Jan
08

Contractor Settles Case in Iraq Prison Abuse

WASHINGTON — An American contractor hired by the military to provide translation services for interrogators at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq has reached a $5 million settlement with scores of detainees who accused its employees of complicity in abusing them, according to financial disclosure documents. The widespread abuse of prisoners held at Abu Ghraib by the United States military early...
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The next CIA’s director’s challenges

qWhat John Brennan faces after confirmationI see no reason why the Senate won’t confirm John Brennan, President Obama‘s chief counter-terrorism adviser, to be the next director of the CIA. There will be pro forma inquiries into his past entanglements with the NSA’s domestic surveillance program and his knowledge and approval of the CIA’s “Greystone” torture protocols, but he will have ready answers...
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RG3 to have surgery on torn right knee ligament

WASHINGTON (AP) — Robert Griffin III is having surgery Wednesday on a torn ligament in his right knee — and to see if there's a second ligament that also needs to be repaired.Baylor coach Art Briles confirmed to USA Today and The Associated Press on Tuesday night that the Washington Redskins rookie has a torn lateral collateral ligament. He said the surgery also will determine whether Griffin has...
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Economic Scene: Health Care and Pursuit of Profit Make a Poor Mix

Thirty years ago, Bonnie Svarstad and Chester Bond of the School of Pharmacy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison discovered an interesting pattern in the use of sedatives at nursing homes in the south of the state. Patients entering church-affiliated nonprofit homes were prescribed drugs roughly as often as those entering profit-making “proprietary” institutions. But patients in proprietary...
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Square Feet: New Revival Plans for Historic Providence, R.I., Power Plant

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — As the new year dawns on Rhode Island’s capital city, a place still suffering a hangover from the recession, there is renewed interest in a waterfront building that has been vacant since plans to create a museum and hotel there collapsed in 2008. Known popularly as Dynamo House — the name for the failed project begun in 2007 by Baltimore-based developer Struever Brothers...
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Jan
07

Japan’s Cleanup After a Nuclear Accident Is Denounced

Ko Sasaki for The New York TimesBags of contaminated soil outside the Naraha-Minami school near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. NARAHA, Japan — The decontamination crews at a deserted elementary school here are at the forefront of what Japan says is the most ambitious radiological cleanup the world has seen, one that promised to draw on cutting-edge technology from across the globe. ...
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181,354 People on Twitter Think They’re Experts at Twitter

Do you tweet a lot? Do you post everything on Facebook? Do you #hashtag #complete #sentences #like #this? Do you describe yourself, variously, as a social media “maven”, “master”, “guru”, “freak”, “warrior”, “evangelist” or “veteran”? (Yes, a social media veteran. As if Tumblr were a deadly war you narrowly survived.) Well: you’ve got company! There are more than 181,000 such individuals...
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Bama bashes Notre Dame 42-14 in BCS title game

MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. (AP) — The coach no longer wears houndstooth. The result is the same. Another Alabama dynasty.Quieting the Irish by the first play of the second quarter, Eddie Lacy, AJ McCarron and the No. 2 Crimson Tide rolled top-ranked Notre Dame 42-14 for the BCS championship Monday night, locking up a second straight national title and third in four years with another laugher of a title game.The...
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Global Update: China Moves to Prevent Spread of Yellow Fever From Africa

In a move that underlines how many Chinese citizens now work in Africa, China’s quarantine officials recently urged greater efforts to make sure that a yellow fever epidemic now raging in Sudan does not come back to China. Local health authorities were asked to scan all travelers arriving from Sudan for fevers. Chinese citizens planning travel to Sudan were advised to get yellow fever shots....
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Japan’s Cleanup After a Nuclear Accident Is Denounced

Ko Sasaki for The New York TimesBags of contaminated soil outside the Naraha-Minami school near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. NARAHA, Japan — The decontamination crews at a deserted elementary school here are at the forefront of what Japan says is the most ambitious radiological cleanup the world has seen, one that promised to draw on cutting-edge technology from across the globe. ...
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