At last we’ve apologised for Hiroshima – well, sort of. We’ve recognised the suffering our atom bombs caused –well, kind of. President Obama was showing off his anti-nuclear credentials in the killing grounds of Hiroshima, but this was not to be confused with saying sorry.
The presence of John Roos, the US ambassador to Japan, and the British deputy ambassador, David Fitton, at the site of the world's first atomic bombing was an odd appearance.
An apology fatally devalued by the passage of 65 years
CIA whisked detainees from Gitmo
Four of the nation's most highly valued terrorist prisoners were secretly moved to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2003, years earlier than has been disclosed, then whisked back into overseas prisons before the Supreme Court could give them access to lawyers, The Associated Press has learned.
The transfer allowed the U.S. to interrogate the detainees in CIA "black sites" for two more years without allowing them to speak with attorneys or human rights observers or challenge their detention in U.S. courts. Had they remained at the Guantanamo Bay prison for just three more months, they would have been afforded those rights.
Alarms sound over trash fires in war zones
Hundreds of military service members and contractor employees have fallen ill with cancer or severe breathing problems after serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, and they say they were poisoned by thick, black smoke produced by the burning of tons of trash generated on U.S. bases.
In a lawsuit in federal court in Maryland, 241 people from 42 states are suing Houston-based contractor Kellogg Brown & Root, which has operated more than two dozen so-called burn pits in the two countries. The burn pits were used to dispose of plastic water bottles, Styrofoam food containers, mangled bits of metal, paint, solvent, medical waste, even dead animals. The garbage was tossed in, doused with fuel and set on fire.
Damaged heart could be coaxed into mending itself, claim scientists
In as little as five years, researchers hope to be able to coax the heart into regenerating itself, repairing the damage caused by cardiac arrests and old age. The revolutionary treatment could be possible after scientists discovered a technique for turning ordinary connective tissue into muscle cells inside the heart.
It works in a similar way to stem cells but instead of the new cells being grown outside the body and then injected back in, the technique simply makes the cells switch at the point where they are needed.
Climate change and illegal logging could wipe out rainforest wildlife by 2100
Most of the plants and animals found in rainforests today could die out by the end of the century because of climate change and illegal logging, according to a new study. The colourful wildlife found in tropical humid forests makes up more than half of the animal and plant species on Earth.
But the first study to look into the combined effect of both global warming and deforestation found most species are in danger of extinction. The study by the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington predicted that by 2100 only 18 to 45 per cent of the plants and animals in tropical forests may exist as they are today.
U.S. Senate confirms Kagan to Supreme Court
The U.S. Senate on Thursday approved President Barack Obama’s nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court, his second appointment to the high court that decides abortion, death penalty and other contentious cases. Ms. Kagan is the fourth woman ever to serve as a Supreme Court justice.
Her addition to the court will mark the first time three female justices have served concurrently. Nearly all Democrats, the Senate's two independents and a handful of Republicans were backing her nomination.
University of Kansas Medical Center has become known for violating the Animal Welfare Act
According to the annual report filed with the USDA by the University of Kansas Medical Center, this facility experiments on and/or holds captive about 150 primates per year, a relatively small amount. The report which contains this statistic is a bland one page document which belies the cruel reality that it represents.
A cross-section of the lives of these animals is represented by a stack of documents which is just over a foot tall. The existence of these highly intelligent animals has been reduced to so much paper and ink. Their identities represented only by numbers, their passing marked only by the word “euthanized.”
1913 WAS A VERY BAD YEAR
Prior to 1913, there was no federal income tax, the states had rights and representation in Washington DC, there was no Federal Reserve Bank and the federal government lived under the enumerated powers afforded it within the US Constitution. What a difference one year can make…
Churchill ordered UFO cover-up, National Archives show
The government took the threat of UFOs so seriously in the 1950s that UK intelligence chiefs met to discuss the issue, newly-released files show.
Ministers even went on to commission weekly reports on UFO sightings from a committee of intelligence experts.
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