Eideard

From the GUARDIAN Eyewitness series

Pakistanis crowd around an army helicopter as it delivers desperately needed food supplies to the village of Tul in Sindh Province, southern Pakistan, which is surrounded by floodwaters.

Gee, I wonder if they sang this one at the concert?

The Army said it was investigating a claim that dozens of soldiers who refused to attend a Christian band’s concert at a Virginia military base were banished to their barracks and told to clean them up.

Pvt. Anthony Smith said he and other soldiers felt pressured to attend the May concert while stationed at the Newport News base, home of the Army’s Transportation Corps. “My whole issue was I don’t need to be preached at,” Smith said in a phone interview from Phoenix, where he is stationed with the National Guard. “That’s not what I signed up for.”

Smith, 21, was stationed in Virginia for nearly seven months for helicopter electrician training when the Christian rock group BarlowGirl played as part of the “Commanding General’s Spiritual Fitness Concerts.”

Smith said a staff sergeant told 200 men in their barracks they could either attend or remain in their barracks. Eighty to 100 decided not to attend, he said.

“Instead of being released to our personal time, we were locked down,” Smith said. “It seemed very much like a punishment…”

Smith said he and the other soldiers were told not to use their cell phones or personal computers and ordered to clean up the barracks.

About 20 of the men, including several Muslims, refused to attend the concert based on their religious beliefs, he said.

The Christian evangelical proselytizing theme clings like stink to many American military bases – especially those in the Bible Belt. Often introduced by a small cadre of over-the-top fundamentalist officers linking throughout our wonderful worldwide network of military enclaves.

It’s something folks haven’t had to report on, blog about, complain about as much since the religious glory days of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld; but, nonetheless persistent and pernicious. The only humorous bit being officer types who should know that “the book” – in the military sense – always takes precedence over their holy roller guidebook.

Drug companies have been accused of conning the public in a report that claimed more than four fifths of new medicines offer few benefits.

An estimated 85 per cent of drugs coming onto the market offer only slight advances on existing treatments while having the potential to cause serious harm due to toxicity or misuse, the study concluded…

”Sometimes drug companies hide or downplay information about serious side-effects of new drugs and overstate the drugs’ benefits,” said Prof Donald Light, a professor of comparative health policy at the University of Medicine and Dentistry in New Jersey.

”Then, they spend two to three times more on marketing than on research to persuade doctors to prescribe these new drugs. Doctors may get misleading information and then misinform patients about the risks of a new drug. It’s really a two-tier market for lemons.”

He alleged that the pharmaceutical industry owned companies in charge of drug testing and provided ”firewalls” of legal protection behind which information about dangers or lack of effectiveness could be be hidden.

Companies were assisted by the ”relatively low bar” for effectiveness that had to be crossed to get a new drug approved…

”A few basic changes could improve the quality of trials and evidence about the real risks and benefits of new drugs. We could also increase the percentage of new drugs that are really better for patients.”

In his paper, Prof Light concluded: “The evidence here indicates that the two-tier market for prescription drugs is the largest and most dangerous market for lemons in modern society. Neither wars nor used car injuries come close.

Nothing that a lot of us haven’t recognized for years; but, it’s always helpful to see legitimate studies provide some ammo against the greedy bastards running the pharmaceutical industry.

I’ve long felt the barrage of advertisements in the mass media for prescription drugs should be outlawed like cigarettes. If they’re beneficial, your physician will have learned about them. Otherwise, the pharma giants are just building artificial demand with their propaganda.

Security forces have found the body of a slain mayor near Mexico’s richest city, days after he was abducted by hitmen in the latest attack on a public official by increasingly bold drug cartels.

