BOSTON —Two explosions have been reported near the Boston Marathon finish line on Boylston Street as thousands of people gathered for the race, and there are reports of injuries.
The blasts happened at about 2:50 p.m. near the intersection of Boylston and Exeter streets. Store fronts have been blown out, and there have been reports of dozens of injuries.
ISTANBUL — Turkish police said Thursday that they had found evidence of a plot linked to Al Qaeda to bomb the United States Embassy in Ankara, a synagogue in Istanbul and other targets, from a raid on two houses in February, according to news reports.
By Kevin Bogardus, Global Affairs @ TheHill.com, April 12, 2013
An Iranian opposition group that was once considered a terrorist front by the State Department has hired an ex-senator to lobby for them.
Former Sen. Robert Torricelli (D-N.J.) has registered to represent the National Council of Resistance of Iran at his lobby firm Rosemont Associates, according to lobbying disclosure records.
By rejecting patent applications, developing countries have kept down the costs of much-needed medications. Can they continue to do so without harming efforts to develop new drugs?
WASHINGTON — Troops from the Economic Community of West African States deployed in Mali are "completely incapable" and are not "up to the task" of fighting Islamist militants, a senior Pentagon official said Tuesday. Michael Sheehan, assistant secretary of defense for special operations, offered his harsh criticism of the West African forces at a congressional hearing in which he praised French troops for rolling back insurgents in Mali.
When nuns puked nails
by Josephine Livingstone, Prospect blog, April 5, 2013
{a review of Brian Levack’s new history of demonic possession in the Christian West, "The Devil Within" (Yale, £25)]
By Catherine E. Shoichet and Joe Sutton, CNN, April 9, 2013
(link includes 'perp walk' video)
The 20-year-old student accused in a stabbing rampage at a Texas college campus told investigators he had fantasies of killing people and had planned the attack, sheriff's officials said late Tuesday.
Dylan Quick, 20, was charged with three counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon after the stabbings, said Donna Hawkins, an official with the Harris County Prosecutor's Office.
[.....] Steven Goodman, a dean and professor of medicine at Stanford and the editor of the journal Clinical Trials, which has its own imitators, called this phenomenon “the dark side of open access,” the movement to make scholarly publications freely available.
CENTENNIAL, Colo. — New questions confronted the University of Colorado, Denver on Friday amid disclosures that a psychiatrist who treated theater shooting suspect James Holmes had warned campus police a month before the deadly assault that Holmes was dangerous and had homicidal thoughts.
Court documents made public Thursday revealed Dr. Lynne Fenton also told a campus police officer in June that the shooting suspect had threatened and intimidated her [.....]
By John Podesta, Op-Ed @ ForeignPolicy.com, April 5, 2013
At the turn of the new century, every one of the 192 member states of the United Nations committed to eight broad goals intended to radically improve the lives of hundreds of millions of people. The Millennium Development Goals, or MDGs, set an ambitious agenda to cut extreme poverty while also pursuing improved access to education, health services, and safe drinking water.
What does it say about Germany today that in order to see some Jews you’ve got to go to a museum?
By Benjamin Weinthal, ForeignPolicy.com, April 4, 2013
US strategy to lower temperature on Korean peninsula involves containing Pyongyang and reassuring Seoul that it has its back
By Ewen MacAskill in Washington, guardian.co.uk, 5 April 2013
[....] in spite of all the military activity and bellicose rhetoric, there is a feeling in the White House and the Pentagon that any threat to the US or its allies is not imminent. The Pentagon assessment is that North Korea has not yet mastered the technology needed to accurately fire a nuclear-armed missile at the US mainland or any of its bases in the Pacific.
BEIJING — With confirmation that a sixth person has died from a mysterious avian-borne virus, Chinese officials escalated their response on Friday, advising people to avoid live poultry, dispatching virologists to chicken farms across the country and slaughtering more than 20,000 birds at a wholesale market in Shanghai where the virus, known as H7N9, was detected in a pigeon. [....]
A federal judge ruled Friday that the government must make the most common morning-after pill available over the counter for all ages, instead of requiring a prescription for girls 16 and younger. In his ruling, he also accused the federal government of “bad faith” in dealing with the requests to make the pill universally available.
State-Wrecked: The Corruption of Capitalism in America
By David Stockman, Op-Ed for New York Times Sunday Review, March 30/31, 2013
For the youngsters who don't recognize the name, he was President Reagan's budget director from 1981 to 1985. This Op-Ed is no doubt causing a lot of controversy in conservative circles, especially those that venerate Saint Reagan. An excerpt:
