binaryoppositionpublic

proposes consolidating the current scheme of bank regulation.

Fed would become the government's "market stability regulator," given sweeping powers to gather information on a wide range of institutions so that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and his colleagues could better detect where threats to the system might be hiding.

certain to generate intense scrutiny in Congress and within the financial services industry

Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, a Democrat

"He is on the money when he calls for a more unified regulatory structure, although we would prefer a single regulator to the three he proposes."

Fed would serve as the market stability regulator and there would also be a financial regulator that would focus on financial institutions that operate with government guarantees such as deposit insurance for banks.

also proposes a business conduct regulator

he continued to be concerned about Iranians “taking Al Qaeda into Iran, training them and sending them back.”

McCain said: “Well, it’s common knowledge and has been reported in the media that Al Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran. That’s well known. And it’s unfortunate.”

based his campaign in large part on his assertion that he is the candidate best prepared to deal with Iraq

visitors spoke about the improvements in Iraq, were somewhat overshadowed by a bombing on Monday that killed more than 40 people in Karbala.

Although there is growing evidence that cannabis can trigger harmful mind-altering effects in users, scientists say the medicinal compound in question, cannabidiol, is not a hallucinogenic ingredient.

They are calling for human trials to be funded after researchers from Israel and Spain successfully conducted tests in mice.

found that symptoms of type 1 diabetes can also be helped by cannabidiol, warned against the use of cannabis by Alzheimer's patients because the psychoactive ingredient THC could have damaging effects on memory.

In the course of a five-month inquiry, the AP discovered that drugs have been detected in the drinking water supplies of 24 major metropolitan areas -- from Southern California to Northern New Jersey, from Detroit, Michigan, to Louisville, Kentucky.

Water providers rarely disclose results of pharmaceutical screenings, unless pressed, the AP found.

How do the drugs get into the water?

People take pills. Their bodies absorb some of the medication, but the rest of it passes through and is flushed down the toilet. The wastewater is treated before it is discharged into reservoirs, rivers or lakes. Then, some of the water is cleansed again at drinking water treatment plants and piped to consumers. But most treatments do not remove all drug residue.

"Based on what we now know, I would say we find there's little or no risk from pharmaceuticals in the environment to human health,"

damaging wildlife

male fish are being feminized, creating egg yolk proteins, a process usually restricted to females.

State lawmakers have passed nonbinding resolutions to end the war in Iraq and impeach Bush and Cheney, and several towns have also passed resolutions of impeachment. None of them have caught on in Washington.

Bush has never visited the state as president, though he has spent vacations at his family compound in nearby Maine.

Roughly 12,000 people live in Brattleboro, located on the Connecticut River in the state's southeastern corner. Nearby Marlboro has a population of roughly 1,000.

Twenty-five years after the federal report A Nation at Risk challenged U.S. public schools to raise the quality of education, the study finds high schoolers still lack important historical and cultural underpinnings of "a complete education." And, its authors fear, the nation's current focus on improving basic reading and math skills in elementary school might only make matters worse, giving short shrift to the humanities — even if children can read and do math.

n all, students earned a C in history and an F in literature, though the survey suggests students do well on topics schools cover. For instance, 88% knew the bombing of Pearl Harbor led the USA into World War II, and 97% could identify Martin Luther King Jr. as author of the "I Have a Dream" speech.

Fewer (77%) knew Uncle Tom's Cabin helped end slavery a century earlier.

"School has emphasized Martin Luther King, and everybody teaches it, and people are learning it,"

The findings probably won't sit well with educators, who say record numbers of students are taking college-level Advanced Placement history, literature and other courses in high school.

Prozac

They are all so-called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs.

Paxil

The researchers found that compared with placebo, these new-generation antidepressant medications did not yield clinically significant improvements in depression in patients who initially had moderate or even very severe depression. The study found that significant benefits occurred only in the most severely depressed patients.

"Drug-placebo differences in antidepressant efficacy increase as a function of baseline severity, but are relatively small even for severely depressed patients.

The researchers obtained data on all the clinical trials submitted to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the licensing of the four drugs.

Although patients get better when they take antidepressants, they also get better when they take a placebo, and the difference in improvement is not very great. This means that depressed people can improve without chemical treatments," Kirsch said in a statement.