President Felipe Calderon, who has staked his presidency on a faltering drug war, condemned the “cowardly assassination” of Edelmiro Cavazos, the mayor of a town on the outskirts of Monterrey, an industrial center with close U.S. business ties…

Cavazos, a 38-year-old, U.S.-educated mayor from Calderon’s conservative National Action Party, was found dumped on a rural road outside his town of Santiago. He was blindfolded and his hands were tied…

Alejandro Garza, the attorney general in the border state of Nuevo Leon, which includes Santiago and Monterrey, 140 miles from Texas, said Cavazos was shot three times and accused drug cartels of being responsible for the killing.

Nuevo Leon Governor Rodrigo Medina urged Calderon to send more troops to Monterrey and surrounding areas, echoing a plea from Mexican business groups published in newspapers across the country.

Medina said this week that Cavazos, who took office last year, was probably targeted for his efforts to clean up Santiago’s corrupt police force, part of a nationwide effort to curb endemic police graft…

Santiago, a popular weekend getaway for Monterrey residents, has also become a staging post for drug gangs smuggling narcotics north into the United States. Many capos have taken refuge in mansions nestled in surrounding hills.

RTFA for the details. Not the murder. That’s bad enough.

The model isn’t new. It was perfected in the days of Al Capone. It had to be stopped back then. And it must be, now.

A 48 million-year-old fossilised leaf has revealed the oldest known evidence of a macabre part of nature – parasites taking control of their hosts to turn them into zombies.

The discovery has been made by a research team led by Dr David P Hughes, from the University of Exeter, who studies parasites that can take over the minds of their hosts.

All manner of animals are susceptible to the often deadly body invasion, but scientists have been trying to track down when and where such parasites evolved…

“This leaf shows clear signs of one well documented form of zombie-parasite, a fungus which infects ants and then manipulates their behaviour.”

The fungus, called Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, appears to take over the mind of infected ants – causing them to leave their colonies and head for a leaf which provides the ideal conditions for the parasite to reproduce.

When the ant gets there it goes into a ‘death grip’– biting down very hard on the major vein of a leaf. This means that when the ant dies, its body stays put so the fungus has time to grow and release its spores to infect other ants.

The death grip bite leaves a very distinct scar on the leaves…After studying leaf fossils from the Messel Pit, a site on the eastern side of the Rhine Rift Valley in Hesse, Germany, they found clear evidence of the death grip bite in a 48 million-year-old leaf specimen.

Questions of parasites which may become symbiotes – and vice versa – is convoluted enough to waste the rest of the weekend on.

But, it might be interesting, eh?

Less than 100 feet from where a hijacked airplane slammed into the Pentagon, Muslim military personnel bring prayer rugs on weekday afternoons for group worship.

On Fridays, a local imam conducts a service in the Pentagon Memorial Chapel built after the September 11, 2001, terror attacks by al Qaeda that killed 184 people at the U.S. military headquarters.

The chapel, with stained-glass windows, burgundy carpeting and a wooden altar, provides a place of prayer and religious observance for anyone regardless of faith or culture.

Its welcoming calm and nondenominational culture are in stark contrast to the emotional debate over plans to build an Islamic cultural center and mosque two blocks from ground zero in New York City, where planes flown by al Qaeda hijackers destroyed the World Trade Center, killing more than 2,700 people…

“I’ve never had a question about it” in four-plus years at the Pentagon, Army spokesman George Wright said…

“We’re very tolerant here of one another and our faith,” he said. “We don’t keep track of who comes in.”

Of course, what’s “normal” in the political life of the United States of America doesn’t have as much to do with tolerance or freedom – as it does with power and control.

Police raiding a marijuana farm in western Canada were astonished to find black bears apparently guarding it.

However initial alarm wore off when officers realised the 10 or so bears did not behave aggressively and were in fact docile and tame.

Police believe dog food was used to attract the animals onto the farm in British Columbia…

Or they were stoner bears.

Two people were arrested in the raid.

The five police who went to the farm near Christina Lake, close to the US border, to dismantle the marijuana plantation were amazed when the bears loped into view.

