In Britain the percentage of obese adults is three times what it was just two decades ago, the fastest-growing rate in Western Europe. An estimated 21 percent of men and 23.5 percent of women are now considered obese here, compared with 27 percent of men and 34 percent of women in America." NYT(reg/req)

The study of more than 70 U.S. companies and individual contractors turned up more than $500,000 in donations to the president's 2000 campaign, more than they gave collectively to any other politician over the past dozen years. 

The report was released by the Center for Public Integrity, a Washington-based research organization that produces investigative articles on special interests and ethics in government. Its staff includes journalists and researchers." AP

In the poll, 39% of independents approve of the way the Bush administration has handled things in Iraq since Bush declared an end to major combat six months ago; 57% of independents disapprove. In the public overall, the poll found, 47% approve."

But the strike is a serious setback for the Bush administration as it tries to persuade the world to focus on the positives of the American occupation, on falling crime and new schools, on cleaner streets and freer speech. 

Instead, it is a reminder that after easily toppling Mr. Hussein, the United States is struggling against a continuing guerrilla resistance, and struggling even though the guerrillas are badly trained and ill equipped." NYT (reg/req)

Demanding an end to the U.S.-led occupation and the quick return of American troops, the demonstrators gathered on a sunny fall day at the Washington Monument to listen to speeches and songs of peace." AP (reg/req NYT)

Thousands of people protested at the central town hall in Sydney ahead of his arrival, calling for Australian soldiers to be withdrawn from Iraq. More demonstrations are also planned in Canberra." BBC

"Are we winning or losing the Global War on Terror?" Rumsfeld asks in the Oct. 16 memo, which goes on to cite "mixed results" against al-Qaeda, "reasonable progress" tracking down top Iraqis and "somewhat slower progress" in apprehending Taliban leaders. "Is our current situation such that 'the harder we work, the behinder we get'? " he wrote ...

Among Rumsfeld's observations in the two-page memo:

• The United States is "just getting started" in fighting the Iraq-based terror group Ansar Al-Islam.

• The war is hugely expensive. "The cost-benefit ratio is against us! Our cost is billions against the terrorists' cost of millions."

• Postwar stabilization efforts are very difficult. "It is pretty clear the coalition can win in Afghanistan and Iraq in one way or another, but it will be a long, hard slog." USA Today

Yet some say there is a remarkable paucity of critical thinking taught at the undergraduate level - even though the need for such skills seems more urgent than ever." Christian Science Monitor

The media are not detached from all responsibility for the events they cover. A journalist will tell you - sometimes sincerely - that he or she only reports the facts. That's never quite the truth. And it's often an outright lie."  New York Post

More generally, the Sept. 8-10 Gallup Poll finds that a little more than half of Americans have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the news media when it comes to reporting the news fully, accurately, and fairly. Trust in the news media has not changed significantly over the last six years. Conservatives have a slightly lower level of trust in the media than either moderates or liberals do." Gallup Poll

Just the sorts of facilities and infrastructure that U.S. taxpayers see crumbling in their own communities as federal, state and local governments struggle with fiscal crises at home." LA Times (reg/req)

The analysis is the first to map the full extent of the nearby Sagittarius galaxy, 10,000 times smaller in mass than our own,  being stretched out - torn apart and devoured by our Milky Way. 

Thousands of stars stripped from a nearby dwarf galaxy are streaming through our own. These "alien" stars could at times be close to our Sun, they say. BBC

No real evidence to support this has emerged, however, leading some (including E&P, just last week) to declare that the media had failed in its duty to correct the public misperception.

So when President George Bush admitted on Wednesday, for the first time, that there was "no evidence that Hussein was involved with the September 11th" attacks, one would assume that would be big news and an opportunity for the press to make up for past failings. 

And according to some newspapers, it was a big story. The Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune (both owned by the Tribune Co.) ran front-page stories on the revelation Thursday. But an analysis of most major American newspapers found the story either buried deep within the paper -- or completely absent." Editor & Publisher

Two researchers at Emory University, Dr. Sarah F. Brosnan and Dr. Frans B. M. de Waal, report today in the journal Nature that they taught female capuchin monkeys to trade pebbles for pieces of food. The capuchins were caged in pairs, so that each member of a pair could see the other. If one monkey got a grape in return for her pebble but the other only a less desired piece of cucumber, the shortchanged monkey would often refuse to hand over the pebble in exchange or might decline to eat the cucumber — both very unusual behaviors." NYT (reg/req)

The world's reply: But you want us to help police and pay for the aftermath because you've found you can't do it alone, so we should share in the decisions as well as the burdens." Christian Science Monitor

One medicinal marijuana lobby group also says test results show the official supply has little active ingredient and is contaminated with lead and arsenic." BBC

"I am confident that when people see what David Kay puts forward they will see that there was no question that such weapons exist, existed, and so did the programs to develop more," Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday. "We did not try to hype it or blow it out of proportion." 

Since no weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) have been found in Iraq, close observers now report that Kay is likely to drop on the media a massive weapon of his own: hundreds or thousands of pages of summaries and documents purporting to prove that Saddam Hussein had WMDs recently (and hid them) and/or had numerous WMD programs underway that we succeeded in pre-empting.

In the parlance once used by Howell Raines, Kay thereby will "flood the zone" and hope the press portrays what may be largely assertion -- not fact -- as compelling proof. Would the media possibly fall for this? There are disturbing indications that they would. -- from Editor & Publisher

The black hole resides in the Perseus cluster, located 250 million light years from Earth. In 2002, astronomers obtained a deep Chandra observation that shows ripples in the gas filling the cluster. These ripples are evidence for sound waves that have traveled hundreds of thousands of light years away from the cluster's central black hole.

"We have observed the prodigious amounts of light and heat created by black holes, now we have detected the sound," said Andrew Fabian of the Institute of Astronomy (IoA) in Cambridge, England, and leader of the study.

In musical terms, the pitch of the sound generated by the black hole translates into the note of B flat. But, a human would have no chance of hearing this cosmic performance, because the note is 57 octaves lower than middle-C (by comparison a typical piano contains only about seven octaves). At a frequency over a million, billion times deeper than the limits of human hearing, this is the deepest note ever detected from an object in the universe. NASA Press Release

'There is no strategy or mechanism for putting the pieces together,' said retired Marine Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, and so, he said, 'we're in danger of failing.' " Washington Post