New Hampshire Health News Digest

Telegraph | News | 'If you don't take a job as a prostitute, we can stop your benefits' A 25-year-old waitress who turned down a job providing "sexual services'' at a brothel in Berlin faces possible cuts to her unemployment benefit under laws introduced this year. Prostitution was legalised in Germany just over two years ago and brothel owners – who must pay tax and employee health insurance – were granted access to official databases of jobseekers. The waitress, an unemployed information technology professional, had said that she was willing to work in a bar at night and had worked in a cafe. She received a letter from the job centre telling her that an employer was interested in her "profile'' and that she should ring them. Only on doing so did the woman, who has not been identified for legal reasons, realise that she was calling a brothel. Under Germany's welfare reforms, any woman under 55 who has been out of work for more ...

Iraqi voter dips his finger in ink after voting in today's historic election!

Iraqis Brave Attacks; Voter Turnout High My Way News BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Iraqis defied violence and calls for a boycott to cast ballots in Iraq's first free election in a half-century Sunday. Insurgents seeking to wreck the vote struck polling stations with a string of suicide bombings and mortar volleys, killing at least 44 people, including nine attackers. Women in black abayas whispered prayers at the sound of a nearby explosion as they waited to vote at one Baghdad polling station. But the mood for many was upbeat: Civilians and policemen danced with joy at one of the five polling stations where photographers were allowed, and some streets were packed with voters walking shoulder-to-shoulder to vote. The elderly made their way, hobbling on canes or riding wheelchairs; one elderly woman was pushed along on a wooden cart, another man carried a disabled 80-year-old on his back. "This is democracy," said Karfia Abbasi, holding up a thumb stained with purple in...

My Way News : "With crucial national elections only two days away, Iraqi officials announced the arrests of three more purported lieutenants of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, including the Jordanian terror mastermind's military adviser and chief of operations in Baghdad. Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh told reporters that U.S. and Iraqi authorities were closing in on al-Zarqawi, head of al-Qaida's affiliate in Iraq who is believed responsible for many of the car-bombings, kidnappings and decapitations of foreigners in Iraq. Despite Saleh's assurances, al-Zarqawi's group posted a new Web message Friday warning Iraqis that they could get hit by shelling or other attacks if they approach polling stations, which it called 'the centers of atheism and of vice.' 'We have warned you, so don't blame us. You have only yourselves to blame,' it said."

Illinois unable to sell flu vaccine bought from Europe : Illinois has been unable to sell any of the 700,000 doses of flu vaccine that Gov. Rod Blagojevich and other state and city governments agreed to buy from Europe, raising the possibility that taxpayers could get stuck paying millions for the unused vaccine. To make matters worse, officials in New York City and Cleveland, who signed onto the deal to import the vaccine, now say they don't need their share of the doses and don't want to pay for them. Illinois put the doses on the market in December after New York City asked the state to resell the 200,000 flu vaccine doses it had agreed to buy for $10 each. Cleveland officials said they told Illinois earlier this month that they no longer wanted the 4,500 doses they had requested at a price of about $11 each. Both cities got extra flu doses from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention while Blagojevich waited for months to get permission from the ...

satellite photo showing open green area

Really good diagram 

New Sisyphus: The New Mein Kampf: Zarqawi Speaks On January 23, Jordanian terrorist leader Al-Zarqawi released an audiotape regarding the upcoming elections in Iraq. Zarqawi is, of course, a very important terrorist leader and the undeniable head of the jihadi insurgency against the Allawi Government and its American allies. Which is why the audiotape is of vital significance. Here is a major Islamic terrorist leader, telling us in his own words, directly, what he believes, what motivates his fight, and why he wishes us dead. And what does he say? "The speaker said democracy was based on un-Islamic beliefs and behaviors such as freedom of religion, rule of the people, freedom of expression, separation of religion and state, forming political parties and majority rule. He said that freedom of expression is allowed "even cursing God. This means that there is nothing sacred in democracy." He said Islam requires the rule of God and not the rule of "the majo...

