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Californians age 40 and older are dying of drug overdoses at double the rate recorded in 1990, a little-noticed trend that upends the notion of hard-core drug use as primarily a young person's peril. Indeed, overdoses among baby boomers are driving an overall increase in drug deaths so dramatic that soon they may surpass automobile accidents as the state's leading cause of nonnatural deaths. In 2003, the latest year for which the state has figures, a record 3,691 drug users died, up 73% since 1990. The total surpassed deaths from firearms, homicides and AIDS. Remarkably, the rate of deadly overdoses...

Intelligencer Rathergate: The Footnotes Threatened to take memos to the Times; later admits he had his doubts all along. (Photo credit: Dennis Van Tine/LFI) Dan Rather’s future on CBS News certainly looks less than assured, just as the updated paperback edition of David Blum’s 60 Minutes tell-all, Tick . . . Tick . . . Tick . . . , hits stores this week. Among Blum’s new revelations: The night before last fall’s controversial National Guard piece aired, Rather called 60 Minutes Wednesday executive producer Josh Howard from the anchor desk to find out why he wasn’t running promos for...

Home | News This Hour | News on the Web | Politics | Culture | Special Reports | International | Nation  Commentary | Bozell's Column | Cartoons | Fact-O-Rama! | Site Search    Terrorist Claims World Leaders Ignored His Warnings By Sherrie Gossett CNSNews.com Staff WriterOctober 10, 2005 (CNSNews.com) - An imprisoned al Qaeda leader claims his repeated warnings to international authorities regarding the terror network's planned operations, including bombings in Spain, Britain and Italy, have gone unheeded. Ali Ahmed Ali Hamad, who is currently serving a 12-year prison term in Zenica prison in Bosnia-Herzegovina for terrorism and robbery, states that for more than three years - from...

Awesome Animals More Weird Mating Habits: The longest-lasting copulation, according to University of Arizona biologist John Alcock (interviewed for an August Knight Ridder story), is that of the lowly "stick insect" (of the phasmida family), which goes on for several months at a time, even though, he said, it is "not clear this is welcome to the female." The male attaches himself to the female's back, which allows her to continue with her daily routine during the mating, while also discouraging competitor males. According to other biologists, some ticks spend up to eight hours on what resembles foreplay, and butterflies,...

Most of the signs are handwritten and simply worded, such as "Workers Wanted" or "Need 50 Laborers Now!" Word has gotten out and each morning day laborers — who come from Central America and Mexico by way of California, Texas and Arizona — gather on street corners in the Kenner and Metairie neighborhoods on the western edge of the city. Lured by jobs paying $15 to $17 an hour, the Spanish-speaking day laborers have flooded into New Orleans to haul out debris, clear downed trees, put in drywall and perform other tasks as rebuilding takes hold in the city. Specialized...

SOME performers say they love New York, but U2's 25-year affair with the city couldn't be expressed better than at their Madison Square Garden Vertigo Tour opener, played with panting passion that was returned kiss for kiss by the sold-out house. The performance on Friday was the kind of show that makes it easy to answer anybody who asks, "What was the best concert of the year?" This was it — hands down and no question. During the two-hour gig, Bono was chatty and even reminisced about when he first came to New York at age 19. He half-joked, "That's...

Democrats voted lock step in the U.S. House of Representatives to deny any new gasoline refineries, trying to keep the price of gas high. Despite the damaging effects on the refineries by hurricanes Katrina in Louisiana and Rita in Texas, democrats continue to try to hamstring refinery production as no new refineries have been built to meet increased demand in more than a decade. Democrats continue to follow extremist environmental policies, even denying compensation for environmental takings in a recent U.S. House of Representatives vote on the Endangered Species act. Once the American public discovers that the democrats have been...

Washington, D.C. – Concerned Women for America (CWA) has released a memorandum explaining its evaluation of information about Harriet Miers, President Bush’s nominee to succeed Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. The memo explains why CWA is unable to endorse the nomination at this time based on current information about Miss Miers. It is available on CWA’s Web site, www.cwfa.org. “CWA staff have been heavily involved in evaluating Miss Miers’ background and qualifications,” said Jan LaRue, CWA’s chief counsel. “We have learned nothing new that allows us to endorse her at this time. Whether we can eventually support her will...

There is no question about Miers good character and temperament to be a judge. There is a question as to whether Miers is sufficiently smart and knowledgeable about Constitutional issues to be qualified to be a Supreme Court Justice. That is why I am undecided. The above concern is not however really a conservative versus liberal issue. Assuming Miers does well at the hearings as to matters of her basic competence, on what basis would “conservative” pressure groups of senators oppose Miers? That she does not have a paper trail? That they are not sufficiently confident that she will vote...

Misunderestimating the Furor Over Hurricane Harriet By Chuck Muth CNSNews.com Commentary October 10, 2005 The White House's spinmeisters are either ignorantly misreading or intentionally mischaracterizing the general conservative opposition to Harriet Miers' nomination to the Supreme Court. They continue "misunderestimating" the furor at their own peril. It's not that conservatives think she's "unqualified." We accept the fact that one need not have been a judge to sit on the Supreme Court. We accept the fact that many a fine Justice had no judicial experience before joining SCOTUS. On the other hand, a lot of really lousy former justices had no...

