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A two-year-old Chinese boy is thought to be the world’s youngest smoker. Tong Liangliang was taught how to light up by his father, who believed the habit would alleviate pain caused by a hernia. The toddler now smokes a pack of cigarettes a day and throws a tantrum if he can’t get his fix. ‘The father wasn’t aware of how serious the toddler’s habit became until the child began to increase the number of cigarettes he smoked per day’, China Radio International reported. Tong received his first cigarette at the age of 18 months in a bid to reduce the...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The House approved a sweeping energy and climate bill Friday which could for the first time usher in widespread government restrictions on greenhouse gases and help renewable energy become cost competitive with fossil fuels. The bill passed 219-212, with virtually no Republican support. The central part of the legislation limits the amount of carbon dioxide, the main gas behind global warming, that companies like electric utilities, gasoline refiners, chemical firms and other large users of energy can put into the atmosphere. There were previously no restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions. The bill aims to cut greenhouse...

China has given its word to the United States that it is "deeply committed" to implementing tough new nuclear sanctions against North Korea, a senior US official said Friday. The official also said that as part of the effort to put a straitjacket on Pyongyang after its latest nuclear test and missile launches, Washington had set up an inter-agency team to coordinate the sanctions with other nations.

The Catholic Church makes men . . . Of such she may also someday make soldiers. — Hilaire Belloc It is a source of no small irony that, even as radical feminists within and without the Church have railed for two generations against patriarchy and phallocentrism, it can be quite plausibly said that the post-conciliar Church in this country has, for all intents and purposes, been run by women. Consider a Sunday in the life of a typical American parish. Father Reilly, once his mother's darling, says Mass before a congregation disproportionately representative of widows (both the traditional and the...

Borrowing from the physics of invisibility cloaks could make it possible to hide buildings from the devastating effects of earthquakes, say physicists in France and the UK. The "earthquake cloak" idea comes from the team led by Stefan Enoch at the Fresnel Institute in Marseille, France. They were the first to show that the physics of invisibility cloaks could have other applications – designing a cloak that could render objects "invisible" to destructive storm waves or tsunamis. The seismic waves of an earthquake fall into two main groups: body waves that propagate through the Earth, and surface waves that travel...

MOSCOW (AFP) – The United States and Russia will sign a military cooperation agreement when US President Barack Obama visits in July, Moscow's top military commander said Friday after meeting his US counterpart. The announcement reflects warming ties between Moscow and Washington and would have been unthinkable last August when the Georgia crisis pushed their relations to the lowest point since the Cold War. *snip* "We reached an absolutely identical understanding that in the world there are many more threats and challenges that we should solve on the political and military levels," he said, quoted by all three major Russian...

"Freedom from indoctrination ought to be a basic human right for all children," argues ABBA star Björn Ulvaeus in a passionate plea for Sweden to rethink its policy on faith-based schools. Without thinking too much about it at the time, when I wrote the lyrics for ABBA's songs the message I wished to convey tallies well with campaigns launched recently by humanist organisations in the UK, US and Australia: "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life." Earlier this month the Swedish Humanist Association (Humanisterna) launched a similar campaign. And in light of the growing influence of...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Ruth Madoff, the wife of epic swindler Bernard Madoff, will have to look for a new home after a court approved the sale of the couple's luxury Manhattan apartment and she agreed to forfeit $80 million in assets. Court documents filed on Friday night showed Ruth Madoff, 68, who has said nothing in public about her husband's crimes in the six months since his arrest, would be left with $2.5 million in cash. Madoff, 71, who will be sentenced in Manhattan federal court on Monday, is likely facing the rest of his life in prison after...

States that have set the U.S. agenda on addressing greenhouse gas emissions are lining up behind a federal climate bill, fearing signs of dissent would weaken a plan that still faces hurdles. Nearly half the U.S. states have moved toward curbing greenhouse gas emissions and want the federal government to learn from their experience in creating systems to cap emissions and trade pollution credits. The U.S. House of Representatives on Friday narrowly passed a climate change bill that would create a national system to cap greenhouse gas emissions and allow trade of such credits. Only eight Republicans joined Democrats in...

