ECHIDNE OF THE SNAKES

The CSI Fingerprint Examination Kit, two brands of children's play clay, powdered cleanser, roof sealers, duct tapes, window glazing, spackling paste and small appliances were among the products in which asbestos was found by at least two of three labs hired by the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization.

The group, which was created in 2004 by asbestos victims and their families, spent more than $165,000 to have government-certified laboratories examine hundreds of consumer products over 18 months to determine whether asbestos was present.

It is unusual for a group of volunteers, many of whom have asbestos-caused diseases, to fund research that impacts public health.

"We had to. No one else was doing it," said Linda Reinstein, the group's co-founder and executive director. "This is information that consumers and Congress must have because asbestos is lethal and we naively believe that the government is protecting us, when it's not."

The product that is of greatest concerns to some public health experts is the fingerprint kit, which is a huge seller, according to sales personnel interviewed by the Seattle P-I.

The state's director of science curriculum has resigned after being accused of creating the appearance of bias against teaching intelligent design.

Chris Comer, who has been the Texas Education Agency's director of science curriculum for more than nine years, offered her resignation this month.

In documents obtained Wednesday through the Texas Public Information Act, agency officials said they recommended firing Comer for repeated acts of misconduct and insubordination. But Comer said she thinks political concerns about the teaching of creationism in schools were behind what she describes as a forced resignation.

Agency officials declined to comment, saying it was a personnel issue.

Comer was put on 30 days paid administrative leave shortly after she forwarded an e-mail in late October announcing a presentation being given by Barbara Forrest, author of "Inside Creationism's Trojan Horse," a book that says creationist politics are behind the movement to get intelligent design theory taught in public schools. Forrest was also a key witness in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case concerning the introduction of intelligent design in a Pennsylvania school district. Comer sent the e-mail to several individuals and a few online communities, saying, "FYI."

Agency officials cited the e-mail in a memo recommending her termination. They said forwarding the e-mail not only violated a directive for her not to communicate in writing or otherwise with anyone outside the agency regarding an upcoming science curriculum review, "it directly conflicts with her responsibilities as the Director of Science."

The memo adds, "Ms. Comer's e-mail implies endorsement of the speaker and implies that TEA endorses the speaker's position on a subject on which the agency must remain neutral."

The couple, who divorced in 2005, had a history of domestic violence, police said.

The family lived in Frederick County for about five years, with Brockdorff moving out in 2005 and Pumphrey leaving this year, neighbors said.

Brockdorff was a self-employed electrician who had coached T-ball, and Pumphrey was a flight attendant, said Mullen, who lives two houses away. The three Brockdorff children were close friends with Mullen's.

The couple's relationship was stormy, and police were often called to their large home to help settle their disputes, Mullen said.

In fall 2005, Pumphrey asked Brockdorff to move out, and he moved to nearby Urbana. But he continued to visit Pumphrey and harass her, Mullen said. Pumphrey got a restraining order and even suspected that her phone had been tapped.

"She was very scared," Mullen said. "She wanted to protect her kids and herself."

MSNBC political analyst Pat Buchanan appeared on the November 26 edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes to discuss his new book, Day of Reckoning: How Hubris, Ideology, And Greed Are Tearing America Apart (Thomas Dunne Books, November 2007), in which he writes that America is "on a path to national suicide" and later asks: "How is America committing suicide?" answering: "Every way a nation can." He proceeds to claim that "[t]he American majority is not reproducing itself. ... Forty-five million of its young have been destroyed in the womb since Roe v. Wade, as Asian, African, and Latin American children come to inherit the estate the lost generation of American children never got to see."

The author of the book on which the new film The Golden Compass is based has hit back at critics who accuse him of peddling "candy-coated atheism".

Philip Pullman dismissed as "absolute rubbish" accusations by the US-based Catholic League that the film promotes atheism and denigrates Christianity.

"I am a story teller," he said. " If I wanted to send a message I would have written a sermon."

The Golden Compass - which stars Nicole Kidman - premiers in London on Tuesday.

