My Sister's Story (Video)

NBC's Peter Alexander shares the story of his sister who is diagnosed with a rare genetic disease (Usher syndrome) that will leave her blind and deaf soon.

This is a good example of how a reporter can cover stories about his own family member without being biased.

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The Heights Traveled to Subdue Tibet

By Edward Wong, New York Times

MAQU, China — The paramilitary officer took our passports. It was close to midnight, and he and a half-dozen peers at the checkpoint stood around our car on the snowy mountain road. After five days, our travels in the Tibetan regions of western China had come to an abrupt end.

My colleagues and I waited for the police to arrive. We were to be escorted to the local police station, interrogated and put on a plane back to Beijing.

“This is for your own safety,” the paramilitary officer said.

The detention, two weeks ago, was not entirely unexpected: I was reporting on Tibet, one of the most delicate issues in the eyes of the Chinese government. And I was traveling through Tibetan areas of Qinghai and Gansu Provinces as the government was deploying thousands of troops to clamp down on any unrest.

Tibetans widely resent Chinese rule, and Chinese leaders fear that Tibetans could seize on this month, the 50th anniversary of a failed uprising, to carry out a wave of protests, similar to what took place a year ago. Part of the mission of the security forces is to evict foreigners so that whatever occurs will be kept hidden from the world.

That, of course, has always been part of the problem with Tibet. China’s lockdown this month is only the latest episode in a long history of both Tibetans and Chinese trying to keep the mountain kingdom closed to the outside world. News of Tibet has always been difficult to obtain because much of the region lies on a remote plateau above 15,000 feet that is ringed by mountains. Information becomes that much harder to get when governments padlock the gate.

Drawing a veil over Tibet has only encouraged outsiders to project their own imaginings and desires onto the hidden land, sometimes with disastrous consequences.

It happened in the 19th century, when Tibetan officials, seeing Britain and Russia jockey for influence in Central Asia during the Great Game, decided to close Tibet to foreigners. The very state of isolation spurred explorers, spies, missionaries, colonial officers and Buddhist devotees into quests to reach Lhasa, the Tibetan capital.

Britain shot its way to Lhasa during a brutal military invasion in 1904, then tried to keep other foreigners out. The Chinese Communist Party, after conquering Tibet in 1951, kept the region closed during decades of repression (and made it into a “hell on earth,” the Dalai Lama said on Tuesday).

China gradually opened Tibet to tourists, only to close it during each stirring of civil unrest.

“A large element of Tibet’s historical allure grew precisely out of its isolation, that it was untouched by the modern world and did not welcome incursions,” Orville Schell, author of “Virtual Tibet,” a book about the enduring Western fascination with Tibet, wrote in an e-mail message. “So, there is a certain irony in the fact that China, which had been successful in removing a good deal of the allure of the Tibet mystique to Westerners by making it so accessible, now once again feels obliged to ‘close’ it.”

The history of Western attempts to penetrate into Tibet in the 19th and early 20th centuries is recounted in “Trespassers on the Roof of the World,” by Peter Hopkirk. The travelers often braved blizzards, mountain passes and marauding bandits, only to be stopped short of Lhasa by armies of Tibetans led by high-ranking monks. Sometimes they were taken prisoner and tortured. (I didn’t have it quite as bad on that mountain road. Not only did the paramilitary officers not draw weapons on us, they offered us hot milk as we sat in our car.)

In 1879, Col. Nikolai Prejevalsky of the Imperial Russian Army set out with an escort of armed Cossacks for the Tibetan capital, only to be halted within 150 miles of Lhasa by Tibetan officials. He turned back.

Eighteen years later, a British adventurer named A. Henry Savage Landor was captured on his way to Lhasa, brought to a provincial governor and tortured, including being stretched on a rack for 24 hours. After his release, he returned to England and wrote a best-selling book about his captivity.

