertheless offers the most detailed look available of the balance sheet of U.S. households. Washington Post (reg/reg) 

The news came as defense chiefs admitted privately that the British troop commitment in Afghanistan may last for up to 10 years.

Iraq's national defense force will assume responsibility for security.

The planned pull-out from Iraq follows the acceptance by London and Washington that the presence of the coalition, mainly composed of British and US troops, is now seen as the main obstacle to peace. 
The Sunday Telegraph

They appear alternately confused and indignant, exasperated and thankful, worried and hopeful. And in pages upon pages of their statements and questions and letters to the Americans who appear to control their fate, the detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, largely argue that they did nothing wrong. Washington Post (reg/req)

He was accused of being an "enemy combatant" after being captured in Afghanistan, and was released without charge in January 2005. 

The transcript shows a brief but combative encounter between a defiant Feroz Ali Abbasi and an exasperated tribunal president, an unnamed US Air Force colonel. It ends with Feroz Abbasi being removed from the room. 

It demonstrates the limited nature of these hearings - the evidence is mainly kept secret.

What is more revealing is a long document attached to the transcript which was hand-written by Feroz Abbasi. It is revealing about his motives, actions and complaints. BBC

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, spiritual leader of 77 million Anglicans, also described Islamist extremism as "appalling" and terrorism as "an insult to God and man".

"I think what we've got in Guantanamo is an extraordinary legal anomaly ... creating a new category of custody," Williams said in an interview with BBC television in Sudan during a visit there with the United Nations World Food Program. Reuters

They said arterial disease in women was linked to either partner demonstrating hostility, but in men it was linked to either showing controlling behavior. 

The research was presented to the American Psychosomatic Society meeting. BBC

But the 6,000 pages of documents released under the Freedom of Information Act do not always name the person attending the tribunal. Many as listed as "detainee".

It is not always clear who has been released and who is still held and it could take weeks for the documents to be fully analysed. Here [ via the BBC  ] is some of the named evidence given at hearings.

The studies differed significantly in estimates of how much water was being added to the oceans this way, but their authors both said that the work added credence to recent conclusions that global warming caused by humans was likely to lead to higher sea levels than previous studies had predicted.

The earlier projections presumed that snowfall over Antarctica, as well as Greenland, would increase as warming added moisture to the air, compensating for the losses of ice from crumbling or melting along coasts.

Several independent experts agreed with the new conclusions, saying they meshed both with more localized studies of trends in Antarctica and with evidence from warm spells before the last ice age.

"Snowfall will matter less and less," said Robert Bindschadler, an expert on polar ice at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration who was not involved in either study. "We know that warmer climates eventually lead to less ice." NYT

While most Indians look favorably upon the United States, and though the protests have not been as large as expected, anti-Bush demonstrations have been held in various Indian cities by communists and Muslim groups during his visit. The AP

However, the names do not appear as a simple list - they are buried within 6,000 pages of documents posted on the Pentagon's website. BBC

After the publication of the long-suppressed pictures of Abu Ghraib victims and the United Nations finding that torture and abuse are still taking place at the US prison in Guantánamo Bay, America has fashioned its own nightmare. We now must ask ourselves, "Where are the good Americans?" The Nation

Among the warnings, Knight Ridder has learned, was a major study, called a National Intelligence Estimate, completed in October 2003 that concluded that the insurgency was fueled by local conditions - not foreign terrorists- and drew strength from deep grievances, including the presence of U.S. troops.

The existence of the top-secret document, which was the subject of a bitter three-month debate among U.S. intelligence agencies, has not been previously disclosed to a wide public audience. 

The accounts of more than 300,000 soldiers and Marines returning from several theaters paint an unusually detailed picture of the psychological impact of the various conflicts. Those returning from Iraq consistently reported more psychic distress than those returning from Afghanistan and other conflicts, such as those in Bosnia or Kosovo. Washington Post (reg/req)

Only one in four Americans can name more than one of the five freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment (freedom of speech, religion, press, assembly and petition for redress of grievances.) But more than half can name at least two members of the cartoon family, according to a survey. The AP

“It was about four years ago when I finished a story and I said to myself, ‘Is this it?’ Tomorrow is going to be another day, and I’m going to need to bang out another story, and the next day the same thing is going to happen. And sure, I might run into some really interesting stories, but a lot of the stuff you end up writing, you’re just trying to get it out into the paper and make sure everything is accurate,” Atkinson tells The Strategist.

So, despite an offer to join the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel as the business editor, Atkinson surprised his colleagues by joining Weber Shandwick’s Baltimore office as a vice president after leaving the Sun last August. 

“The news business is a tough business. It wasn’t as romantic as it once was. It wasn’t as fun and exciting as it once was for me, which was very sad,” he explains. “Newsrooms are a tough place to work. Corporations have to make their quarterly numbers. The shareholder comes first, and as a result, there’s more pressure on the bottom line. The Sun, where I worked, is a really good paper, but they feel the pressure.” PR Society of America