In Basra, Iraq, religious extremists are waging a violent campaign against women who do not dress or behave according to their interpretation of Islam and doctors who provide medical services to women.

"They kill women, leave a piece of paper on her or dress her in indecent clothes so as to justify their horrible crimes," said Basra police chief Maj. Gen. Abdul Jalil Khalaf. Militants murdered 42 women between July and September, the BBC reported Nov. 15.

Ninety-seven women were burnt to death and 27 others killed in the three Kurdish provinces during the past four months, the human rights minister in the Iraqi Kurdistan region revealed.




"I cannot say that violence against women has lowered," Yusuf Aziz Muhammad told reporters after taking part in a conference held in Arbil on Sunday to discuss means to stop violence against women.
The statements coincide with the international day to eliminate violence against women, November 25.
"Surveys conducted in Arbil (the capital of the autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan region) showed that there were 60 cases of women burning in Arbil, 21 in Duhuk and 16 in Sulaimaniya. There were also 10 cases of women killing in Arbil, 11 in Duhuk and six in Sulaimaniya," Muhammad said.
The Kurdish official, citing the figures of 2005, noted that there were 59 cases of women killing in the region, which rose to 118 in 2006.
"Cases of women burning themselves in Sulaimaniya during 2006 were 64 and in Duhuk 185," said the minister.
Women proved involved in honor-related crimes are forced to burn themselves and sometimes they are set ablaze by their male relatives.

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Democrats like to define themselves as the party of poor and middle-income Americans, but a new study says they now represent the majority of the nation's wealthiest congressional districts.

In a state-by-state, district-by-district comparison of wealth concentrations based on Internal Revenue Service income data, Michael Franc, vice president of government relations at the Heritage Foundation, found that the majority of the nation's wealthiest congressional jurisdictions were represented by Democrats.

He also found that more than half of the wealthiest households were concentrated in the 18 states where Democrats hold both Senate seats.

"If you take the wealthiest one-third of the 435 congressional districts, we found that the Democrats represent about 58 percent of those jurisdictions," Mr. Franc said.

A key measure of each district's wealth was the number of single-filer taxpayers earning more than $100,000 a year and married couples filing jointly who earn more than $200,000 annually, he said.

But in a broader measurement, the study also showed that of the 167 House districts where the median annual income was higher than the national median of $48,201, a slight majority, 84 districts, were represented by Democrats. Median means that half of all income earners make more than that level and half make less.

Mr. Franc's study also showed that contrary to the Democrats' tendency to define Republicans as the party of the rich, "the vast majority of unabashed conservative House members hail from profoundly middle-income districts."

In March, Circuit City let go more than 3,000 workers and replaced them with lower-paid staff, a move criticized by analysts who said the loss of the more-experienced employees hurt sales of items such as extended warranties.

Circuit City's "execution remains a significant concern," Sanford Bernstein analyst said in a research note on Wednesday.

Cimino said Circuit City's changes include the creation of a supervisor position for stores and the elimination of shelf- stocking duties for sales associates to give them more time with customers.

The moves have "improved the associate morale in the stores," Cimino said. "We're getting feedback from our customers that they are having a better experience in the stores."

The electronics retailer, facing larger competitors and falling sales, said Wednesday that it would lay off about 3,400 store workers. The laid-off workers, about 8 percent of the company's total work force, would get a severance package and a chance to reapply for their former jobs, at lower pay, after a 10-week delay, the company said.

The androgynous masculinization of the modern woman, through the donning of pants, suits, uncovered shoulders and unveiled hair, has in a sense led to the slow whorification of ladyhood. In discarding feminine dress, women seem to have symbolically discarded femininity and modesty (the virtues of women) in favor of sexual virility, promiscuity and immodesty (the vices of men).

The case has sparked outrage among human rights groups.

"Barring the lawyer from representing the victim in court is almost equivalent to the rape crime itself," said Fawzeyah al-Oyouni, founding member of the newly formed Saudi Association for the Defense of Women's Rights.