Those who did make it into Lhasa usually did so in disguise. A handful of Indian spies in the employ of the British Empire posed as holy men. A Japanese Buddhist named Ekai Kawaguchi pretended to be a Chinese physician. And a Frenchwoman fluent in Tibetan language and culture, Alexandra David-Néel, became the first Western woman to set foot in Lhasa when she entered dressed as a pilgrim in 1923.

By then, though, news of Tibet had been seeping out into the world. That began with the British military expedition of 1904, led by Sir Francis Younghusband. With Maxim guns and Enfield rifles, the soldiers killed thousands of Tibetans on their march from India. The Tibetans were forced to sign a treaty with the British, one of the terms being that the British could post trade agents within Tibet. The British then did all they could to keep other foreigners out.

The British had invaded Tibet thinking the Russians already had a foothold there, but they found no significant Russian influence. That was because until then, the 13th Dalai Lama had succeeded in sealing off Tibet. That very success had led the British to fill the void with their imaginings. They dreamed up Tsarist plots and proceeded, with great violence, to pry open Tibet in part because of those delusions.

Decades later, after ending Tibet’s self-rule in 1951, then destroying countless temples and persecuting monks and nuns in horrific campaigns, China began modernizing Tibet and opened it to foreign tourists. I first traveled to Tibetan regions of China in 1999, and spent five weeks in Lhasa and central Tibet in 2001, part of the time hiking between monasteries.

But now that I work in China as a journalist, it is much harder to get to Tibet. All foreign journalists need permission from the government to legally enter central Tibet, which is rarely granted. What’s more, since the uprising of March 2008, the government has, for months at a time, kept foreigners from entering any Tibetan area.

Chinese can travel to Tibet, but the land is far away. What little they know of Tibet comes from truly Orwellian government propaganda. The official line asserts, for example, that the Dalai Lama is “a jackal clad in Buddhist monk’s robes.”

One Chinese friend who worked in a Tibetan area of Qinghai Province told me he gets shocked looks from friends when he shows them photographs of himself with red-robed monks. “They get scared,” he said. “They say, ‘What are you doing? Who are these people?’ They don’t know how to react.”

That sense of confusion was echoed by a Chinese reader engaged in a discussion on Tibet last week on this newspaper’s Web site, nytimes.com.

“Even for me, a real Chinese, Tibet is such a remote and mysterious place,” wrote the reader, Cao Wei, of Shanghai. “I don’t have an idea what all these things are about.”

Source: The New York Times

UCLA and UC-Berkeley professors launch climate change blog

Ann Carlson, faculty director of the Emmett Center on Climate Change and the Environment at UCLA and Dan Farber, director of Berkeley's environmental law program created www.legalplanet.wordpress.com to write about climate change, energy, environmental law and policy.

Check out latest blogs on removing the gray wolf from a list of endangered species ("Nobody's Perfect"), salmon crisis in California ("California's Salmon Crisis") or the attitude toward global warning issues ("Global warming still a partisan issue").

Iraqi shoe-thrower's message to the UN

The Iraqi journalist from Al-Baghdadiya television who (in)famously threw his shoes at George Bush might serve jail term for assaulting a foreign head of state. Most Iraqis now consider him a hero for insulting a person who is largely responsible for more chaos in their country.

Muntazer al-Zaidi's first offense earned him a less severe verdict even though he pleaded non-guilty. He said, "Yes, my reaction was natural." He felt he was innocent and he merely represented the frustration felt by most Iraqis toward Bush, who is largely held responsible for the situation in Iraq. "It is the farewell kiss, you dog", shouted al-Zaidi when throwing both his shoes in less than 5 seconds before security forces pinned him on the floor.

Most of the family members feel it's a political decision and they will appeal.

This incident speaks glaringly about the image Bush and other aggressors have in Iraq and the middle-east. The outburst of emotion clearly sends a message to the international community that America's achievement is not the same as Iraq's perception of achievement. The former US president George W. Bush may have been standing next to Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki amidst tight security and might perhaps claim to have the support of the allied forces, but the Iraqis only consider him worthy of the sole of their feet for his role. That's so much to say about the anger toward a distant country whose soldiers are dying to bring some normalcy in a country that wouldn't have meant much had there been potato fields instead of oil wells.

Why isn't Bush's policies directed toward the military junta of Myanmar or the oppressions in Egypt? If this experiment in the middle-east succeeds, the actions of the United States will become even bolder despite the falsity of the statistics upon which it waged a war. The United Nations should play a decisive part in the world affairs. The US cannot dictate the roles of the UN just because it is one of the highest donor countries. Nobody wants an invasionist America today.

Perhaps the shoe-thrower would have felt otherwise if the UN had played a decisive role in his country.

Extreme Fishing: Not for Amateurs (Video)

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Population growth, climate change sparking water crisis: UN

PARIS (AFP) — Surging population growth, climate change, reckless irrigation and chronic waste are placing the world's water supplies at threat, according to a landmark UN report.

Compiled by 24 UN agencies, the 348-page document gave a grim assessment of the state of the planet's freshwater, especially in developing countries, and described the outlook for coming generations as deeply worrying.

Water is part of the complex web of factors that determine prosperity and stability, it said.

Lack of access to water helps drive poverty and deprivation and breeds the potential for unrest and conflict, it warned.

"Water is linked to the crises of climate change, energy and food supplies and prices, and troubled financial markets," the third World Water Development Report said.

"Unless their links with water are addressed and water crises around the world are resolved, these other crises may intensify and local water crises may worsen, converging into a global water crisis and leading to political insecurity at various levels."

The report pointed to a double squeeze on fresh water.

On one side was human impact. There were six billion humans in 2000, a tally that has already risen to 6.5 billion and could scale nine billion by 2050.

Population growth, especially in cities in poor countries, is driving explosive demand for water, prompting rivers in thirsty countries to be tapped for nearly every drop and driving governments to pump out so-called fossil water, the report said.

These are aquifers that are hundreds of thousands of years old and whose extraction is not being replenished by rainfall. Mining them for water today means depriving future generations of liquid treasure.

Fuelling this is misuse or abuse of water, through pollution, unbridled irrigation, pipe leakage and growing of water-craving crops in deserts.

Applying pressure from the other side is climate change, said the report.

Shifts to weather systems, unleashed by man-made global warming, will alter rainfall patterns and reduce snow melt, scientists say.

The water report was first issued in 2003 and is updated every three years. The latest issue, entitled "Water in a Changing World," is published ahead of the fifth World Water Forum, taking place in Istanbul from March 16 to 22.

The mammoth document made these points:

-- DEMOGRAPHIC GROWTH is boosting water stress in developing countries, where hydrological resources are often meagre. The global population is growing by 80 million people a year, 90 percent of it in poorer countries. Demand for water is growing by 64 billion cubic metres (2.2 trillion cubic feet) per year, roughly equivalent to Egypt's annual water demand today.

-- In the past 50 years, EXTRACTION from rivers, lakes and aquifers has tripled to help meet population growth and demands for water-intensive food such as rice, cotton, dairy and meat products. Agriculture accounts for 70 percent of the withdrawals, a figure that reaches more than 90 percent in some developing countries.

-- ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION from water pollution and excessive extraction now costs many billions of dollars. Damage in the Middle East and North Africa, the world's most water-stressed region, amounts to some nine billion dollars a year, or between 2.1-7.4 percent of GDP.

-- The outlook is mixed for key UN MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS, which in 2000 set the deadline of 2015 for halving the number of people without access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation. The target on drinking water is on track but the tally of people without improved sanitation will have decreased only slightly by 2015, from 2.5 billion to 2.4 billion.

-- Water stress, amplified by climate change, will pose a mounting SECURITY CHALLENGE. The struggle for water could threaten fragile states and drive regional rivalry.

"Conflicts about water can occur at all scales," the report warned, adding: "Hydrologic shocks that may occur through climate change increase the risk of major national and international security threats, especially in unstable areas."

-- Between 92.4 billion and 148 billion dollars are needed annually in INVESTMENT to build and maintain water supply systems, sanitation and irrigation. China and developed countries in Asia alone face financial needs of 38.2-51.4 billion dollars each year.