Initially 100 million seeds from more than 100 countries have been sent for safekeeping at the $10 million facility which holds 268,000 seed samples, each from a different farm or field.

"Biological diversity is under threat from the forces of nature ... and from the actions of man," Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said at the opening ceremony.

insurance policy

threats such as war, natural disasters or climate change, he said.

Dubbed a doomsday vault, the cavern in the Svalbard archipelago off the northern tip of Norway is a backup storage for seeds from gene banks around the globe.

The deposits range from major African and Asian staples such as rice, maize, wheat, cowpea and sorghum to European and South American varieties of eggplant, lettuce, barley and potato. Genetically modified varieties will not be included.

The finding may explain the popularity of some high-cost drugs over cheaper alternatives, the authors conclude.

It may also help account for patients’ reports that generic drugs are less effective than brand-name ones, though their active ingredients are identical.

The research is being published on Wednesday in The Journal of the American Medical Association.

The investigators had 82 men and women rate the pain caused by electric shocks applied to their wrist, before and after taking a pill. Half the participants had read that the pill, described as a newly approved prescription pain reliever, was regularly priced at $2.50 per dose. The other half read that it had been discounted to 10 cents. In fact, both were dummy pills.

The pills had a strong placebo effect in both groups. But 85 percent of those using the expensive pills reported significant pain relief, compared with 61 percent on the cheaper pills.

corrected for each person’s individual level of pain tolerance.

Previous studies have shown that pill size and color also affect people’s perceptions of effectiveness. In one, people rated black and red capsules as “strongest” and white ones as “weakest.”

The government was concerned that the images, which included views of the entrances to military bases, were a threat. Gen. Gene Renuart, head of the military command responsible for homeland defense, said, "It actually shows where all the guards are.

It shows how the barriers go up and down. It shows how to get in and out of buildings. I think that poses a real security risk for our military installations."

Freedom of information and security butt heads once again.

But the images were taken from public streets, where anyone could walk and take the same pictures and/or video and post them to the Internet.

The question remains whether the government had the right to request that the images be removed.

Street Views has caused controversy from the start. Many privacy advocates claimed that even though images were taken in public places -- where no reasonable assumption of privacy really exists -- people were being exposed doing things they might not wish to have plastered on the Internet for all to see.

man was pictured exiting a San Francisco strip club.

woman was shown sunbathing

Complaints have even included a woman asking that a picture of her cat be taken down, a request Google denied."

One of the greatest challenges in battling HIV is the virus' ability to mutate and evade medications.

This means the virus cannot get out of the cells to infect other cells, thereby blocking the spread of the virus."

"This means that TRIM22 is an essential part of our body's ability to fight off HIV. The results are very exciting because they show that our bodies have a gene that is capable of stopping the spread of HIV."

When we put this gene in cells, it prevents the assembly of the HIV virus," said Barr

drugs are unable to eradicate the virus.

Barr and his team have discovered a gene that could potentially do the job naturally.

in the future the idea would be to develop drugs or vaccines that can mimic the effects of this gene."

figure out why this gene does not work in people infected with HIV

gene's ability to battle other viruses.

"As far Moses on Mount Sinai is concerned, it was either a supernatural cosmic event, which I don't believe, or a legend, which I don't believe either, or finally, and this is very probable, an event that joined Moses and the people of Israel under the effect of narcotics," Shanon told Israeli public radio on Tuesday.

Moses was probably also on drugs when he saw the "burning bush," suggested Shanon, who said he himself has dabbled with such substances.

"The Bible says people see sounds, and that is a clasic phenomenon," he said citing the example of religious ceremonies in the Amazon in which drugs are used that induce people to "see music."

He mentioned his own experience when he used ayahuasca, a powerful psychotropic plant, during a religious ceremony in Brazil's Amazon forest in 1991. "I experienced visions that had spiritual-religious connotations," Shanon said.

He said the psychedelic effects of ayahuasca were comparable to those produced by concoctions based on bark of the acacia tree, that is frequently mentioned in the Bible.

prompted fears that the new ‘Okhta Centre’ would impact negatively on St Petersburg’s historic skyline.

need for heating is minimal in order to reduce its environmental impact. 

