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News
Remember four years ago when Democratic Presidential candidates were arguing over whose withdrawal plans were the most aggressive?
Plan Would Keep Small Force in Iraq Past Deadline
WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta is supporting a plan that would keep 3,000 to 4,000 American troops in Iraq after a deadline for their withdrawal at year’s end, but only to continue training security forces there, a senior military official said on Tuesday.
The proposal for a smaller force — if approved by the White House and the Iraqi government, which is not yet certain — reflected the shifting political realities in both countries.
Even as the military reduces its troop strength in Iraq, the C.I.A. will continue to have a major presence in the country, as will security contractors working for the State Department.
Former Rebels Say They Have Gadhafi Surrounded
Libya's former rebels have ousted dictator Moammar Gadhafi surrounded, and it is only a matter of time until he is captured or killed, a spokesman for Tripoli's new military council said Wednesday.
Anis Sharif would not say where Gadhafi had been found, but said he was still in Libya and had been tracked using high technology and human intelligence. Gadhafi is trapped in a 40-mile-radius area surrounded by rebels, he said.
"He can't get out," said Sharif, who added the former rebels are preparing to either detain him or kill him.
Serbian Official Convicted of War Crimes
The former head of the armed forces in Serbia was convicted on Tuesday of crimes against humanity and war crimes by an international tribunal at The Hague.
The former official, Momcilo Perisic, was the army chief of staff of Yugoslavia in the 1990s when that crumbling nation was reduced to just Serbia and Montenegro, and he was a principal architect of the ethnic war in the breakaway republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. He was charged in connection with attacks on civilians by soldiers under his command in Bosnia and Croatia, including in the cities of Sarajevo and Srebrenica, and he was sentenced on Tuesday to 27 years in prison.
I know I would certainly like to chat with the Chief of Staff about regulations. I wonder how one goes about arranging such a meeting.
White House may take bigger role in vetting costly regulations ahead of 2012
The involvement of President Obama’s chief of staff in last week’s decision to withdraw a smog rule might signal a more muscular White House role in vetting costly regulations ahead of the 2012 election.
Obama’s surprise move to block an ozone regulation from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) followed immense pressure from industry trade associations, which made numerous personal appeals to White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley.
Daley met with the heads of several business groups more than two weeks before Obama withdrew the regulation — an unusual level of senior White House involvement in the regulatory process.
This looks promising, though I do wonder what economists would say about the effectiveness of a $200 billion stimulus in this economy.
Obama’s jobs speech will renew push for spending to boost economy
We’ve seen this image before: Barack Obama putting the final touches on an important economic speech calling for stimulus spending, job creation, infrastructure investment, assistance to those hit by the housing crisis and an extension of unemployment benefits.
As the president prepares to deliver a pivotal address to a joint session of Congress on Thursday, it seems like a replay of the economic agenda he outlined when seeking the Democratic nomination.
In his speech Thursday, Obama’s prescriptions will be in the same mold as they were in 2008 — infrastructure spending; housing aid, including an expanded refinance program ;and new measures to assist the unemployed, administration officials say. They will also include tax cuts to give extra cash to workers and spur hiring, as well as aid for states and localities. The cost of the programs is likely to be at least $200 billion, and a reluctant Congress would have to approve many of the ideas.
Brand New Pictures of the Apollo Landing Sites
Life, alas, offers no such stop-action feature, as the now 77-yr.-old Cernan surely appreciates. But the moon does — at least a topographic one. On the airless, windless, weatherless expanse of the lunar surface, a scratch in the soil made in 1972 will still be fresh years, millennia and epochs later. And today, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), a NASA research craft that has been circling the moon since 2009, sent home poignant visual proof of that, beaming back the crispest images ever of the Apollo 12, 14 and 17 landing sites.
LRO has barnstormed all six lunar landing sites before, but the new images — while still black-and-white and requiring something of a space-junkie's tastes to be fully appreciated — are dazzling by comparison. (All of the pictures are interactively viewable here. Part of the reason for the crispness of the pictures is the exceptional resolution of the LRO's on-board cameras, far sharper than any set of non-human eyes sent up before. The rest is due to the fact that the LRO just plain flew so low. The Apollo command modules orbited at an altitude of about 60 mi. (97 km). LRO's average altitude is about half that (31 mi. or 50 km), but to capture the new images, the controllers adjusted the orbit so that its lowest point — or perilune — was only 13 mi. (21 km). At that comparative treetop level, newly sharp details sprang into view — footpaths, equipment, cables, tire tracks from the lunar rovers, as well as the Apollo 17 rover itself and the leggy lower half of the lunar modules that brought the astronauts down to the surface. Also faintly visible is Apollo 17's American flag.
A drink a day linked to healthy aging in women
Middle-aged women who drink alcohol in moderation have a better chance than nondrinkers of staying healthy as they age, especially if they spread out their consumption over most days of the week, a new study from Harvard researchers suggests.
The study followed nearly 14,000 mostly white women beginning in 1976. Compared with teetotalers, those who averaged roughly three to 15 alcoholic drinks per week in their late 50s had up to 28% higher odds of being free from chronic illness, physical disability, mental health problems, and cognitive decline at age 70, the study found.
The findings don't necessarily apply to men or to nonwhite women. But they add to the "strong, consistent evidence" that people who drink in moderation are less likely than nondrinkers or heavy drinkers to experience health problems such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and dementia, says Qi Sun, M.D., the lead author of the study and a nutrition researcher at the Harvard School of Public Health, in Boston.