Five things Obama will do at the UN

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Five things Obama will do at the UN

President Obama hasn’t had much time lately for anything other than the economy, jobs, and maybe a little worrying about the midterm elections. But he’ll focus a good chunk of this week on foreign affairs when he decamps Washington for the United Nations in New York, spending the better part of three days – from Wednesday afternoon to Friday evening – on many of the bigger issues on his international plate.
Here are five things Mr. Obama will do while in New York.

- Howard LaFranchi, Staff writer

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Zimbabwean children attend a ceremony where South Korea Ambassador Vae-hack Oh handed over a donation of thousands of library books and computers to Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai in Harare on August 23. Zimbabwe has the lowest per capita GDP in the world. (AP/File)

5. Call for an overhaul of the UN campaign to improve living conditions for the world’s poorest

Obama will participate Wednesday in the closing session of a two-day summit on the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, the eight-point strategy adopted by world leaders in 2000 for lifting the standard of living of the world’s poorest by 2015. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called the summit both to take stock of progress and to prod the international community to renewed action, pressing participants from more than 145 countries to do better on everything from reducing hunger to tackling maternal and infant mortality to raising access to primary education
Obama will remind attendees that the US, the world’s largest provider of development assistance, is at the forefront of efforts. But he will also encourage both wealthy and developing countries to rethink their strategies for reducing poverty, putting greater emphasis on local economic development programs and plans that reach more of the world’s least-accessible rural poor. He is also expected to say more attention must be paid to accountability and weeding out corruption.
A controversial indicator to watch for: how much importance Obama places on the role family-planning services play in economic development. Conservatives who suspect the administration of opening the door to abortion will be ready to pounce.

source:http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Foreign-Policy/2010/0920/Five-things-Obama-will-do-at-the-UN/Call-for-an-overhaul-of-the-UN-campaign-to-improve-living-conditions-for-the-world-s-poorest

Frankenfish - modified salmon - considered for approval in US

WASHINGTON
U.S. government food regulators pondered Monday whether to say, for the first time, that it's OK to market a genetically engineered animal as safe for Americans people to eat.

The Food and Drug Administration is holding two days of hearings on a request to market genetically modified salmon. Ron Stotish, chief executive of AquaBounty, the company that made the marketing request, said at the meeting that his company's fish product is safe and environmentally sustainable.
Critics, however, call the modified salmon "frankenfish" that could cause the eventual decimation of the wild salmon population. An FDA advisory committee is reviewing the science of the genetically engineered fish this week and hearing such criticisms as the agency ponders approval.

IN PICTURES: The 20 weirdest fish in the ocean
The FDA has already said that the salmon, which grows twice as fast as conventional ones, is as safe to eat as the traditional variety.
Whether the American public will have an appetite for it is another matter. Genetic engineering is already widely used for crops, but the government until now has not considered allowing the consumption of modified animals. Although the potential benefits — and profits — are huge, many individuals have qualms about manipulating the genetic code of other living creatures.
Part of the two-day hearing will focus on labeling of the fish. It is possible that if the modified salmon is approved, consumers would not even know they were eating it. Current FDA regulations only require modified foods to be labeled as such if the food is substantially different than the conventional version, and the agency has said that the modified salmon is essentially the same as the Atlantic salmon.
Approval of the salmon would open the door for a variety of other genetically engineered animals, including an environmentally friendly pig that is being developed in Canada or cattle that are resistant to mad cow disease.
"For future applications out there the sky's the limit," said David Edwards of the Biotechnology Industry Association. "If you can imagine it, scientists can try to do it."
AquaBounty says it would be the first in the world to market genetically engineered fish.The company submitted its first application for FDA approval in 1995, but the agency did not decide until two years ago to consider applications for genetically engineered animals — a move seen as a breakthrough by the biotechnology industry.
Genetically engineered — or GE — animals are not clones, which the FDA has already said are safe to eat. Clones are copies of an animal. With GE animals, their DNA has been altered to produce a desirable characteristic.
In the case of the salmon, AquaBounty has added a growth hormone from a Chinook salmon that allows the fish to produce their growth hormone all year long. The engineers were able to keep the hormone active by using another gene from an eel-like fish called an ocean pout that acts like an on switch for the hormone, according to the company. Conventional salmon only produce the growth hormone some of the time.


