Breast cancer biology changing

By Emma WilkinsonHealth reporter, BBC NewsLifestyle changes and screening have shifted the type of breast cancers women are diagnosed with over the past couple of decades, research suggests.Women are now more likely to have hormone-dependent, slow-growing tumours, a comparison of tissue samples from the 1980s and 1990s shows.The Scottish researchers also found improved survival over [...]

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[Source: vote tags: Tracking the Vote - Posted by FreeAutoBlogger]

Obama raises the bar: a brief history of presidential drinking.

Barack Obama hada drinks party at the White House on Wednesday night. He invited congressional leaders of both parties for cocktails at 7:30. In his relentless push for his stimulus plan, he's apparently not going to let them out of his sight. He was with the same people on Tuesday, just a few days after he'd met with them at the White House. The cocktail invitation could be a polite gesturethey hosted him Tuesday on the Hill, and he wants to return the favor; or it could be a stratagemafter being with them so much, Obama realizes that everyone could use a good drink. Or it could be a philosophical statement: Sobering times do not necessarily require everyone to be sober.

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How Obama can prepare himself (and us) for the inevitable failures.

Some possible new slogans for the Obama administration:

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Obama's speech goes for prose instead of poetry.

On the west steps of the Capitol, Barack Obama turned his inaugural address into a national locker-room speech. Describing our current crisis and "a nagging fear that America's decline is inevitable," he called on Americans to "pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America." He called for "a new era of responsibility" founded on America's oldest virtues. "Those values upon which our success dependshard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotismthese things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded, then, is a return to these truths."

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[Source: Slate Magazine - Politics

Washington’s criminal role in the Sri Lankan state’s anti-Tamil war

Last Wednesday, the US embassy in Colombo issued a statement that welcomed the Sri Lankan state's recent victories in the war with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and urged Sri Lanka's government and military to press forward with the annihilation of the LTTE. The key passage in the statement read: "The United States does not advocate that the Government of Sri Lanka negotiate with the LTTE, a group designated by America as a Foreign Terrorist Organization since 1997."

Within hours of Washington formally renouncing its support for a negotiated settlement to the 25 year-old civil war, the Sri Lankan government banned the LTTE.

The Sri Lankan state has now arrogated to itself the power to jail for up to 20 years those it accuses of "supporting" the LTTE. Since resuming offensive operations against the organization in 2006, the government and military have leveled this charge against virtually anyone opposed to the war or even the government's right-wing socio-economic policies, from socialists and striking workers to the Tamil National Alliance, a 20-strong parliamentary grouping that considers the LTTE the only legitimate representative of the Tamils in negotiations with the government.

Colombo had previously outlawed the organization, but lifted the ban in 2002 when a truce was declared and the Sri Lankan state and LTTE agreed to enter into peace talks.
anti-tamil-war

Trans-Texas Corridor is dead

In response to public outcry, the ambitious proposal to create the Trans-Texas Corridor network has been dropped and will be replaced with a plan to carry out road projects at an incremental, modest pace, a state transportation official announced today.“The Trans-Texas Corridor, as it is known, no longer exists,” said Amadeo Saenz Jr., executive director [...]

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[Source: vote tags: Tracking the Vote

How hiring R. Kelly's lawyers will help Rod Blagojevich.

"It's kind of lonely right now," Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich said Friday in his first press conference since being arrested on federal corruption charges. "But I have on my side the most powerful ally there is, and it's the truth." Blagojevich and the truth aren't going it completely alonelast week, the governor brought on Chicago defense attorneys Sam Adam Jr. and Edward Genson. Genson, it seems, is billing by the analogy: So far he's compared the impeachment hearings now taking place in the Illinois Legislature to a witch hunt, a dog-and-pony show, a fairy tale, and Alice in Wonderland. Meanwhile, Adam Jr. has dismissed the idea that Blagojevich needs to apologize to the people of Illinois: "He's not going to apologize for fighting for sick children. He's not going to apologize for making sure that senior citizens get prescription drugs."

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[Source: Slate Magazine - Politics