A color-coded map identifies American cities' level of risk to bioterrorism. Red identifies urban areas of highest risk, yellow is medium risk, and green is lowest risk. (Credit: Walter W. Piegorsch)ScienceDaily (Mar. 5, 2008) — A University of Arizona researcher has created a new system to dramatically show American cities their relative level of vulnerability to bioterrorism.
Walter W. Piegorsch, an expert on environmental risk, has placed 132 major cities -- from Albany, N.Y., to Youngstown, Ohio -- on a color-coded map that identifies their level of risk based on factors including critical industries, ports, railroads, population, natural environment and other factors.
Piegorsch is the director of a new UA graduate program in interdisciplinary statistics and a professor of mathematics in the College of Science, as well as a member of the UA's BIO5 Institute.
The map marks high-risk areas as red (for example, Houston and, surprisingly, Boise, ID), midrange risk as yellow (San Francisco) and lower risk as green (Tucson). The map shows a wide swath of highest-risk urban areas running from New York down through the Southeast and into Texas. Boise is the only high-risk urban area that lies outside the swath.
The model employs what risk experts ...   more »

By LARA JAKES JORDAN 
Become an FBI Agent - Want to become an FBI agent? Find out how.
WASHINGTON (AP) - The FBI improperly used national security letters in 2006 to obtain personal data on Americans during terror and spy investigations, Director Robert Mueller said Wednesday.
Mueller told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the privacy breach by FBI agents and lawyers occurred a year before the bureau enacted sweeping new reforms to prevent future lapses.
Details on the abuses will be outlined in the coming days in a report by the Justice Department's inspector general.
The report is a follow-up to an audit by the inspector general a year ago that found the FBI demanded personal data on people from banks, telephone and Internet providers and credit bureaus without official authorization and in non-emergency circumstances between 2003 and 2005. 
Mueller, noting senators' concerns about Americans' civil and privacy rights, said the new report "will identify issues similar to those in the report issued last March." The similarities, he said, are because the time period of the two studies "predates the reforms we now have in place."
He added: "We are committed to ensuring that we not only get this right, ...   more »

'Breathtaking' decision on homeschooling
now moving to California Supreme Court
By Bob Unruh
A "breathtaking" ruling from a California appeals court that could subject the parents of 166,000 students in the state to criminal sanctions will be taken to the state Supreme Court.
The announcement comes today from the Pacific Justice Institute, whose president, Brad Dacus, described the impact of the decision as "stunning."
"The scope of this decision by the appellate court is breathtaking," he said. "It not only attacks traditional homeschooling, but also calls into question homeschooling through charter schools and teaching children at home via independent study through public and private school."
"If not reversed, the parents of the more than 166,000 students currently receiving an education at home will be subject to criminal sanctions," he said.
WND broke the story of the ruling that came in a case involving the family of Phillip and Mary Long of Los Angeles.
(Story continues below)
The decision from the 2nd Appellate Court in Los Angeles granted a special petition brought by lawyers appointed to represent the two youngest children after the family's homeschooling was brought to the attention of child advocates. The lawyers appointed by the state were unhappy ...   more »

Narco-rebels say Venezuela aiding them, more help coming from Democrat president
WASHINGTON – A laptop computer captured in the possession of a slain Colombian revolutionary provides tangible evidence Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is aiding the narco-rebels and that they see more help coming next year if Barack Obama becomes president.
The laptop was seized Saturday after a raid by Colombian government forces on commandos of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. Some 23 rebels were killed in the raid, including Raul Reyes, their leader. The files on the computer provide details and context to what the Colombian government claims is Chavez's effort to subvert the U.S. ally.
Venezuela says the documents are lies. Obama's campaign has not commented on the allusions to a relationship between the Democratic presidential candidate and the Chavez-backed, drug lords of FARC.
The files reveal correspondence between the most prominent members and leaders of FARC:
Reyes, the FARC's foreign minister and public face;
Manuel Marulanda, the rebels' 77-year-old supreme leader;
Jorge Briceno, their much-feared field marshal;
Ivan Marquez, the insurgents' apparent go-between with Chavez. Marquez is believed to live in Venezuela.
Copies of 13 documents were sent to reporters yesterday by Colombia's national police ...   more »