source:http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Latest-News-Wires/2010/0920/Frankenfish-modified-salmon-considered-for-approval-in-US

US notches world's highest incarceration rate

More than 5.6 million Americans are in prison or have served time there, according to a new report by the Justice Department released Sunday. That's 1 in 37 adults living in the United States, the highest incarceration level in the world.
It's the first time the US government has released estimates of the extent of imprisonment, and the report's statistics have broad implications for everything from state fiscal crises to how other nations view the American experience.
If current trends continue, it means that a black male in the United States would have about a 1 in 3 chance of going to prison during his lifetime. For a Hispanic male, it's 1 in 6; for a white male, 1 in 17.
The numbers come after many years of get-tough policies - and years when violent-crime rates have generally fallen. But to some observers, they point to broader failures in US society, particularly in regard to racial minorities and others who are economically disadvantaged.

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By Gail Russell Chaddock, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor / August 18, 2003

obama and his wife Michelle in coffee shop!!!

 This is Women brain!!!!

One night President Obama and his wife Michelle decided to do something out of routine and go for a casual dinner at a restaurant that wasn't too luxurious. When they were seated, the owner of the restaurant asked the president's secret service if he could please speak to the First Lady in private. They obliged and Michelle had a conversation with the owner. Following this conversation President Obama asked Michelle, why was he so interested in talking to you. She mentioned that in her teenage years, he had been madly in love with her.  President Obama then said, "so if you had married him, you would now be the owner of this lovely restaurant" , to which Michelle responded, "no, if I had married him, he would now be the President"  This is the mail came to me i'm not responsibe  for this post

US: Students losing their sensitive side

Are college students as nice as they used to be? Apparently not, and modern technology may be partly to blame, reports The Washington Post. A new University of Michigan study has found that since 2000, college students in the US have become less empathetic.

The meta-analysis was led by Sara Konrath, a researcher at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research, and was presented in Boston at the annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science. She analysed data on empathy among almost 14,000 college students over the past 30 years.

"We found the biggest drop in empathy after the year 2000," said Konrath. "College kids today are about 40% lower in empathy than their counterparts of 20 or 30 years ago, as measured by standard tests of this personality trait."
Full report on The Washington Post site 

Hormones in U.S. Beef Linked to Cancer Risk

Beef produced in the United States contains dangerously high levels of natural and synthetic hormones, warns Dr. Samuel S. Epstein of the Cancer Prevention Coalition.

According to Epstein, more than half of all beef cows slaughtered in the United States each year have been treated with either the natural hormones estrogen, progesterone or testosterone, or the synthetic hormones melengesterol, trenbolone or zeranol. Hormone-emitting pellets are implanted under each cow's ear when it enters the feedlot, then again 50 days later. After another 50 days, the cow is slaughtered.

The hormones cause the cows to rapidly put on weight, leading to approximately $80 more profit per animal.

"Not surprisingly, but contrary to longstanding claims by the [FDA] and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), residues of these hormones in meat are up to 20-fold higher than normal," Epstein said in a press release. "Still higher residues result from the not uncommon illegal practice of implantation directly into muscle. Furthermore, contrary to misleading assurances, meat is still not monitored for hormone residues."

The FDA insists that hormone levels in U.S. beef are safe and normal, but does not require any testing to back up this claim.

According to Epstein, however, tests reveal that an eight-year-old boy eating two hamburgers in one day would be exposed to enough estradiol to increase his body's levels of the hormone by 10 percent.

Exposure to external hormones is well known to increase the risk of cancer, reproductive dysfunction and other health problems.

"Increased levels of sex hormones are linked to the escalating incidence of reproductive cancers in the United States since 1975 - 60 percent for prostate, 59 percent for testis and 10 percent for breast," Epstein said.

