The ongoing phenomenon of mysterious honeybee deaths is starting to raise alarm in the food industry, which depends heavily on bees to pollinate many critical crops. "Honeybee health and sustainable pollination is a major issue facing American agriculture that is threatening our food supply and endangering our natural environment," said Diana Cox-Foster of Penn State. I tend to think that honeybees are simply "on strike." They're tired of being slave workers for the very humans who continue to destroy their habitat, pollute their air and water, and steal the labors of their hard work (honey, bee pollen and free pollination services).

A handful of the world's largest agricultural biotechnology companies are seeking hundreds of patents on gene-altered crops designed to withstand drought and other environmental stresses, part of a race for dominance in the potentially lucrative market for crops that can handle global warming, according to a report being released today.

News that scientists have for the first time genetically altered a human embryo is drawing fire from some watchdog groups that say it's a step toward creating "designer babies." The idea of designer babies is that someday, scientists may insert particular genes into embryos to produce babies with desired traits like intelligence or athletic ability. Some people find that notion repugnant, saying it turns children into designed objects, and would create an unequal society where some people are genetically enriched while others would be considered inferior. The study appears to be the first report of genetically modifying a human embryo. It was presented last fall at a meeting of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, but didn't draw widespread public attention then. The result was reported over the weekend by The Sunday Times of London, which said British authorities highlighted the work in a recent report.

Scientists have created what is believed to be the first genetically modified (GM) human embryo.... The HFEA has said that it is preparing for scientists to apply for licences to create GM embryos. A paper, published by the authority, states: “The bill has taken away all inhibitions on genetically altering human embryos for research. The Science and Clinical Advances Group [of the HFEA] thought there were large ethical and public interest issues and that these should be referred for debate.”... Dr David King, director of Human Genetics Alert, warned: “This is the first step on the road that will lead to the nightmare of designer babies and a new eugenics. The HFEA is right to say that the creation and legalisation of GM embryos raises ‘large ethical and public interest issues’ but neglects to mention that these have not been debated at all.” He added: “I have been speaking to MPs all week and no one knows that the government is legalising GM embryos."

British newspaper The Times reports that Zaninovic's feat was announced at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine annual meeting in 2007, but was only publicized recently when the United Kingdom's reproductive technology regulators reviewed the research. The House of Commons is about to consider legislation permitting this and other controversial reproductive technologies, such as the creation of chimeras -- human-animal hybrid embryos.

In the field of bioethics, two contrary visions of the human person are engaged in a “fierce battle” with far-reaching implications for the human race, a professor of bioethics told a Lexington group Feb. 22 at the Catholic Center in Lexington. Legion of Christ Brother Joseph Than, a physician by training and professor of bioethics at the Pontifical Regina Apostolorum University in Rome, said the battle is joined between the Culture of Life and the Culture of Death, between the “correct vision” of the human person as expressed by the Catholic Church and the liberal utilitarian view of humanity.

In March this year Cardinal Keith O’Brien used his Easter Sunday sermon to launch a scathing attack on the Bill, describing the proposals as “grotesque” and “deathly”. “One might say that in our country we are about to have a public Government endorsement of experiments of Frankenstein proportion,” he told worshippers in Edinburgh, “without many people really being aware of what is going on.” Over in the pro-stem cell research camp, medical research charities have written to MPs urging them to support the Bill. Dr Chris Kingswood, Head of Research at the Tuberous Sclerosis Association believes hybrid embryo research is a powerful tool for discovering the basic problems in genetic and other diseases and accelerating the chance of finding treatments or cures. “Carried out in a proper legal framework its potential benefits far outweigh any of the dangers,” he says. He explains the significance of human-animal hybrid embryos...

Today the news is reporting fires in Florida, the result of the last system which went through several southern states including Ok and Texas. It was there that 20 plus people died from tornadoes. The system caused tremendous damage. This was just another storm this year with such impact. Over the weekend some 60 tornadoes were counted. We also saw a small spiral tornado, but it touched down and left quickly, no damage. Wyoming see's very little of this kind of weather. We have seen many devastating weather patterns in the last 10 years. From Katrina to the many tornado, rain, floods, and other drought related patterns, the nation is itself weathering the storm. As we move to summer of 2008, the weather is still one of the main headlines. There has also been extensive earthquake reports along the western coast of America. From Mexico, San Diego up to Alaska, with Seattle seeing a myriad of such occurrences. No doubt, we are living in the last days.

A German graduate student in oceanography at M.I.T. applied to the Transportation Security Administration for a new ID card allowing him to work around ships and docks. What the student, Wilken-Jon von Appen, received in return was a letter that not only turned him down but added an ominous warning from John M. Busch, a security administration official: "I have determined that you pose a security threat." Similar letters have gone to 5,000 applicants across the country who have at least initially been turned down for a Transportation Worker Identification Credential, an ID card meant to guard against acts of terrorism, agency officials said Monday.

