By JEFF BARNARD
  GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP) - Looking high and low, Robbin Thorp can no longer find a species of bumblebee that just five years ago was plentiful in northwestern California and southwestern Oregon.
Thorp, an emeritus professor of entomology from the University of California at Davis, found one solitary worker last year along a remote mountain trail in the Siskiyou Mountains, but hasn't been able to locate any this year.
He fears that the species—Franklin's bumblebee—has gone extinct before anyone could even propose it for the endangered species list. To make matters worse, two other bumblebee species—one on the East coast, one on the West—have gone from common to rare.
Amid the uproar over global warming and mysterious disappearances of honeybee colonies, concern over the plight of the lowly bumblebee has been confined to scientists laboring in obscurity.
But if bumblebees were to disappear, farmers and entomologists warn, the consequences would be huge, especially coming on top of the problems with honeybees, which are active at different times and on different crop species.
Bumblebees are responsible for pollinating an estimated 15 percent of all the crops grown in the U.S., worth $3 billion, particularly those raised in ...   more »

Vicente Fox confirms long-term deal worked out with President Bush
By Jerome R. Corsi
Ex-Mexican President Vicente Fox last night on CNN
Former Mexican President Vicente Fox confirmed the existence of a plan conceived with President Bush to create a new regional currency in the Americas, in an interview last night on CNN's "Larry King Live."
It possibly was the first time a leader of Mexico, Canada or the U.S. openly confirmed a plan for a regional currency. Fox explained the current regional trade agreement that encompasses the Western Hemisphere is intended to evolve into other previously hidden aspects of integration.
According to a transcript published by CNN, King, near the end of the broadcast, asked Fox a question e-mailed from a listener, a Ms. Gonzalez from Elizabeth, N.J.: "Mr. Fox, I would like to know how you feel about the possibility of having a Latin America united with one currency?"
Fox answered in the affirmative, indicating it was a long-term plan. He admitted he and President Bush had agreed to pursue the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas – a free-trade zone extending throughout the Western Hemisphere, suggesting part of the plan was to institute eventually a regional currency. ...   more »

by Cal Thomas
Whatever else his critics say of him, no one can fault President Bush for failing to go the extra mile in his efforts to show that neither he, nor the United States, is opposed to the Islamic faith, or to Muslim nations.
Last week, the president and Mrs. Bush hosted their seventh Iftaar Dinner, the celebration that breaks the Muslim fast during Ramadan. Immediately after 9/11, the president visited a Washington, D.C., mosque and proclaimed Islam a “religion of peace.” He has frequently said that terrorists are not real Muslims, anymore than people who proclaim to be Christian and engage in violence are genuine Christians.
The president is the most openly evangelical Christian and faithful churchgoer since Jimmy Carter. And the evangelical community has mostly embraced him and twice voted for him in overwhelming numbers. But that constituency is likely to be troubled over something the president said in an interview with Al Arabiya television. In an official transcript released by the White House, the president said, “…I believe in an almighty God, and I believe that all the world, whether they be Muslim, Christian, or any other religion, prays to the same God.” Later in the ...   more »

Transcript of Dem candidates' replies to question at Dartmouth debate
Editor's note: The following is a transcript of the replies of the leading Democratic presidential candidates to a question about the propriety of reading literature about same-sex marriage and homosexuality to second-graders.
TIM RUSSERT: I'd like to go to Allison King of New England Cable News again for another question.
Allison?
KING: Thanks, Tim.
The issues surrounding gay rights have been hotly debated here in New England. For example, last year some parents of second-graders in Lexington, Massachusetts, were outraged to learn their children's teacher had read a story about same-sex marriage, about a prince who marries another prince.
Same-sex marriage is legal in Massachusetts but most of you oppose it. Would you be comfortable having this story read to your children as part of their school curriculum?
I'm going to start with Senator Edwards.
JOHN EDWARDS: Yes, absolutely.
What I want is I want my children to understand everything about the difficulties that gay and lesbian couples are faced with every day, the discrimination that they're faced with every single day of their lives.
And I suspect my two younger children, Emma Claire, who's 9, and Jack, who's 7, ...   more »

Jia-Rui Chong, Los Angeles Times
The young American Army medic would not stop bleeding.
He had been put on a powerful regimen of antibiotics by doctors aboard the hospital ship Comfort in the Persian Gulf. But something was wrong.
He was in shock and bleeding from small pricks where nurses had placed intravenous lines. Red, swollen tissue from an active bacterial infection was expanding around his abdominal wound. His immune system was in overdrive.
How odd, thought Dr. Kyle Petersen, an infectious disease specialist. He knew of one injured Iraqi man with similar symptoms and a few days later encountered an Iraqi teenager with gunshot wounds in the same condition.
Within a few days, blood tests confirmed that the medic and the two wounded Iraqis were infected with an unusual bacterium, Acinetobacter baumannii.
This particular strain had a deadly twist. It was resistant to a dozen antibiotics. The medic survived, but by the time Petersen connected the dots, the two Iraqi patients were dead.
It was April 2003, early in the Iraq war - and 41/2 years later, scientists still are struggling to understand the medical mystery.
The three cases aboard the Comfort were the first of a stubborn outbreak ...   more »

By Harry Wallop
Children should not be given mobile phones because using them for more than 10 years increases the risk of brain cancer, a leading scientist has said.
Have your say: Will health warnings make you use your mobile less?   
New research says that children's thinner skulls make them more vulnerable to tumours 
People who have used their phone for a decade are twice as likely to be diagnosed with a tumour on a nerve connecting the ear to the brain, according to a group of scientists who have surveyed the results of 11 different studies.
Prof Kjell Mild, of Orbero University, Sweden, who is a Government adviser and led the research, said that children should not be allowed to use mobile phones because their thinner skulls and developing nervous system made them particularly vulnerable.
His study comes just a month after a separate piece of research, jointly funded by the Government and the mobile phone industry, found there was only a "very faint hint" of a link between long-term use of mobile phones and brain tumours.
This six-year, £8.8 million Mobile Telecommunications and Health Research (MTHR) programme came under fire for failing to investigate more thoroughly those ...   more »