Introduction to Eugenics The principal manifestations of eugenics are racism and abortion; eugenics is the basis for "scientific racism" and laid the foundation for legalizing abortion. It is the driving force behind euthanasia, in vitro fertilization, and embryo and fetal research. It is the driving force in global population policy, which is a key element in American foreign policy. It is the force driving much of the environmentalist movement, welfare policy, welfare reform, and health care. It is found in anthropology, sociology, psychology—all the social sciences. It is reflected in much American literature, especially science fiction. So it is worth...

NEWBERRY, S.C., Oct. 10 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- In response to increased customer demand in North America, Caterpillar Inc. (NYSE: CAT - News) will open a new electric power manufacturing facility in Newberry, South Carolina. There are strong global growth opportunities for Caterpillar in the electric power industry, and the opening of this facility in South Carolina is part of our strategy to further strengthen our worldwide leadership position in this industry," said Bill Rohner, Caterpillar vice president with responsibility for the Electric Power Division. Diesel and gas powered generator sets will be assembled at the Newberry operation. The 10-200 kW range...

Martha MacCallum was just interviewing former Clinton Chief of Staff Leon Panetta about Louis Freeh's new book slamming the old administration on terror response. Panetta defended pitifully by saying they always had a "serious view" concerning this stuff "whether it be Oklahoma City or the Olympics bombing or the flight off New York City". TWA 800 was not caused by a spontaneous fuel tank explosion. This is the fourth or fifth time a high-level Clinton staffer/senator has characterized TWA as a terrorist attack. We deserve to know what happened.

According to two sources close to former Saudi ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan, ex-president Bill Clinton was on the verge of tears over legal woes brought on by the Monica Lewinsky scandal during a Sept. 1998 meeting with Crown Prince Adbullah - and spent almost no time discussing the Khobar Towers bombing case. The Saudi account backs claims by former FBI Director Louis Freeh, who told CBS's "60 Minutes" last night that Clinton failed to press Abdullah during the meeting for cooperation in the Khobar case. Interviewed by the New Yorker in May 2001, two Saudi officials noted that Prince...

SAN FRANCISCO – Two former Black Panthers have been jailed – one for a second time – after refusing to testify before a grand jury about the 1971 killing of a police officer. Richard Brown, 64, was ordered in jail Friday after San Francisco Superior Court Judge Robert Dondero found him in contempt of court for refusing to answer the grand jury's questions. Two days earlier, a fellow former Panther, 62-year-old Ray Michael Boudreaux, was jailed for a second time on the same charge. Boudreaux had spent three weeks behind bars before the state Supreme Court ordered him released Sept....

An open letter to the creative powers behind "Casino Royale" Dear Martin Campbell, Paul Haggis, Barbara Broccoli, Michael G. Wilson and anybody else involved with the upcoming James Bond film: It's only two months before you're supposed to shoot a new James Bond movie and your writer and director are detailing entirely different visions to the press. And there's still the fact that many months of searching have failed to yield a leading man. Does it bother you that with every unsubstantiated rumor and fabricated press release, one of the most successful franchises in cinema history is turning into a...

Beyond leaving people bleary-eyed, clutching a Starbucks cup and dozing off at afternoon meetings, failing to get enough sleep or sleeping at odd hours heightens the risk for a variety of major illnesses, including cancer, heart disease, diabetes and obesity, recent studies indicate. Physiologic studies suggest that a sleep deficit may put the body into a state of high alert, increasing the production of stress hormones and driving up blood pressure, a major risk factor for heart attacks and strokes. Moreover, people who are sleep-deprived have elevated levels of substances in the blood that indicate a heightened state of inflammation...

Saying he questions a sovereign Indian tribe’s role in a local government process, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger late on Friday vetoed the bill that would have made the Rumsey Band of Wintun Indians an official partner in managing Conaway Ranch, if Yolo County officials acquire it through eminent domain. The legislation, AB 1747 by Assemblywoman Lois Wolk, D-Davis, would have made the tribe a member alongside Yolo County officials and others of the joint powers authority created for Conaway Ranch. The tribe has offered to loan the county money for the acquisition. The county and tribe say the veto does not...

With his poll numbers already at one of the lowest points in his tenure following Hurricane Katrina, President Bush took an unusual public battering from conservatives last week after nominating White House counsel and longtime aide Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court. But this week may offer Bush a chance to show progress on several issues that have plagued his second term. He will spend the first two days of the week in the Gulf Coast, where he'll attend the re-opening of a Mississippi elementary school and Habitat for Humanity building a house in Louisiana, as well as a dinner...

A genetically engineered mosquito with glowing gonads could become a new weapon in the battle against malaria. Researchers at Imperial College London created the mosquito by attaching a gene for fluorescence found in jellyfish to a gene expressed only in a male mosquito’s sexual organs. The technique makes it relatively simple to distinguish males from females, something that has previously hindered malaria-eradication strategies. One way to control disease-carrying mosquitoes is to flood an area with millions of sterile males. They mate with the females but produce no offspring, so the insect population drops. The technique has helped control the Mediterranean...