the/diseased/republik

CDC: Tainted peanut butter MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The salmonella bacteria that has sickened more than 400 people in 43 states has been conclusively linked to peanut butter, Minnesota health officials announced Monday. Federal officials said the outbreak may have contributed to three deaths. State health and agriculture officials said last week they had found salmonella bacteria in a 5-pound package of King Nut peanut butter at a nursing facility in Minnesota. Officials tested the bacteria over the weekend and found a genetic match with the bacterial strain that has led to 30 illnesses in Minnesota and others across the country. "The commonality among all of our patients was that they ate peanut butter," said Doug Schultz, a spokesman with the Minnesota Department of Health. While the brand of peanut butter couldn't be confirmed in every case, the majority of patients consumed the same brand, he said Monday. King Nut Companies of Solon, Ohio, on Sunday asked its custom...

An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at the Scripps Research Institute are potentially one step closer to creating life . In an experiment they recently created enzymes that can replicate and evolve. 'It kind of blew me away,' said team member Tracey Lincoln of the Scripps Research Institute, who is working on her Ph.D. 'What we have is non-living, but we've been able to show that it has some life-like properties, and that was extremely interesting.'" - full story link at the title.

 found a copypasta version of the DOT notice of highway closures @ cryptome : [Federal Register: January 7, 2009 (Volume 74, Number 4)] [Notices] [Page 760-761] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr07ja09-76] ----------------------------------------------------------------------- DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION Federal Highway Administration [Docket No. FHWA-2008-0189] Emergency Temporary Closure of I-395 & I-695 Southeast and Southwest Highway in the District of Columbia AGENCY: Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), DOT. ACTION: Announcement for the District of Columbia to temporarily close the SE/SW Highway (I-395 & I-695), on January 20, 2009, for safety and security purposes for the Inauguration of the President of the United States. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- SUMMARY: Pursuant to section 658.11(e) of title 23, Code of Federal Re...

i have just recently found out about this new CTA policy: On Nov. 22, Mike Doyle of Chicago Carless fame wrote a well-researched piece about the CTA's newest efforts to crack down on what it calls "continous riders" -- passengers who ride to the end of a rail terminal and board another train going in the opposite direction. Often folks who do this are homeless. Doyle is angry that the CTA should now start aggressively enforcing this rule, saying it's aimed squarely at the homeless: "It’s pretty clear who these new “continuous riding” signs are aimed at. I can’t imagine a reasonable Chicagoan believing that homeless people are not the obvious and only target here." But Doyle didn't just angrily rail against this policy. He reached out to the CTA with a series of well-thought-out questions to try and determine what was behind this new crackdown. The CTA had their typical PR spin that it wasn't to crack down on homeless, but "to remind CTA cus...

Vice President Dick Cheney, in another stunning admission during his campaign to burnish the Bush administration’s legacy, said he personally authorized the “enhanced interrogations” of 33 suspected terrorist detainees and approved the waterboarding of three so-called “high-value” prisoners. “I signed off on it; others did, as well, too,” Cheney said about the waterboarding, a practice of simulated drowning done by strapping a person to a board, covering the face with a cloth and then pouring water over it, a torture technique dating back at least to the Spanish Inquisition. The victim feels as if he is drowning. Cheney identified the three waterboarded detainees as al-Qaeda figures Abu Zubaydah, Khalid Sheik Mohammed and al Nashiri. “That's it, those three guys,” Cheney said in an interview with the right-wing Washington Times.

A US man divorcing his wife is demanding that she return the kidney he donated to her or pay him $1.5m (£1m) in compensation. Dr Richard Batista told reporters that he decided to go public because he was frustrated at the slow pace of divorce negotiations with his estranged wife. He said he had not only given his heart to his wife, Dawnell, but donated his kidney to save her life. But divorce lawyers say a donated organ is not a marital asset to be divided.

MANHATTAN — Lev L. Dassin, the Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced that Ben-Ami Kadish pleaded guilty earlier today to a one-count information charging him with participating in a conspiracy to act as an unregistered agent of the Government of Israel. In summary, according to statements at Kadish’s guilty plea before U.S. Magistrate Judge Theodore H. Katz, the Information and other documents filed Manhattan federal court: Kadish is a former employee of the U.S. Army’s Armament Research, Development, and Engineering Center at the Picatinny Arsenal in Dover, New Jersey ("the Arsenal"). On numerous occasions from about 1980 through 1985, Kadish provided classified documents relating to the U.S. military – including some relating to U.S. missile defense systems – to an agent of the Government of Israel, Yossi Yagur, who photographed the documents at Kadish’s residence. Kadish, 85, faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a...