Bitch about Headline News on Health, Environment, Internet, Politics and other Issues
Spiegel Online reports here: Officially, relations between Moscow and Berlin are still as chummy as ever, but European jitters about the security of Russian gas and oil throw a shadow on Angela Merkel’s first business summit with Vladimir Putin. Even George Soros weighs in.
Found this story here at the Washington Post website: Nearly 30 percent of the experts on Food and Drug Administration advisory panels reported financial conflicts of interest, but excluding them would not have changed the recommendation for or against any particular drug, a consumer group said yesterday.
The Washington Post reports here: With gasoline prices expected to hover at record highs through summer, President Bush yesterday called for price-fixing investigations and several measures aimed at holding down the fast-rising costs of driving.
BBC news reports here: Panama has announced an ambitious $5.3bn (£2.9bn) plan to widen its famous canal to handle a new generation of giant container ships. President Martin Torrijos described the project as a "formidable challenge" but necessary if the canal is to retain its place as a key route for global cargo. The plan is due to be put to a national referendum later this year.
For relevant Information on the Third Set of Locks Project see this page here from The Panama Canal Website.
Spiegel Online writes here: As if prices at the gas pump weren’t high enough: A Russian oil chief admits that a planned pipeline to east Asia will let Moscow raise the price of crude to Europe.
Newsweek writes here: "No matter how powerful he grew inside the Bush White House, Josh Bolten always came off as just one of the guys, a smart, hardworking wonk who ducked publicity and rewarded his staff with a night at the bowling alley. But in the two weeks since he was named the new White House chief of staff, Bolten has, in his quiet, unassuming way, created high anxiety inside the West Wing. He was hired to do an urgent but seemingly impossible job—revive the flailing administration—and he had barely moved into his new office before he began easing out loyal but timeworn aides." - So whats your take? Will it Matter?
Spiegel Onlie reports here: Buying a fake of the Mona Lisa is fair enough, it’s a great painting, hangs in the Louvre and isn’t for sale. But buying a fake of a fake? Unwitting buyers have been shelling out thousands for faked forgeries of Mona and other classics, apparently thanks to fraud by the great-niece of the man who forged the Hitler diaries.
The Washington Post reports here: The Food and Drug Administration is sometimes too slow in picking up safety problems once drugs are on the market and in responding to emerging danger signals, a federal study concluded in a report to be released today.The review by the Government Accountability Office found that the FDA does not have clear policies for addressing drug safety issues and that it sometimes excludes its best safety experts from important meetings.
BBC reports here: Electrical power has changed our lives and given us phenomenal freedoms, from talking to people around the world, to going to the moon. But do we know just how much power we are using when we switch things off or put them into standby mode?
Figures from the Energy Saving Trust on standby power use in the UK home are astonishing:
It means that in one year, in the UK alone, our equipment on standby produces a total of 3.1 million tonnes of CO2.
But there is a bigger culprit out there: the personal computer, as power supply manufacturer Scott Richards explains. "If a million PC users switched to a more efficient power supply, it would save almost the equivalent of 250 million litres of gasoline a day." By the end of 2004 there were 820 million PCs in use around the world, and by 2007 that will top a billion, according to the Computer Industry Almanac. No matter how easy these devices make our lives there is little doubt that they are costing us and the planet dearly. As Mr Richards says: "If you really want to be green with your PC, when you’re done using it turn it off."