-- CONSERVATION and reuse of water, including recycled sewage, are the watchwords of the future. The report also stressed sustainable water management, with realistic PRICING to curb waste. It gave the example of India where free or almost-free water had led to huge waste in irrigation, causing soils to be waterlogged and salt-ridden.

Source: Google News

UN comes to Charles Sobhraj's rescue

KATHMANDU: In a fresh twist to the six-year-old saga of Charles Sobhraj's arrest and murder conviction in Nepal, that electrified the world 

almost three decades after his criminal career had ebbed, the UN has taken up cudgels on behalf of the 64-year-old, giving credence to his claim that he was the victim of fraud and injustice in the Himalayan republic. 

After losing the battle for freedom in Kathmandu's district and appellate courts, which held him guilty of the murder of American tourist Connie Jo Bronzich in 1975, Sobhraj, a cult figure in the 70s with reports of his preying on western tourists and staging audacious jail breaks, approached the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva last November for "justice". 

According to Sobhraj's lawyer in Paris, Isabelle Coutant-Peyre, the only "evidence" police produced to prove that he had come to Nepal in 1975 – which he denies – werephotocopies of two guest registration cards. According to the prosecution, Sobhraj had visited Nepal in 1975 using the passport of a Dutch tourist and stayed in two upmarket hotels. The handwriting in the two hotel guest registration cards, they claim, matches Sobhraj's handwriting. 

Sobhraj's lawyers have reject the cards, saying they are crude forgeries by police. More importantly, photocopies are not admissible in court as evidence, according to Nepal's laws. Though several judges asked police and the prosecutor to produce the actual cards, Coutant-Peyre pointed out to the UN office that they had failed to produce them in six years. She had also complained to the UN that Nepal's officials were deliberately delaying the trial. 

Last week, Sobhraj's prayers were heard when Ibrahim Salama, chief of the Human Rights Treaties branch at the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, informed his lawyer that the UN body is taking up his case. Salama also said that his office has asked the Maoist government of Nepal to send its reply to the complaints within six months. 

A triumphant Coutant-Peyre said she was happy that the UN has taken up Sobhraj's case. 

"Though a new republican political system has replaced absolute and arbitrary monarchy in Nepal, there is no progress in the judiciary, of whom Charles Sobhraj is a victim," she told TNN. "I hope Nepal will be severely condemned for these violations and the nightmare endured by Charles Sobhraj and his family for five and a half years will end soon." 

Sobhraj, who has been stopped from meeting visitors in prison except his lawyers and fiancée, was upbeat at the news, his Nepali lawyers said. 

The 64-year-old alleges that bribes were paid to secure a conviction against him. He also says once he is released, he will use the "incriminating tapes" and photographs in his possession in his new book on his trial and imprisonment in Nepal that will "expose" the "rampant corruption in police and judiciary".

Source: Times of India

Hub among 1,000 cities to turn out lights for climate change

By Michele Richinick, Globe Correspondent

Lights on the famous Citgo sign, Zakim Bridge, Prudential Center, John Hancock Tower, and other local landmarks will "go dark" for one hour this month as Boston joins cities across the world in a climate-change campaign.

More than 1,000 cities in 80 countries are expected to participate in Earth Hour on March 28, from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m. World Wildlife Fund, the event's sponsor, is asking individuals, businesses, governments, and organizations to turn off their lights for one hour to make a global statement of concern about climate change and to demonstrate commitment to finding solutions.

"We are asking people to vote with their light switch," said Dan Forman, a spokesman for World Wildlife Fund.

"For every light they turn off, it is in effect a vote for action on climate change."

Mayor Thomas M. Menino announced Boston's participation in the campaign yesterday at a news conference.

"We are very happy everyone in the mayor's office is fully on board," Forman said. "Boston has always been thought of as a progressive-thinking city. For them to come out and take action on climate change and rally the citizens behind this shows [Boston is] making a commitment to join a global deal when it comes to climate change."

