Free Republic

On Thursday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Alex Wagner Tonight,” Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry told countries that say they need fossil fuels for development that “they have to buy into this transformation” to green energy that he acknowledged “the private sector’s restrained against investing” in, “partly just out of concern, not confident.” Guest host Ayman Mohyeldin asked, “I was interviewing the Iraqi prime minister today, who’s desperate to get his country’s economy back on track after 20 years of war, but at the same time, a lot of it goes through fossil fuel. How do you convince a leader...

Here’s an interesting conundrum involving nuclear decay rates. We think that the decay rates of elements are constant regardless of the ambient conditions (except in a few special cases where beta decay can be influenced by powerful electric fields). So that makes it hard to explain the curious periodic variations in the decay rates of silicon-32 and radium-226 observed by groups at the Brookhaven National Labs in the US and at the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesandstalt in Germany in the 1980s. Today, the story gets even more puzzling. Jere Jenkins and pals at Purdue University in Indiana have re-analysed the raw data...

NEW YORK (AP) - Pressed anew on whether she supports granting driver's licenses to illegal immigrants, Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton said Tuesday it depends on the state. In a CNN interview, Clinton, a New York senator, reiterated her support for governors who must contend with large populations of undocumented workers in the absence of federal immigration reform. She then was asked whether she thinks it is a "good idea" for governors to allow illegal immigrants to obtain driver's licenses. "It depends upon what state they're in. It depends upon what they think the risks are," Clinton said. "A governor of...

WASHINGTON - The effect of deforestation on climate depends on three things — location, location and location. Environmentalists concerned about global warming have long encouraged preservation of forests because they absorb carbon dioxide, the most abundant greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. But the issue, like most things, may be more complicated than it first appears. New research in this week's online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, confirms the effectiveness of tropical forests at reducing warming by absorbing carbon. But it suggests that in snowy latitudes, forests may actually increase local warming by absorbing solar energy that...

Cervical cancer virus risk may depend on race 15:30 02 August 2006 NewScientist.com news service Roxanne Khamsi Race may influence a woman’s risk of a virus known to cause cervical cancer, researchers report. The new study finds that a variant of the human papillomavirus (HPV) from a particular geographical region will infect a woman longer if her ancestors come from the same region. Experts say it is an uncommon example of how people are more prone to viral agents from their own place of origin. HPV is by no means an uncommon virus: about 50% of sexually active women between...

WASHINGTON, May 21, 2006 – One day after Iraq's unity government was sworn in, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said it's too soon to try to project when major U.S. troop withdrawals might occur. Speaking today on NBC's "Meet the Press," Rice said conditions on the ground and consultations with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government would play the question out over time. "We are going to sit with the new Iraqi prime minister and his team and look at the security situation both in terms of what remains to be done and who should do it," Rice said. The secretary...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 25, 2005 – U.S. troops serving in the war against terrorism "all rely on the love and support of their families," President Bush said at a gathering of military spouses at Bolling Air Force Base here today. Military members are deployed worldwide defending "our freedom and our security in the first war of the 21st century," Bush said. American servicemembers are performing dangerous missions in places like Afghanistan and Iraq "with skill and courage and compassion," Bush said. All of America "is proud of the men and women who wear our uniform," Bush said, adding, "And so am...

WASHINGTON - In early January 2001, President-elect George W. Bush got a sobering warning from a railroad executive he invited to an economic conference in Austin, Texas. "Mr. President, you're inheriting a recession," CSX Inc. chairman John Snow remembers saying. For sure, Bush is hearing much more upbeat counsel these days from Snow, whose lease as treasury secretary was just extended by the president after weeks of suspense. Nobody is forecasting a recession ahead of Bush's second term. But the prognosis for the economy is mixed as the president begins his campaign to sell an ambitious and costly domestic agenda....