The number of Americans being secretly wiretapped or having their financial and other records reviewed by the government has continued to increase as officials aggressively use powers approved after the Sept. 11 attacks. But the number of terrorism prosecutions ending up in court -- one measure of the effectiveness of such sleuthing -- has continued to decline, in some cases precipitously. The trends, visible in new government data and a private analysis of Justice Department records, are worrisome to civil liberties groups and some legal scholars. They say it is further evidence that the government has compromised the privacy rights of ordinary citizens without much to show for it.

Imagine this scenario: multiple terrorist bomb and nerve-gas attacks in the Pacific Northwest, several hijacked planes flying over the United States, and a major hurricane approaching the East Coast. The U.S. military and dozens of other federal and state agencies spent the week dealing with these simulated emergencies. It's an annual training exercise to see how the U.S. Northern Command would deal with a major terrorist attack on American soil. It may seem an unlikely perfect storm of events, but Gen. Victor "Gene" Renuart says the country must be prepared. "I think prudence tells you that you have to expect it could occur," says Renuart, who as commander of the U.S. Northern Command Headquarters in Colorado Springs, Colo., is the person ultimately responsible for the security of the United States. "Can I put a timeline on it? I know that terrorist organizations are trying increasingly to find a way in."

Americans seem to be sharing an obsession with the "real life" of others. While we are watching more and more reality TV shows, we are ignoring a critical reality of our own. We all know that there will be an earthquake of a major magnitude, as well as other emergencies like fires and floods or pandemic flu. Yet we constantly avoid dealing with that reality. This denial makes us dangerously unprepared to effectively respond to these real emergencies. Here's more reality. While Washington and Sacramento talk a lot about emergency preparedness, public dollars and resources for preparedness are limited and quickly disappearing. And one of the biggest realities we need to face is that government can't do it alone. We all share responsibility for being prepared.

The leak of Bush administration guidelines urging U.S. officials to avoid using terms such as "jihadi" or "Islamic terrorists" to refer to al-Qaida and similar groups has exposed a fault line in Republican thinking about the U.S. war on terror. Last Friday every GOP member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence voted for an amendment to an intelligence bill that would have banned the use of federal cash to produce documents like the terminology guidelines from the U.S. National Counter-Terrorism Center that recently leaked and were posted online. The amendment, authored by Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., the GOP ranking member, was defeated on a party-line vote.

The Bush administration repeatedly ignored corruption at the highest levels within the Iraqi government and kept secret potentially embarrassing information so as not to undermine its relationship with Baghdad, according to two former State Department employees. The State Department's policies "not only contradicted the anti-corruption mission but indirectly contributed to and has allowed corruption to fester at the highest levels of the Iraqi government," Brennan told the Senate Democratic Policy Committee. The U.S. embassy "effort against corruption — including its new centerpiece, the now-defunct Office of Accountability and Transparency — was little more than 'window dressing,'" he added.

Who are the new leaders influencing economic and political agendas around the world? What will life be like in America, Europe, Japan, or China in the year 2020? Which countries will dominate the course of globalization? CSIS was pleased to host David Rothkopf, President and CEO of Garten Rothkopf and Visiting Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Robert Shapiro, Chairman of Sonecon LLC and former Undersecretary of Commerce, for a discussion on globalization. These international economic experts addressed these questions above and discuss their new books, respectively entitled, "Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making," and "Futurecast: How Superpowers, Populations, and Globalization Will Change the Way You Live and Work." Charles Freeman, Freeman Chair in China Studies at CSIS, chaired the session.

This article examines a variety of issues derived from a report to The Club of Rome entitled RIO: Reshaping the International Order. These issues include legal changes for a new social order, regional unions, global solidarity, the East-West dialectic, a standing United Nations Peace Force and the redefinition of rights and freedom.

On April 30, the Senate's subcommittee on the Constitution held a vitally important hearing on "Secret Law and the Threat to Democratic and Accountable Government," chaired by Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis. At issue, ignored by the presidential contenders, is a profound change in the very core of our laws. Said witness Steven Aftergood, secrecy expert at the Federation of American Scientists: Growing use of secret law "is implicated in fundamental political controversies over domestic surveillance, torture and many other issues directly affecting the lives and interests of Americans. ... Secret law excludes the public from the deliberative process, promotes arbitrary and deviant government behavior, and shields official malefactors from accountability." At this very Senate hearing, John R. Elwood, the Office of Legal Counsel's deputy assistant attorney general, provided a startling example of the Bush administration's justification for the imperious essence of secret law. As reported in the May 1 New York Times, Elwood "disclosed a previously unpublicized method to cloak government activities."

A gun’s lifespan is greatly affected by how often it is fired. It is impractical, however, to expect soldiers to document their weapon use in the field, especially in the heat of battle. A new RFID-enabled system being tested by the Army automates the process. The system, designed by the Army’s Benét Laboratories research center, begins with a piezoelectric sensor that tracks when a weapon is fired by sensing its recoil. A tiny processor records the sensor’s data. An attached RFID tag enables the system to communicate the information easily via reader scans. The system package is capable of extrapolating complex statistics based on the intensity of fire, such as strain and heat, which help gauge the wear and tear on the weapon.