Jonathan Leake
THE world is only ten weeks away from running out of wheat supplies after stocks fell to their lowest levels for 50 years.
The crisis has pushed prices to an all-time high and could lead to further hikes in the price of bread, beer, biscuits and other basic foods.
It could also exacerbate serious food shortages in developing countries especially in Africa.
The crisis comes after two successive years of disastrous wheat harvests, which saw production fall from 624m to 600m tonnes, according to the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
Experts blame climate change as heatwaves caused a slump in harvests last year in eastern Europe, Canada, Morocco and Australia, all big wheat producers.
Booming populations and a switch to a meat-rich diet in the developing world also mean that about 110m tons of the world's annual wheat crop is being diverted to feed livestock.
Short term pressures have compounded the problem. Speculative buying by investors gambling on further price rises has further pushed up prices.
Though shortages are often blamed on the use of land for biofuel crops, the main biofuel cereal crop is maize, not wheat. Farmers have brought millions of acres of fallow ...   more »

Three weeks ago, I wrote about Mississippi Legislature House Bill 282 that would have imposed fines or revoked licenses of food establishments that served obese people. Fortunately, the measure died in committee. State Rep. Ted Mayhall, one of the bill's sponsors, justified it by saying that he wanted to bring attention to the fact that "Obesity makes people more susceptible to diabetes, which puts a further strain on the state's financially challenged Medicaid program."
His sentiments were expressed by quite a few readers who didn't necessarily support such a measure but opined that if a particular behavior or lifestyle imposed costs on others through tax-supported health care, the government had a right to intercede.
Similar justification was used for laws requiring helmets for motorcyclists and bicyclists. After all, if one exercises his liberty to ride without a helmet, and has an accident and becomes a vegetable, society has to bear the expense of taking care of him. The fact that an obese person becomes ill, or a cyclist has an accident, and becomes a burden on taxpayers who must bear the expense of taking care of him, is not a problem of liberty. It's a problem of socialism where one ...   more »

This month we celebrate Easter. Whoops! Why is our most holy holiday named after a pagan goddess? It is at this time that we celebrate the very Gospel itself: "…that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures; that He was buried; and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures." Yet for some reason we have allowed the remembrance of Christ's death and resurrection to be muddled by ancient pagan traditions (rabbits that lay eggs and other such nonsense). Nonetheless, it is perhaps appropriate at this time of year to examine a rather peculiar episode in Israel's history. This strange event was a foreshadowing of things to come:
It happened during the wilderness wanderings, after the children of Israel escaped from slavery in Egypt. On one of the many occasions that the Israelites were murmuring against God's provision, God sent deadly serpents as a judgment. In response to Moses' prayer for the people, God instructed Moses to set up a bronze serpent on a pole, and everyone who looked upon it would live (Numbers 21:4-9).
This seems like a strange remedy. Why a bronze serpent? Why did God choose this peculiar method? It would be ...   more »

'Undisputed presence in Canada of known terrorists, extremists'
One of northern Montana's scenic vistas, through which authorities fear terrorists could penetrate U.S. border defenses
A new report from the Department of Homeland Security is warning that the U.S. is at risk from invasion through its northern border, a 4,000-mile stretch of mostly unattended territory in 12 states, with the confirmed presence of a number of terrorist and extremist groups in Canada.
"The primary threat along the northern border is the potential for extremists and their conveyances to enter the U.S. undetected," the report delivered to Congress this week says. "There is an undisputed presence in Canada of known terrorist affiliate and extremist groups, including Hezbollah, Hamas and the Armed Islamic Group of Algeria."
While both the United States and Canada long have boasted that the border between the two nations is the longest undefended international border in the world – there even is an International Peace Garden straddling the boundary on the edge of North Dakota, in the post-9/11 world, concerns over the movement of terrorists and their weaponry into the United States has increased exponentially. 
That, especially since it was revealed that even before 9/11, an Algerian-born operative for ...   more »