"This is not just about the girl, it's about every woman in Saudi Arabia," she said. "We're fearing for our lives and the lives of our sisters and our daughters and every Saudi woman out there. We're afraid of going out in the streets."

Human Rights Watch said it has called on Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah "to immediely void the verdict and drop all charges against the rape victim and to order the court to end its harassment of her lawyer."

Chapel Hill, North Carolina – Today, Senator John Edwards released the following statement;

"Today's news that a Saudi Arabian court has chosen to punish the victim of a gang rape is an appalling breach of the most fundamental human rights. I am outraged that President Bush has refused to condemn the sentence. We need a president who will reengage with the world and restore our moral authority - only then will we be able to lead other nations in protecting the basic rights and human dignity of every person on this planet."

At halftime of the Jets' home game against the Pittsburgh Steelers on Sunday, several hundred men lined one of Giants Stadium's two pedestrian ramps at Gate D. Three deep in some areas, they whistled and jumped up and down. Then they began an obscenity-laced chant, demanding that the few women in the gathering expose their breasts.

When one woman appeared to be on the verge of obliging, the hooting and hollering intensified. But then she walked away, and plastic beer bottles and spit went flying. Boos swept through the crowd of unsatisfied men.

Denisse Rivera, a 23-year-old from the Bronx, was on a first date Sunday. When she arrived at the crowd at Gate D, several men pointed at her, signaling men at all levels to chant in her direction. After a brief moment of hesitation, she flashed them. Then she took a bow.

"I don't care," Rivera said when told that video clips of previous incidents, taken on cellphones, ended up online. "I love my body and I like what I have, so let everybody share it."

Two security guards soon approached Rivera. The guards warned her about indecent exposure laws, she said, and let her go.

What's not sexy is feminism (not to be confused with femininity), which is directly responsible for the disappearance of our beloved dresses and the adoption of pants by the "new woman." Like all fashions, pants are symbolic of something - in this case masculinity - through their allowance of physical activity. Dresses, the antithesis of pants, symbolize femininity through grace and elegance. Men find elegance in women to be attractive, and dresses are a physical manifestation of femininity. The wearing of pants by women represents the masculinization of the fairer sex, which is not at all attractive.

In advocating the wearing of dresses, I must distinguish between the flowing elegant dresses of tradition and the more degenerate and immodest dresses of our present culture. The miniskirt, a dress of sorts that doesn't extend below the knees, is both lacking in modesty and elegance. Elegance is essential to femininity, and the lack thereof implies a sort of masculinization. Modesty is essential to feminine virtue, and the lack thereof implies a state of whorification. Immodest, inelegant dresses constitute a degeneration and androgynization of true dresses.

Like all fashions, pants are symbolic of something - in this case masculinity - through their allowance of physical activity.

If all fashions are symbolic, dresses in particular symbolize womanhood by more fully embodying the ideal of a true lady, the objective understanding of what men find attractive in the fairer sex: passivity, domesticity, childrearing, coital love, piety and fertility. These defining aspects of womanhood are immutable.

Only strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities can forestall these terrible scenarios. This would not require a "declaration of war," an antiquated concept that has not been employed since World War II and rarely before. We would send no troops, conquer no land. Rather, we would act in pre-emptive self-defense.

At stake are supreme issues of national safety. The president alone, as Alexander Hamilton said, is positioned to operate with "decision, activity, secrecy, and dispatch." Of course, Congress can block presidential action, but in this case, most members will be satisfied to stand clear and let the president do what must be done.

The world's scientists have done their job. Now it's time for world leaders, starting with President Bush, to do theirs. That is the urgent message at the core of the latest — and the most powerful — report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of 2,500 scientists who collectively constitute the world's most authoritative voice on global warming.

Released in Spain over the weekend, the report leaves no doubt that man-made emissions from the burning of fossil fuels (and, to a lesser extent, deforestation) have been responsible for the steady rise in atmospheric temperatures.

