After decades of reminding people about the dangers of cigarettes, offering nicotine gum or patches and making smokers huddle outside, the government is turning to gruesome pictures. Federal health officials Wednesday unveiled plans to replace the warnings cigarette packs began carrying 25 years ago with new versions using images that could include emaciated cancer patients, diseased organs and corpses.
Public health authorities and anti-smoking activists hailed the move as a milestone in the battle against tobacco in the United States that began in 1964 when the surgeon general first declared cigarettes a public health threat. That battle made steady progress for decades, but has been stymied in recent years, with a stubborn one in five adults and teens still smoking.
Updated tobacco warnings could feature graphic images
May seeks judicial review of July 7 terror inquest ruling
The Home Secretary is trying to prevent secret evidence at the 7 July terror attack inquests from being heard in public.
Theresa May is seeking a judicial review of the coroner's ruling in favour of the bereaved families, who want to see the evidence and question the security service, MI5, about the intelligence gathered before the bombings on London's transport network in the summer of 2005.
Human rights whistleblower David House new US target
Last week, David House, a developer working on human rights issues with the Bradley Manning Support Network joined the ranks of Targeted Individual human rights workers. Not being "with" the Bush-Obama team, he is considered a threat, subsequently experiencing what such targets do on a regular basis. Returning home from a Mexican vacation, House was detained and the FBI seized his computer and other personal belongings, including his research papers.
As with every Targeted Individual that has contacted the writer, House committed no crime, nor was he ever alleged to have committed a crime.
U.S. Tweaks Message: Troops Will Still Be in Afghanistan in 2014
The Obama administration is increasingly emphasizing the idea that the United States will have forces in Afghanistan until at least the end of 2014, a change in tone aimed at persuading the Afghans and the Taliban that there will be no significant American troop withdrawals next summer.
In a move away from President Obama’s deadline of July 2011 for the start of an American drawdown from Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, all cited 2014 this week as the key date for handing over the defense of Afghanistan to the Afghans themselves.
Pentagon group finds there is minimal risk to lifting gay ban during war
A Pentagon study group has concluded that the military can lift the ban on gays serving openly in uniform with only minimal and isolated incidents of risk to the current war efforts, according to two people familiar with a draft of the report, which is due to President Obama on Dec. 1.
More than 70 percent of respondents to a survey sent to active-duty and reserve troops over the summer said the effect of repealing the "don't ask, don't tell" policy would be positive, mixed or nonexistent, said two sources familiar with the document.
E.P.A. Issues Guidance on New Emissions Rules; Texas says 'no way'
Seeking to reassure major power plant and factory owners that impending regulation of climate-altering gases will not be too burdensome, the Environmental Protection Agency emphasized on Wednesday that future permitting decisions would take cost and technical feasibility into account.
Under the Obama administration, the E.P.A. declared that gases that contribute to global warming are a danger to human health and the environment and thus must be regulated under the Clean Air Act. The agency is starting with the largest sources of such emissions — coal-burning power plants, cement factories, steel mills and oil refineries — and then will extend the regulations to smaller facilities.
Amnesty: prosecute Bush for admitted waterboarding
The United States must prosecute former President George W. Bush for torture if his admission in a memoir that he authorized waterboarding holds true, rights group Amnesty International said on Wednesday.
In "Decision Points," published this week, Bush defended his decision to authorize waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning condemned by some as torture.
Bush said the practice was limited to three detainees and led to intelligence breakthroughs that thwarted attacks and saved lives. He told NBC in an interview to publicize the book that his legal adviser had told him it did "not fall within the anti-torture act."
Halliburton to EPA: Just Trust Us and Go Away
Two months ago, U.S. EPA wrote nine major natural gas drilling companies a letter. It politely asked the recipients to voluntarily tell agency officials the secret brew of chemicals they use to "frack" gas from the shale deposits.
EPA wasn't even planning to make the ingredient list public, a policy the industry is fighting tooth-and-nail in Congress. Instead, it just wanted the information to help with a crucial first-ever federal study of the health and safety risks of hydraulic fracturing, a drilling technique that has already ruined water and air quality in towns across the country and has proceeded unregulated thanks to the Dick Cheney-pushed "Halliburton loophole" passed in 2005.
Iraqi Christians targeted in another slew of attacks
A series of bombings across Baghdad Wednesday morning targeted Christian homes, killing at least three and wounding 26.
The attacks came just 10 days after Islamist militants stormed a church during Sunday mass, eventually killing more than 50 people, mostly Christian worshipers. It was the worst attack on Iraqi Christians in recent history, and it has increased fear that more of Iraq’s already dwindling Christian community will leave Iraq and seek safer homes abroad.
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