US appoints envoy to Muslim world Mrs Clinton said Ms Pandith brought 'years of experience' to the role The US State Department has appointed its first Special Representative to Muslim Communities. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Farah Pandith would play a leading role in US efforts to "engage Muslims around the world". She said Ms Pandith, who was born in Indian-administered Kashmir, would bring years of experience to the role. The appointment is part of President Barack Obama's attempts to improve relations with the Muslim world. Mrs Clinton said Ms Pandith "sees her personal experience as an illustration of...

S.C. governor's wife: I told him to stop affair ‘I was hoping he was on the Appalachian Trail,’ she says in interview Jenny Sanford, wife of South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, says she told her husband in no uncertain terms to stop seeing his lover. View related photos Alice Keeney / AP NBC Video: Politics GOP, a reality-show based community? June 26: Countdown presents the Republican candidates for 2012 as reality show contestants in 'The Real GOP candidates of 2012.' Sanford all apologies Sanford shows no signs of stepping down Obama calls Iran crackdown 'outrageous' Jackson’s personal politics Slideshow First...

Dedicated to Americas finned cars of the fifties and early sixties.

A hardline Iranian cleric called on Friday for the execution of leading rioters to teach a lesson to the thousands who have protested against the June 12 presidential election result. I want the judiciary to ... punish leading rioters firmly and without showing any mercy to teach everyone a lesson, Ahmad Khatami told worshippers at Tehran University. Khatami, a member of the Assembly of Experts, said the judiciary should charge the leading rioters as being mohareb or one who wages war against God. They should be punished ruthlessly and savagely, he said. Under Iran's Islamic law, punishment for people convicted...

A great video from the Jews for Preservation of Firearm Ownership (JPFO) site entitled "No Guns for Negros" how gun control was used to prevent Blacks from owning firearms and how gun control itself is ineffective to control crime. A must see video to show when people have nothing to defend themselves, they will be prosecuted easier without resistance.

Remember the scene where he declines to fight the bully? His daughter is on the hilltop, giving him a mischievous smile, sitting on her bicycle, and the bicycle seat has flashing lights. I took a contemporary theology class in college and we discussed cinematic symbolism. The texts we were using affirmed that in movies, nothing is accidental. Everything has a purpose. So in "Joe Somebody," what's with the flashing bicycle seat?

On the Lou Dobbs show last week, the Rev. Samuel Rodriguez of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Council and Bishop Harry Jackson Jr. of the High Impact Leadership Coalition were confronted with the policy choice of whether to give emergency treatment to a 3-year-old undocumented child. Dobbs pushed a trade-off between "covering citizens and illegal immigrants." Rodriguez said that illegal immigrants should be covered; Jackson said they should not be treated the same as citizens, but then suggested that in practice he wouldn't turn the child away. I suspect most Americans agree with Jackson. But what about for legal immigrants?...

"America is still the abiding alternative to tyranny. That is our purpose in the world." Ronald Reagan "Freedom's never more than 1 generation away from extinction We didn't pass it to children in bloodstream it must be fought for" President Obama's weak response to Iranian government's reign of terror against its own people, not only goes against the most basic of American values, but it has also struck fear in the hearts of those looking to bring freedom and democracy to the Middle East. Not Just in Iran, but in the Arab world also. The democracy activist is afraid the...

President Obama rarely misses a chance to stress that 46 million people in the U.S. lack health coverage. But the actual number of chronically uninsured Americans is far less, experts say.Obama cited the figure in a recent speech to the American Medical Association to create a sense of urgency and moral necessity for his proposed health care reforms. "We are not a nation that accepts nearly 46 million uninsured men, women, and children. We are not a nation that lets hardworking families go without the coverage they deserve; or turns its back on those in need. We are a nation...

WASHINGTON – Stymied by Congress so far, the White House is considering issuing an executive order to indefinitely imprison a small number of Guantanamo Bay detainees considered too dangerous to prosecute or release, two administration officials said Friday.

WASHINGTON (Army News Service, June 26, 2009) -- Several Walter Reed Army Medical Center staffers survived the deadliest accident in Washington Metrorail's 33-year history Monday. Maj. David Bottoms, a Walter Reed chaplain and Col. Thomas Baker, chief of pathology, said they were both riding in the first car of the train that slammed into another stopped train during Monday's rush-hour commute home. "I was reading and listening to my iPod, and I noticed the front end of the car was buckling and it was coming toward us. It looked like a wave ... it stopped three seats in front of...