“They were tame, they just sat around watching. At one point one of the bears climbed onto the hood of a police car, sat there for a bit and then jumped off,” said Royal Canadian Mounted Police sergeant Fred Mansveld.

In Canada, feeding bears is illegal as it leads to bears associating food with humans and increases the likelihood of bears coming into towns and cities to look for food.

Especially if they have the munchies.

The woman who Jennifer Aniston, Cher, Melanie Griffith and other stars have trusted with their skin allegedly couldn’t be trusted with their credit cards.

Federal agents arrested Beverly Hills spa owner Gabriella Perez on charges of using her celebrity clients’ credit card information to make fraudulent purchases totaling at least $280,000, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office in Los Angeles…

Chez Gabriela Studio is “the temple of beauty” for Beverly Hills, its website said.

“Gabriela is my favorite ass kicking facialist,” the website quoted Cher saying. “She is the Michelangelo of skin care!”

The criminal complaint named actress Liv Tyler as a major victim, with $214,000 in allegedly fraudulent charges made by Perez on her American Express card last year.

High-end jewelry designer Loree Rodkin was the first client to alert federal investigators, the complaint said.

The complaint alleges Perez “fraudulently charged numerous times on her (Rodkin’s) Visa credit card from the studio.”

When Rodkin’s lawyer tried to resolve the charges with Perez, she allegedly offered her $25,000 in services in exchange for the $68,000 in allegedly fraudulent charges, the complaint said.

How do you negotiate your way out of credit card fraud?

OTOH, how do you let a couple hundred thousand dollars be added to your credit card account – without noticing? Sheesh!

Adults who have Internet access at home are much more likely to be in romantic relationships than adults without Internet access, according to research to be presented at the 105th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association.

“Although prior research on the social impacts of Internet use has been rather ambiguous about the social cost of time spent online, our research suggests that Internet access has an important role to play in helping Americans find mates,” said Michael J. Rosenfeld…lead author of the study, “Meeting Online: The Rise of the Internet as a Social Intermediary.”

According to the study, 82.2 percent of participants who had Internet access at home also had a spouse or romantic partner, compared to a 62.8-percent partnership rate for adults who did not have Internet access…

In addition to finding that people are more likely to be in romantic relationships if they have Internet access in their homes, Rosenfeld and study co-author Reuben J. Thomas…found that the Internet is the one social arena that is unambiguously gaining importance over time as a place where couples meet…

The study also found that the Internet is especially important for finding potential partners in groups where the supply is small or difficult to identify such as in the gay, lesbian, and middle-aged heterosexual communities.

Now, who didn’t know this?

Criminalizing speech is a tricky business, but Congress seemed to think it had found the right balance in 2006 when it overwhelmingly enacted the Stolen Valor Act, which made it a crime simply to lie about having received a military medal or service badge.

But the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit begs to differ. In a decision released on Tuesday, the three-judge panel, based in San Francisco, declared the law unconstitutional because it infringed on the defendant’s freedom of speech, even if it was false. That defendant, Xavier Alvarez, had claimed to be a Marine and a winner of the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military award. He was neither.

In a 2-to-1 ruling, the appellate court said that if the law were held constitutional, many everyday lies could become criminal acts. “There would be no constitutional bar to criminalizing lying about one’s height, weight, age, or financial status on Match.com or Facebook, or falsely representing to one’s mother that one does not smoke, drink alcoholic beverages, is a virgin, or has not exceeded the speed limit while driving on the freeway,” Judge Milan D. Smith, Jr., wrote for the majority. “The sad fact is, most people lie about some aspects of their lives from time to time…”

“We have no doubt that society would be better off if Mr. Alvarez would stop spreading worthless, ridiculous and offensive untruths,” the ruling said. “But, given our historical skepticism of permitting the government to police the line between truth and falsity, and between valuable speech and drivel, we presumptively protect all speech, including false statements.”

If we made all liars into criminals, we wouldn’t have a standing politician left to run for re-election.