Women in the United States are five times more likely to get breast cancer than women in the European Community or other countries that have banned the production or importation of hormonal beef.

Sources for this story include: www.organicconsumers.org.

US Gov't Makes a Mess of Classifying Sensitive Data

"Protecting and classifying sensitive information such as social security numbers shouldn't be that hard, but (perhaps not surprisingly) the US government has elevated complicating that task to an art form. It seems that designating, safeguarding, and disseminating such important information involves over 100 unique markings and at least 130 different labeling or handling routines, reflecting a disjointed, inconsistent, and unpredictable system for protecting, sharing, and disclosing sensitive information." This was the conclusion of a recent report (PDF) by the Government Accountability Office, which also "found areas where sensitive information is not fully safeguarded and thus may remain at risk of unauthorized disclosure or misuse."

U.S. Hospitals Secretly Promote Black Market Trading of Harvested Organs for Transplants

Many hospitals in United states are conflicting , tacitly participating in the illegal organ transplant industry by not scrutinizing potential donors too closely.

Will Obama reveal back?

As a U.S. Senator, the President-Elect Barack Obama Voted for Legislation which would have to Killed Gianna Jessen who was Born Alive after a BOTCHED Abortion
Gianna Jessen is 31 years old whose life and survival has been the subject of intense media interest in light of the debate that she sparked during the recent U.S. presidential campaign. She was born in California in 1977 to a mother who tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to undergo an abortion. At the age of 17, when many girls her age were planning what they would be wearing on prom night, Gianna's mother, who was six weeks pregnant, decided to end her pregnancy and her unborn baby's life by submitting to an injection of saline solution whose purpose was to burn the embryo she was carrying. Demonstrating a fierce will to survive, even at that tender age, Giana, diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy and numerous other disabilities because of the attempted abortion, managed to survive when the odds were decidedly against her. By pure chance, the abortionist was not present when Gianna was born, for had he been present, there is almost no chance that she would have lived. An experienced nurse quickly sent Gianna for emergency care at a local neonatology intensive care department where the doctors kept her alive, assuming that there was no chance she could. Weighing only 2 pounds there was little hope, and when she did "make it" she was placed in foster care. The diagnosis was she would probably never be able to walk or crawl, lift her head or sit up by herself. Eventually, demonstrating a fierce sense of personal drive, she eventually learned to sit up, crawl, then stand. She learned to walk with leg braces and a walker by the time she was four years old. Physical therapy became a routine in her life, and after undergoing four surgical procedures, she learned to walk unassisted. Walking led to walking faster and eventually she overcame the obstacles and started running. Running led to racing, led to competitions and she soon entered marathons (26.2 miles) a rare achievement for a person who started out in life on such shaky ground. What does this have to do with America's dazzling president-elect - himself a "poster image" of excellent health? Little other than the fact that according to Ms. Jessen, early in his political career, Mr. Obama was unwilling to support legislation which would have protected the lives of "botched abortions". Gianna views Mr. Obama's opinions on the matter as being seriously detrimental to the chances of people like her surviving if they manage to do so by some miraculous means. Gianna went so far as to publicize her concerns about Mr. Obama's legislative record, and her views, and the candidate's positions were widely viewed as opposing campaign advertisements. The advertisements and attendant publicity resulted in public statements, accusations and denials becoming part of their outspoken debate. As Gianna sees it, Mr. Obama has lost his sense of objectivity due to political ambition and expediency, as reflected in his attack on her during the campaign. All she asked of him publicly was to support medical care and protection for infants who survive abortion. Gianna claims that Obama voted against such legislative protection and care four times even though the U.S. Senate voted 98-0 in favor of a bill identical to the one Obama opposed. Again, according to Ms. Jessen, in the words of Mr. Obama's own misleading ad, his position is totally unacceptable. In defending his position, Mr. Obama said that the question of when babies should receive human rights was above his pay grade. Gianna's response to that very wishy-washy explanation: That type of vacillation in public policy almost left her to die. No one should have to go through what she experienced.