If these emissions are not brought under control, the report predicts, the consequences could be disastrous: further melting at the poles, sea levels rising high enough to submerge island nations, the elimination of one-quarter or more of the world's species, widespread famine in places like Africa, more violent hurricanes.

And it warns that time is running out. To avoid the worst of these disasters, it says, the world must stabilize emissions of greenhouse gases by 2015, begin to reduce them shortly thereafter and largely free itself of carbon-emitting technologies by midcentury.

The quest for things exorbitantly exotic has reached a fever pitch of late. For one thing, more people than ever can afford to join in the pursuit. "This is the richest year ever in human history," said Steve Forbes, chief executive of Forbes, whose recent Forbes 400 list consisted entirely of billionaires for the second year since its inception. The past year has seen the number of billionaires grow 19%, to nearly 1,000, according to the company. In the past 10 years, the number of financial millionaires has more than doubled.

Half the new members on the Forbes 400 list come from hedge funds and private equity, and they form a fiscal fraternity that is not only wealthier but also younger, more diverse and more numerous than ever. While managing and making billions, the economy's latest whiz kids are shaking up the financial world and, quite often, the planet's spending habits along with it. "Never before have so many Americans gotten so wealthy so quickly. And never before have the wealthy spent so much on lifestyle and consumer goods," says Robert Frank, author of Richistan: A Journey Through the American Wealth Boom and the Lives of the New Rich. "So what do you do to stand out? The challenge for today's rich is to set themselves apart from the merely affluent. You want things no one else can afford or experience. The challenge is to always stay ahead." And while the recent stock-market turbulence may stall the tide, it is unlikely to stem it. "You can't get rich off financial markets and not be exposed if they fall," Frank says. "The next year or two, we might have a slight decline in numbers of millionaires as well as a decline in the amount of their wealth. But long term, I'm bullish on wealth. The rich are going to get richer, and more important, they are going to get more numerous."

The U.S. Military is demanding that thousands of wounded service personnel give back signing bonuses because they are unable to serve out their commitments.

To get people to sign up, the military gives enlistment bonuses up to $30,000 in some cases.

Now men and women who have lost arms, legs, eyesight, hearing and can no longer serve are being ordered to pay some of that money back.

One of them is Jordan Fox, a young soldier from the South Hills.

He finds solace in the hundreds of boxes he loads onto a truck in Carnegie. In each box is a care package that will be sent to a man or woman serving in Iraq. It was in his name Operation Pittsburgh Pride was started.

Fox was seriously injured when a roadside bomb blew up his vehicle. He was knocked unconscious. His back was injured and lost all vision in his right eye.

A few months later Fox was sent home. His injuries prohibited him from fulfilling three months of his commitment. A few days ago, he received a letter from the military demanding nearly $3,000 of his signing bonus back.

Like vultures, the mortgage lenders began circling the single-family house with the tiny front lawn on Merrill Avenue.

They knew that the woman who owned the house was old and sick and that her two aging daughters were struggling with illness and poverty as well. That was all to the good as far as the lenders were concerned. The predator's mission is to home in on the vulnerable.

"The people that wanted to put through the loan called me about a hundred times," said Rosa Dailey, who is 65 and going blind and needs an oxygen tank at times to help her breathe. "I kept telling them no, because I didn't think we could afford it. But they kept saying how it was to our advantage. So I finally said: 'All right, let's see what we can do.' "

...

That was the beginning of a tragic spiral, with one unaffordable loan following another. As Ms. Dailey put it: "I feel like they led me down a dark alley."

Ms. Dailey told me her story in the freezing living room of the house on Merrill Avenue, which no longer has a working furnace and is growing shabbier by the day. It's all she has left. Her mother and her older sister are dead now. Her only income is about $1,300 a month from Social Security — less than the monthly note on the house, which is in foreclosure proceedings.

One aspect of the so-called mortgage crisis that hasn't been adequately explored is the extent to which predatory lenders have committed fraud against vulnerable homeowners. They have pushed overpriced loans and outlandish fees on hapless victims who didn't understand — and could not possibly have met — the terms of the contracts they signed.