Other participating US cities include Washington, D.C., New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Chicago, Atlanta, Miami, and Dallas, Forman said. The town of Acton is also on the list, which Forman said grows "by leaps and bounds" each day. Universities, including Harvard, have signed up to campaign for the cause.

Two million people participated in the first Earth Hour in 2007, which began in Sydney.

Last year, the event went global, with more than 400 cities around the world participating. Lights on structures including the Golden Gate Bridge, Sydney Opera House, and Empire State Building also went dark last year, as well as the Google homepage.

Fifty million people around the world - 36 million in the United States - shut off their lights to raise awareness last year.

Source: The Boston Globe

Dalai Lama: Tibet 'hell on earth'

Tibetans across the world are marking 50 years since a failed uprising against Chinese rule [AFP] Tibet under Chinese rule has become a "hell on earth", the Dalai Lama has said, as he marked 50 years since a failed uprising against Chinese rule forced him to flee across the Himalayas to India. "These 50 years have brought untold suffering and destruction to the land and people of Tibet," the region's spiritual leader told thousands of Tibetans in the northern Indian town of Dharamshala, the seat of Tibet's government-in-exile. His comments came as Tibetan exiles and their supporters held rallies around the world while Chinese authorities imposed a lockdown in the Tibetan region in a bid to head off protests inside its borders. "Having occupied Tibet, the Chinese communist government carried out a series of repressive and violent campaigns," the Dalai Lama said on Tuesday. 'Meaningful autonomy' "These thrust Tibetans into such depths of suffering and hardship that they literally experienced hell on earth. The immediate result of these campaigns was the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Tibetans." Tibet: Key dates  1950 Chinese forces invade Tibet  1959 Dalai Lama flees to exile in India after failed uprising against Chinese rule  1960s-70s Hundreds of monasteries destroyed during Chinese Cultural Revolution  1965 China announces creation of Tibet Autonomous Region  1989 Dalai Lama awarded Nobel Peace Prize for leading non-violent struggle for Tibet  2006 Opening of first rail line linking Tibet to rest of China  2008 Crackdown in Lhasa following anti-China protests to mark 1959 uprising Lamenting that Tibetan culture and identity were "nearing extinction", he said "even today Tibetans in Tibet live in constant fear ... regarded like criminals, deserving to be put to death". The 74-year-old leader of the Tibetan government-in-exile also repeated a demand for "legitimate and meaningful autonomy" for Tibet, not independence from China. Beijing brands the Dalai Lama a "splittist" bent on separating Tibet from China, but he said that Tibetans were seeking "an arrangement that would enable Tibetans to live within the framework of the People's Republic of China". The Dalai Lama fled from Lhasa on March 10, 1959 after Chinese forces crushed an uprising against its rule in the Himalayan region. Tibet's government-in-exile says that more than 80,000 people died between March and October of 1959 alone and that at least 200 more were killed last year when Chinese security forces clamped down on protests marking the anniversary. China denies that it used violence to stop anniversary commemorations last year, saying instead that rioters were responsible for nearly two dozen deaths. In his speech on Tuesday, the Dalai Lama called for the use of peaceful means of achieving the Tibetan cause. "I have no doubt that the justice of Tibetan cause will prevail if we continue to tread a path of truth and non-violence" Dalai Lama "I have no doubt that the justice of Tibetan cause will prevail if we continue to tread a path of truth and non-violence," he said. In the run-up to the anniversary, China has ramped up security inside Tibet and in Tibetan areas of neighbouring Chinese provinces. Chinese forces have set up checkpoints to seal off the region while foreign tourists as well as journalists were told to leave several weeks ago. The government has also apparently stopped internet and text-messaging services - which helped spread word of last year's protests – in parts of the region. Scuffles Four protesters were arrested in Australia but were later released [AFP] Outside of China, however, Tibetan exiles and their supporters have been holding rallies calling for an end to Chinese rule over the region. In Australia, scuffles broke out between protesters and police outside the Chinese embassy in Australia. Police said four of about 300 protesters who marched from parliament in Canberra to the nearby embassy were arrested after they broke through fencing demarcating a designated protest area. The four men were later released without charge, police said. In Kathmandu, the Nepalese capital, police said some 150 Tibetan exiles staged a protest marking the uprising's anniversary. Protesters, including monks and school children, screamed "Stop the killing in Tibet" and "Long live the Dalai Lama," as they scuffled with riot police inside a monastery. Around six protesters were bundled into a waiting police truck, the AFP news agency reported, but were released minutes later. In the US, on Monday, hundreds of Tibetan exiles and their supporters rallied in front of the White House in Washington DC, with cries of "Free Tibet" and anti-China slogans before marching to the Chinese embassy. Source: Al Jazeera

