September 2, 2010
NEW YORK – It is "unethical, insensitive and inhumane" to oppose the planned mosque near ground zero, more than 50 leading Muslim organizations said Wednesday as they cast the intense debate as a symptom of religious intolerance in America.
National
September 2, 2010
With Sen. Lisa Murkowski conceding the Alaska GOP primary Tuesday night to lawyer Joe Miller, some Democrats now believe they have a chance to pick up a seat in a state no one thought could be in play in a cycle where Democrats are facing a significant loss of seats.
Democrats spent the previous week ramping up an organization and excitement for the campaign of Sitka Mayor Scott McAdams, the Democratic nominee who would have been the party's sacrificial offering against Murkowski this fall.
National
September 2, 2010
WASHINGTON -- Glenn Beck is a talented huckster, a shrewd survivor who may be in the middle of another self-reinvention. This time, he seems bent on remaking himself as one of the oldest of the stock all-American characters: the Elmer Gantry-like preacher-performer.
Last weekend, Beck held a rally on the National Mall, "Restoring Honor," calling the nation back to what he sees as its traditional Christian roots. Beck gets a lot of things wrong, including history. Moreover, he's an odd spokesman for conservative Christianity, since he's Mormon.
National
September 2, 2010
ORLANDO, Fla. – The French national railway's hope to bid on the first high-speed tracks in the United States is running into resistance from Holocaust survivors because of the company's role in transporting Jews to Nazi death camps.
National
September 2, 2010
SILVER SPRING, Md. – A man who railed against the Discovery Channel's environmental programming for years burst into the company's headquarters with at least one explosive device strapped to his body Wednesday and took three people hostage at gunpoint before police shot him to death, officials said.
National
September 2, 2010
WASHINGTON – Allergan Inc., the maker of wrinkle-smoothing Botox, has agreed to pay $600 million to settle a yearslong federal investigation into its marketing of the top-selling, botulin-based drug.
The Justice Department and the company said Wednesday in a statement it will plead guilty to one misdemeanor charge of "misbranding," in which the company's marketing led physicians to use Botox for unapproved uses. Those included the treatment of headache, pain, spasticity and cerebral palsy in children.
Companies are prohibited from promoting drugs for unapproved, or "off-label," uses.
National
September 2, 2010
WASHINGTON – Sophisticated computer models that replaced instinct with cold, hard math have helped forecasters predict where a storm like Hurricane Earl is going about twice as accurately as 20 years ago.
And last year, they proved it: The three-day forecast was as accurate as the here-it-comes, one-day warning used to be in the 1980s. In the 2009 hurricane season, the one-day forecast predicting where a storm would hit was off by only 53 miles on average.
National
September 2, 2010
NEW ORLEANS – Engineers don't expect to see another gusher when they delicately remove a cap on the blown-out Gulf of Mexico well that spawned the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.
The planned removal of the cap Thursday is a prelude to raising the massive blowout preventer that failed to prevent the disaster.
National
September 1, 2010
SACRAMENTO, Calif. – California lawmakers have rejected a bill seeking to ban plastic shopping bags after a contentious debate over whether the state was going too far in trying to regulate personal choice.
The Democratic bill, which failed late Tuesday, would have been the first statewide ban, although a few California cities already prohibit their use.
The measure offered California an opportunity to emerge at the forefront of a global trend, said Sen. Gil Cedillo, who carried the measure on the Senate floor.
National
September 1, 2010
WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama vowed on Wednesday that a deadly Hamas attack in the West Bank "is not going to stop us" in the quest for Middle East peace as he opened a Washington summit to relaunch face-to-face Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
Wading into a new round of Middle East diplomacy in the face of deep skepticism over his chances for success, Obama condemned as "senseless slaughter" the ambush that killed four Israeli settlers on Tuesday in the occupied West Bank.
National