Animal-Human Hybrids Spark Controversy Scientists have begun blurring the line between human and animal by producing chimeras—a hybrid creature that's part human, part animal. Chinese scientists at the Shanghai Second Medical University in 2003 successfully fused human cells with rabbit eggs. The embryos were reportedly the first human-animal chimeras successfully created. They were allowed to develop for several days in a laboratory dish before the scientists destroyed the embryos to harvest their stem cells. In Minnesota last year researchers at the Mayo Clinic created pigs with human blood flowing through their bodies. And at Stanford University in California an experiment might be done later this year to create mice with human brains. Scientists feel that, the more humanlike the animal, the better research model it makes for testing drugs or possibly growing "spare parts," such as livers, to transplant into humans. Watching how human cells mature an...

C-SPAN.org Barnett's famous 90 minute presentation on American global foreign strategy, fusing economic and military policies best suited for our changing world. Really good stuff! : Note: Most events will remain in the archive for 15 days or less. Q&A on C-SPAN PLAYC-SPAN Special: Thomas P.M. Barnett, Author, 'The Pentagon's New Map' C-SPAN is hosting a special program with Thomas P.M. Barnett, author of the book 'The Pentagon's New Map.' This work is a study of how globalization affects U.S. national security. It outlines a strategy for the way the U.S. and its military should operate in the post-September 11th world. The book is inspired by a briefing that Mr. Barnett has delivered hundreds of times in the past few years to government officials, military officers, business leaders and opinion makers. This show will air a tape of Barnett giving that briefing, and from 9:30-10:30pm ET he will take viewer phone calls. Thomas P.M. Barnett is ...

MSNBC - Dr. Cliff Arnall's calculations show that misery will peak this Monday. : "LONDON - Is the midwinter weather wearing you down? Are you sinking in debt after the holidays? Angry with yourself for already breaking your New Year's resolutions? Wish you could crawl back under the covers and not have to face another day of rain, sleet, snow and paperwork? Probably. After all, it's nearly Jan. 24, the 'most depressing day of the year,' according to a U.K. psychologist. Dr. Cliff Arnall's calculations show that misery will peak this Monday. Arnall, who specializes in seasonal disorders at the University of Cardiff, Wales, created a formula that takes into account numerous feelings to devise peoples' lowest point. The model is: [W (D-d)] x TQ M x NA The equation is broken down into seven variables: (W) weather, (D) debt, (d) monthly salary, (T) time since Christmas, (Q) time since failed quit attempt, (M) low...

Globes [online] - UAV flocks to be operated against terrorists Elad Kivelevitch, who is working towards his M.Sc. at Technion - Israel Institute of Technology under the guidance of Dr. Pini Gurfil of the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering, has developed an innovate and unique method of fighting terrorism, using a flock of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The new method will make it possible to distinguish between military targets and civilians, even in crowded built-up areas, and greatly increase the probability of hitting and destroying the target. Kivelevitch and Gurfil have developed an algorithm for indentifying and destroying targets in hostile territory, based on natural movements of flocks, such as storks, wasps, and ants. They have created a flock of coordinated UAVs, which do not collide with each other, and which work as a team. “A flock of UAVs can perform a given mission better than one UAV,” Gurfil explains. “Communications between the members of the flock are sophi...

TIME.com: Limousine Terror? : "Limousine Terror? Fears of automotive mayhem as the Presidential inauguration nears As Washington gears up for the first Inaugural of the post-9/11 era, one potential security threat has emerged as a particular focus of concern: vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices, or VBIEDS, possibly disguised as limousines. The fears were prompted in part, say U.S. intelligence sources, by a 39-page document seized from al-Qaeda last year, titled 'Rough Presentation for Gas Limo Project.' It lays out a scenario for using limousines to deliver bombs equipped with cylinders of a flammable gas. Though the Inauguration is not specifically mentioned, parts of the document began circulating among senior U.S. intelligence authorities on Jan. 5. In response, barriers have been set up to block any vehicle bent on destruction. The document is believed to have been written by Issa al-Hindi, an al-Qaeda operative captured in Britain last year. It recommen...