The 10 Most Endangered Newspapers in America

By 24/7 WALL ST., TIME

Over the past few weeks, the U.S. newspaper industry has entered a new period of decline. The parent of the papers in Philadelphia declared bankruptcy, as did the Journal Register chain. The Rocky Mountain News closed, and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, owned by Hearst, will almost certainly close or only publish online. Hearst has said it will also close the San Francisco Chronicle if it cannot make massive cuts. The most recent rumor is that the company will lay off half the editorial staff. Still, that action may not be enough to make the property profitable.

24/7 Wall St. has created a list of the 10 major daily papers that are most likely to fold or shutter their print operations and only publish online. The properties were chosen on the basis of the financial strength of their parent companies, the amount of direct competition they face in their markets and industry information on how much money they are losing. Based on this analysis, it's possible that 8 of the nation's 50 largest daily newspapers could cease publication in the next 18 months. (Read "The Race for a Better Read.")

1. The Philadelphia Daily News. The smaller of the two papers owned by Philadelphia Newspapers LLC, which recently filed for bankruptcy. The company says it will make money this year, but with newspaper advertising still falling sharply, the city cannot support two papers, and the Daily News has a daily circulation of only about 100,000. The tabloid has a small staff, most of whom could probably stay on at Philly.com, the Web operation for both of the city dailies.

2. The Minneapolis Star Tribune has filed for Chapter 11. The paper may not make money this year, even without the costs of debt coverage. The company said it made $26 million last year, about half of what it made in 2007. The odds are that the Star Tribune will lose money this year if its ad revenue drops another 20%. There is no point for creditors to keep the paper open if it cannot generate cash. It could become an all-digital property, as supporting a daily circulation of more than 300,000 is too much of a burden. It could survive if its rival, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, folds. A grim race.

3. The Miami Herald, which has a daily circulation of about 220,000. It is owned by McClatchy, a publicly traded company that could be the next chain to file for Chapter 11. TheHerald has been on the market since December, but no serious bidders have emerged. Newspaper advertising has been especially hard-hit in Florida because of the tremendous loss in real estate advertising. The online version of the paper is already well read in the Miami area, Latin America and the Caribbean. The Herald has strong competition north of it, in Fort Lauderdale. There is a very small chance it could merge with the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, but it is more likely that the Herald will go online-only with two editions, one for English-language readers and one for Spanish.

4. The Detroit News is one of two daily papers in the big U.S. city badly hit by the economic downturn. It is unlikely that it can merge with the larger Detroit Free Press, which is owned by Gannett. It is hard to see what would be in it for Gannett. And with the fortunes of Detroit getting worse each day, cutting back the number of days the paper is delivered would not save enough money to keep the paper open.

5. The Boston Globe is, based on several accounts, losing $1 million a week. One investment bank recently said the paper is worth only $20 million. The paper is the flagship of what theGlobe's parent, the New York Times, calls the New England Media Group. The Times has substantial financial problems of its own. Last year, ad revenue for the New England properties was down 18%. That is likely to continue or get worse this year. Supporting larger losses at the Globe will become nearly impossible. Boston.com, the online site that includes the digital aspects of the Globe, will probably be all that remains of the operation.