In a country where temperatures dip to minus 30 degrees

The external envelope of the tower comprises of two double glazed glass skins with an atrium between the inner and outer walls.  The atrium acts as a buffer zone providing both thermal insulation and natural ventilation at different times of the year.

pentagram design of the tower maximises access to daylight and allows for spectacular views for the internal offices without losing heat due to exposed surface area in comparison to other structures.

design allows for a generous number of social spaces and green ‘breakout’ zones spread out along the floors.

access leisure areas without wasting valuable time and energy, in terms of vertical transportation, commuting to ground level.

With this project, we thought about sustainability issues right from the start and as such it has been totally integrated into the design, frame and structure

More than seven drinks in a week or more than three drinks in one day exceed the recommended limits set by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

most likely to be white and male, younger than 70, with higher education, higher income and better health,

less likely to be depressed than non-drinkers.

6 percent were risky drinkers, while 82 percent said they didn't drink at all.  

truth is that many people shouldn’t drink at all as they get older, either because of encroaching medical problems, or the possibility of interaction with medication, Merrick said.

Some people can drink in limited amounts with no ill effects, of course. And she acknowledged that other studies have shown that a drink a day might actually be beneficial, even in the elderly.

researchers in South Carolina reported that non-drinkers who started drinking in middle age were nearly 40 percent less likely to have a heart attack or other heart problem than those who never tipped a glass.

"There are countless better uses for $42 million than a self-congratulatory mailer that gives the president a pat on the back for an idea that wasn't even his," Sen. Charles Schumer

actual rebate checks are scheduled to go out starting in May, after the IRS has finished separately mailing out routine refunds for the 2007 tax year.

The research, conducted across the country, is shedding light on how our candidate of choice might not be entirely our own choosing.

When you step into the voting booth in November, you will have only a partial say in your decision.

Since then, scientists — both political and biological — have fought quietly over the origin of our political views: whether they're entirely a product of the people around us, or whether we've already chosen our candidates without even realizing it.

study that analyzed how self-proclaimed liberals and conservatives use a portion of the brain that activates when a person is confronted with information or ideas contrary to his established beliefs.

Liberals' use of that portion of the brain was higher than that of conservatives in the study, suggesting that liberals are more responsive to different ideas, the report said.

"More liberal people tend to be able to deal with pros and cons of decisions, and as they get more conservative, people like to focus on one side of the story,"

The cloak of secrecy that long concealed the C.I.A.’s secret interrogation program and its legal underpinnings has gradually broken down.

The C.I.A. director, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, publicly admitted for the first time two weeks ago that the agency used waterboarding in 2002 and 2003 in the interrogation of three Qaeda suspects but said that the technique was no longer used, and its legality under current law is uncertain. The technique, which has been used since the Spanish Inquisition and has been found illegal in the past by American courts, involves water poured into the nose and mouth to create a feeling of drowning.

Mr. Jarrett’s disclosure came as prosecutors and F.B.I. agents conduct a criminal investigation of the C.I.A.’s destruction in 2005 of videotapes of harsh interrogations and a week after Congress passed a ban on coercive interrogations, which President Bush has said he will veto.

free trade, immigration and security are three main issues he will seek to work out with Washington, a fundamental need for preferential energy prices have brought him to Chavez's doorstep.

his administration had lowered that number to just over 15 murders a day

In the past five years, some 25,700 Guatemalans have been murdered,

17 murders a day before Colom came into office

since the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) entered into force in 2006, Guatemalan exports to the US have grown 20 percent annually.

one policeman for every 2,400 civilians, and one for approximately every 21.77 square kilometers

sent back to the country from the US every year, over US$4 billion in 2007.

Colom's focus is on improving the situation inside the country so his countrymen are not forced to find a better life elsewhere.

has received multiple offers from Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to join Venezuela's PetroCaribe initiative.

he would consider joining PetroCaribe, likely the best source of cheap gas for Guatemala, but was careful to add that he would consult with his country's business elite first

Colom has spent many years managing textile factories.

42% solar-to-laser energy conversion efficiency, outperforming previous technology by a factor of four.

aims to put space-based power systems in orbit by the year 2030.

SSPS will be able to make use of solar energy 24 hours a day.

a single satellite will be able to match the output of a 1-gigawatt nuclear power plant,

Sussex Police say they first stopped Delaney at the airport in 2004 and have recorded more than 30 encounters with him since.