My Way News : "WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has been conducting secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran to help identify potential nuclear, chemical and missile targets, The New Yorker magazine reported Sunday. The article, by award-winning reporter Seymour Hersh, said the secret missions have been going on at least since last summer with the goal of identifying target information for three dozen or more suspected sites. Hersh quotes one government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon as saying, 'The civilians in the Pentagon want to go into Iran and destroy as much of the military infrastructure as possible.' One former high-level intelligence official told The New Yorker, 'This is a war against terrorism, and Iraq is just one campaign. The Bush administration is looking at this as a huge war zone. Next, we're going to have the Iranian campaign.' The White House said Iran is a concern and a threat that needs to be taken serious...

Commentary February 2005 The War Against World War IV Norman Podhoretz ------------------------------------ A Second-Term Retreat? All things considered, then, I feel safe in predicting that Bush will not reverse course in his second term, and that he will continue striving to implement the doctrine bearing his name throughout the greater Middle East—that, in short, he will go on "sticking to his guns, literally and figuratively," as Time put it in naming him "Person of the Year." But I feel equally safe in predicting that the forces opposing him, both in the region and at home, will persist in their struggle to nip this immense enterprise in the bud. In Iraq, the insurgents—a coalition of diehard Saddamists, domestic Islamofascists, and foreign jihadists—have a simple objective. They are trying to drive us out before the seeds of democratization that we are helping to sow have taken firm root and begun to flower. Only thus can the native insurgents ho...

Telegraph | Opinion | This disaster exposes the myth of the UN's moral authority The UN's authority is instead one of those ineffable mystical mysteries. The authority's existence cannot be perceived by the senses and exerts no influence on the events of this world. Even the authority's most devout hierophants retain the right to disavow that authority at whim, as Ms Short herself disavowed its resolutions on Iraq. And yet at other times those same hierophants praise this same imperceptible, inconsequential, and intermittently binding authority as the best hope for a just and peaceful world. An early church father is supposed to have said of the story of the resurrection: "I believe it because it is absurd." The same could much more justly be said of the doctrine of the UN's moral authority. Whence exactly does this moral authority emanate? How did the UN get it? Did it earn it by championing liberty, justice, and other high ideals? That seems a str...

Information management - How to use Gmail as your second brain : "Information Management: How to use Gmail as your second brain By Adam Boettiger - adam@digitalocean.cc Please feel free to Link to this article from your own web site. I don't know about you, but I subscribe to quite a few email discussion lists and ezines/newsletters. I've been online since 1992 and through the years have found email discussion lists to be an invaluable source of topic-specific help, tips and information. But information is useless unless it meets at least two criteria: 1. You can easily and quickly store it 2. You can easily and quickly retrieve it at the time when you need it We are all overloaded with email and information, however there are many nuggets of gold that we see every day that we wish we could file away in our brain somewhere. You may subscribe to a discussion list and receive 10 posts a day from it, with maybe 2 being relevant to your problems, and of thos...

Amir Taheri: Islamic headgear is not essential : In the United States several Muslim women are suing airport security firms for having violated their first amendment rights by asking them to take off their hijab during routine searches of passengers. All these and other cases are based on the claim that the controversial headgear is an essential part of the Muslim faith and that attempts at banning it constitute an attack on Islam. That claim is totally false. The headgear in question has nothing to do with Islam as a religion. It is not sanctioned anywhere in the Koran, the fundamental text of Islam, or the hadith (traditions) attributed to the Prophet. This headgear was invented in the early 1970s by Mussa Sadr, an Iranian mullah who had won the leadership of the Lebanese Shiite community. In an interview in 1975 in Beirut, Sadr told this writer that the hijab he had invented was inspired by the headgear of Lebanese Catholic nuns, itself inspired by that of Christia...