One would think that the very name of the Department of Homeland Security implies that this ever-expanding governmental entity seeks to maintain a safe and secure environment within the border of the country commonly now known as the ‘homeland’. Part and parcel of this protection mandate, one might assume, would be an all out effort to remove biological threats to highly secure areas, right? Then, why has the Senate now struck a deal with the White House to transfer implicit control of farm-related, biological research from the informed and (one would assume) competent hands of the Agriculture Secretary and into the militarized and non-farming hands of the DHS Chief (bearing in mind that DHS is ultimately under the control of the Big Kahuna, the Director of National Intelligence)?

Armchair MacGyvers visit Web sites like BoingBoing.net that lovingly chronicle the more audacious projects here and at events like the anarchic Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert. These overlapping, even incestuous, communities form the “maker movement” of do-it-yourself enlightenment. In an age where just about every human activity, from shopping to sex, can be performed in the virtual world, they choose to get their hands dirty.

A woman who risked her life saving 2,500 Jewish children from the gas chambers died yesterday aged 98. Irena Sendler, a social worker, smuggled them out of the Warsaw Ghetto and gave them false identities. She died at a Warsaw hospital after she had been in hospital for a month with pneumonia. Mrs Sendler was serving as a social worker with the city's welfare department during World War II when she masterminded the risky rescue operations of Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto. Records show that her team of some 20 people saved nearly 2,500 children from the Warsaw Ghetto between October 1940 and April 1943, when the Nazis burned the ghetto, shooting the residents or sending them to death camps.

Life isn't supposed to be this hard, not in California. Yet here she sits on a saggy mattress in a raggedy tent at a migratory labor camp in Sacramento, this lovely young woman, her head resting on her hand, her expression so very sad. It's mid-morning, but already the day seems lost to her. This is how Farm Security Administration photographer Dorothea Lange found her in November 1936. But who is she and what became of her? An East Coast historian hopes someone knows her story.

Goodbye, Oedipus. Hello, Isaac. That's the basic premise of a new online course being offered through the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine. Funded by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation and titled "A Biblical Approach to Mental Health," the class examines how hope-filled Bible stories can and should substitute for the fatalistic Greek narratives that serve as case studies in traditional psychotherapy. Abraham and Isaac, for instance, would bump Oedipus and Laius.

It is the dream of every archaeologist to dig in the Valley of the Kings, the burial ground of the monarchs of the New Kingdom (ca. 1500-1100 BC). Of all the sites in Egypt, this is one of the most magical. It is hard to believe that, of the 63 tombs found in the valley, not one was officially discovered by an Egyptian archaeologist.

That description fits Pan, the Greek god of shepherds and sexuality. His "father" was either Zeus or Hermes, the legendary source of Hermetic magic. In fact, Lewis often included such mythical gods in his stories.[3] One disturbing example is in That Hideous Strength, where Lewis linked the ruling Roman god Jove (Jupiter) to our King of kings! "Suddenly a greater spirit came," he wrote, announcing the main source of victorious power. "For this was great Glund-Oyarsa, King of Kings... known to men in old times as Jove..."[2] But in Prince Caspian, Aslan is the ruling god and the main source of magical power. It's his presence that transforms Narnia. And Lucy was the first to notice. She "began to feel that the whole forest was coming awake" and imagined how the trees would look in their human shapes. She knew that the beech tree "would be a gracious goddess....” while others would be "tree-gods." All would bow to Aslan!

According to Inca legend, Lake Titicaca was revered as the location where the god Viracocha [Quetzalcoatl] created a race of giants and later, the first humans. The Inca maintained that the giants built Tiahuanaco and also many other cities and structures in the area. However, due to their great evil, Viracocha destroyed the giants in a world flood. This legend is still believed by the local Indian inhabitants to this day. The geoglyphs covering this area also exhibit extreme age. In areas where ice age sediment surrounding hills and mountains has been eroded by rain and wind, patterns carved into the bedrock underneath the sediment has been exposed, suggesting their creation sometime before the last glacial melt near the end of the Pleistocene era, c. 13,000 years ago. Early researchers speculated that Inca and pre-Inca farming techniques produced the anomalous patterns on the ground around Lake Titicaca, especially in the horizontal terracing found surrounding the lake itself. However, the altitude of the Bolivian high plain presents several problems with a farming related explanation for the majority of the geoglyphs in the region. At an average of 12,500 feet above sea level, most of the shapes and patterns are located in areas that have not been conducive for growing crops for the last 10,000 years. Their creation would have required an immense workforce laboring for hundreds of years in such thin air that altitude sickness was a real danger... literally, a super human effort. Additionally, recent high-resolution satellite images suggest that most of the features are characteristic of religious and ritualistic forms of pre-Incan art. They may even represent a sophisticated yet unknown form of communication.

"The size and scope of David Flynn's Teohuanaco discovery simply surpasses comprehension. Mammoth traces of intelligence carved in stone and covering hundreds of square miles. For those who understand what they are seeing here for the first time, this could indeed be the strongest evidence ever found of prehistoric engineering by those who were known and feared throughout the ancient world as gods." ~ Thomas Horn