6. The San Francisco Chronicle. Parent company Hearst has already set a deadline for shuttering the paper if it cannot make tremendous cost cuts. The Chronicle lost as much as $70 million last year. Even if the company could lower its costs, the Northern California economy is in bad shape. The online version of the paper could be the only version by the middle of 2009.

7. The Chicago Sun-Times is the smaller of two newspapers in the city. Its parent company, Sun-Times Media Group, trades for 3 cents per share. Davidson Kempner, a large shareholder in the firm, has dumped the CEO and most of the board. The paper has no chance of competing with the Chicago Tribune.

8. The New York Daily News is one of several large papers fighting for circulation and advertising in the New York City area. Unlike the New York Times, the New York Post, Newsdayand Newark's Star-Ledger, the Daily News is not owned by a larger organization — real estate billionaire Mort Zuckerman owns the paper. Based on figures from other big dailies, it could easily lose $60 million or $70 million, and has no chance of recovering from that level.

9. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram is another big daily that competes with a larger paper in a neighboring market — in this case, Dallas. The parent of the Dallas Morning News, Belo, is probably a stronger company than the Star-Telegram's parent, McClatchy. The Morning News has a circulation of about 350,000, while the Star-Telegram has just over 200,000. TheStar-Telegram will have to shut down or become an edition of its rival. Putting them together would save tens of millions of dollars a year.

10. The Cleveland Plain Dealer is in one of the economically weakest markets in the country. Its parent, Advance Publications, has already threatened to close its paper in Newark. Employees gave up enough in terms of concessions to keep the paper open. Advance, owned by the Newhouse family, is carrying the burden of its paper plus Condé Nast, its magazine group, which is losing advertising revenue. The Plain Dealer will be shut or go digital by the end of next year.

- Douglas A. McIntyre

Barack Obama's stem cell and climate change science is superstition

By Gerald Warner, Telegraph

Barack Obama is earning plaudits from the "science" lobby, militant secularists and other usual suspects for his decision to lift the Bush administration's ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research today. This is being hailed as a new Enlightenment and it is every bit as bogus as the first.

Embryonic stem cell research is a dead end. Embryonic stem cells have not been used successfully to treat any illness, despite inflated claims that one day they will supply revolutionary new treatments for illnesses ranging from diabetes to paralysis. Dr James L Sherley, a Senior Scientist at Boston Biomedical Research Institute in America, has said: "The promises of cures from cloned human embryonic stem cell research are indeed misguided. Whether extracted from IVF embryos or cloned embryos, embryonic stem cells are unable to mend tissues and organs. Only adult stem cells have this ability, and they possess it naturally."

In contrast to the failure of embryo experimentation, stem cells from umbilical cords and placental blood have already been employed successfully to treat leukaemia and anaemia, while adult stem cells have also worked in trials to treat severe heart failure. Most recently, teams of researchers in Britain and Canada have found a safe way of manufacturing stem cells from a patient's skin. The new technology obviates the need to use viruses, which created a risk of cancer, as well as allowing the transformational genes to be removed after performing their function, preventing them from causing any future damage.

By giving a fiscal boost to research that is both ethically controversial and scientifically futile, Barack Obama is directing science onto a negative course. His allocation of federal funds to embryo experimentation makes American taxpayers complicit in the destruction of days-old human beings. In tandem, his embrace of the "man-made" climate change lobby shows that his supposedly enlightened policy is just a new superstition. Presumably, like the Prince of Wales, he believes we have just 100 months to go before climatic Armageddon.

Obama claims that science, not political ideology, will guide his administration. That is transparently not so. This policy is, to the point of caricature, driven by the ideology of junk science, liberal hysteria, and the aggressive lobbying of interest groups hungry for taxpayers' money. Obama is a sucker, impressed by the white-coat pretensions of lobbyists who are the 21st-century equivalents of those seekers for the Philosopher's Stone who plucked importunately at the sleeves of medieval monarchs ("Sire, I have a project...").

This presidency is now firmly set on the road to political, fiscal, cultural and moral disaster. Change we need... Hope... Oh, yeah.

Source: Telegraph