Pentagon reveals rejected chemical weapons - News | Print | New Scientist : THE Pentagon considered developing a host of non-lethal chemical weapons that would disrupt discipline and morale among enemy troops, newly declassified documents reveal. Most bizarre among the plans was one for the development of an 'aphrodisiac' chemical weapon that would make enemy soldiers sexually irresistible to each other. Provoking widespread homosexual behaviour among troops would cause a 'distasteful but completely non-lethal' blow to morale, the proposal says. Other ideas included chemical weapons that attract swarms of enraged wasps or angry rats to troop positions, making them uninhabitable. Another was to develop a chemical that caused 'severe and lasting halitosis', making it easy to identify guerrillas trying to blend in with civilians. There was also the idea of making troops' skin unbearably sensitive to sunlight. The proposals, from the US Air Force Wri...

Fed up over problems stemming from viruses and spyware, some computer users are giving up or curbing their use of the Web. Stephen Seemayer had the first Pong video game system on his block. A decade later, the Echo Park artist was the first in his neighborhood to get a personal computer. And in 1996, he was so inspired by the World Wide Web that he created a series of small paintings for viewing over the Internet. Now the 50-year-old Seemayer is once again on the cutting edge: Sick of spam clogging his in-box and spyware and viruses crashing his system, Seemayer yanked out his high-speed connection. "I'm not going to pay for something that I can't use," he said. A small but growing number of frustrated computer owners are coming to the same conclusion. They're giving up or cutting back their use of the Internet, especially at home, where no corporate tech support team will ride to their rescue. [...] But 2004 "was a real turning point in a b...

U.S. Falls out of the Index of Economic Freedom's Top 10 - 06 Jan 2005 AccountingWEB.com - Jan-6-2005 - For the first time ever, the U.S. does not rank among the world's 10 freest economies in the Index of Economic Freedom, published annually by The Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal. The U.S.' score in the 2005 Index did not change from 2004. But improvements in the economies of Chile, Australia and Iceland enabled all three to surpass the U. S., leaving it in a tie for 12th with Switzerland and out of the top 10 for the first time in the 11-year history of the Index. "The United States is resting on its laurels while innovative countries around the world are changing their approaches and reducing their roadblocks," said Marc Miles, a co-editor of the book, along with Ed Feulner and Mary Anastasia O'Grady. "The U.S. is eating the dust of countries that have thrown off the 20th-century shackles of big government spending and massiv...

BostonHerald.com - Local/ Regional News: Eastie gang linked to al-Qaeda : A burgeoning East Boston-based street gang made up of alleged rapists and machete-wielding robbers has been linked to the al-Qaeda terrorist network, prompting Boston police to ``turn up the heat'' on its members, the Herald has learned. MS-13, which stands for La Mara Salvatrucha, is an extremely violent organization with roots in El Salvador, and boasts more than 100 ``hardcore members'' in East Boston who are suspected of brutal machete attacks, rapes and home invasions. There are hundreds more MS-13 gangsters in towns along the North Shore, said Boston police Sgt. Detective Joseph Fiandaca, who has investigated the gang since it began tagging buildings in Maverick Square in 1995. In recent months, intelligence officials in Washington have warned national law enforcement agencies that al-Qaeda terrorists have been spotted with members of MS-13 in El Salvador, prompting concerns ...

The New York Times > International > Secret Meeting, Clear Mission: 'Rescue' U.N. Secret Meeting, Clear Mission: 'Rescue' U.N. By WARREN HOGE Published: January 3, 2005 Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times Secretary General Kofi Annan during a meeting in his office last week with Jan Egeland, the United Nations emergency relief coordinator. UNITED NATIONS, Jan. 2 - The meeting of veteran foreign policy experts in a Manhattan apartment one recent Sunday was held in strict secrecy. The guest of honor arrived without his usual retinue of aides. The mission, in the words of one participant, was clear: "to save Kofi and rescue the U.N." At the gathering, Secretary General Kofi Annan listened quietly to three and a half hours of bluntly worded counsel from a group united in its personal regard for him and support for the United Nations. The group's concern was that lapses in his leadership during the past two years had eclipsed the ac...