Leaked Pentagon report warns climate change may bring famine, war

LONDON (AFP) - A secret report prepared by the Pentagon warns that climate change may lead to global catastrophe costing millions of lives and is a far greater threat than terrorism.

The report was ordered by an influential US Pentagon advisor but was covered up by "US defense chiefs" for four months.

It predicts that "abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies," The Observer reported.

The report, quoted in the paper, concluded: "Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life.... Once again, warfare would define human life."

-- Britain will have winters similar to those in current-day Siberia as European temperatures drop off radically by 2020.

-- by 2007 violent storms will make large parts of the Netherlands uninhabitable and lead to a breach in the acqueduct system in California that supplies all water to densely populated southern California

-- Europe and the United States become "virtual fortresses" trying to keep out millions of migrants whose homelands have been wiped out by rising sea levels or made unfarmable by drought.

-- "catastrophic" shortages of potable water and energy will lead to widespread war by 2020.

From dharmabums

Women Report Satisfaction with Preventive Mastectomy

Women who elected to lower their high risk of breast cancer by having both breasts surgically removed report being satisfied with the procedure, according to research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (Vol. 284, No. 3). The researchers found that 70 percent of the women were satisfied or very satisfied with their decision to have the operation, and 67 percent reported they definitely or probably would choose to have the operation again

Smith & Wesson chairman resigns over criminal past

Jonathan J. Higuera
The Arizona Republic
Feb. 26, 2004 05:00 PM

Smith & Wesson Holding Corp., parent company of the 150-year-old handgun maker, Friday will formally announce the resignation of its board chairman, whose criminal past as an armed robber became known earlier this month.

James Joseph Minder, 74, who spent at least 13 years in Michigan prisons for various armed robberies and a bank heist, stepped down at the company's board meeting Monday in Scottsdale...

Minder served various stints in state and federal prisons in the 1950s and 1960s. He admitted to carrying out at least 20 armed robberies. The last eight came while he was a 29-year-old journalism student at the University of Michigan in 1959. That ended with a wild, three-mile chase and crash in a stolen car.

He was dubbed the 'shotgun bandit' for his penchant for brandishing a 16-gauge sawed-off shotgun at shopkeepers. During his stint at a federal prison, he and another prisoner on the Ionia Reformatory debate team escaped during a scheduled debate in a stolen car. They were caught a week later after a police chase.

A crash victim had to give an ambulance crew directions after they went 60 miles in the wrong direction.

Rosalind Stillwell was handed a map and asked to help find a hospital expecting her for further treatment.

I was in a lot of pain and didn't need this on top of everything else."

She arrived at Southlands Hospital two hours late.

Designer vaginas

"Designer vaginas" are now on offer to New Zealand women with the establishment of the country's first "appearance gynaecology" clinic in Auckland.

Andrew Mackintosh's private practice at Ascot Hospital offers a range of treatments, including restoring hymens, vaginal rejuvenation, repairing damage from giving birth, liposuction and labial reconstruction.

"Every day I see women who thank me for what I am doing."

Duped Wendy's managers order strip search

By Jennifer Rosinski
Thursday, February 26, 2004

Four local Wendy's restaurant supervisors ordered employees to shed their clothes under the direction of phony phone calls from a man who passed himself off as a cop conducting an investigation.

"Obviously we had managers who were duped. They thought they were responding to direct orders from police," Wendy's spokesman Bob Bertini said.

Pentagon officials have confirmed that Guantanamo detainees may still be kept in detention, even if they are found not guilty by a military tribunal.

They say detainees could be kept prisoner if they are considered a security risk.

Clear Channel employee killed by religious film

BY DENISE NEIL AND DANA STRONGIN

The Wichita Eagle

Peggy Law Scott, 57, was attending a 9:30 a.m. showing of The Passion of the Christ with some co-workers from Clear Channel Radio when she collapsed about 20 minutes before the movie was to end.

Emergency dispatchers said they responded to a report of a woman who wasn't breathing and might be having a seizure. The cause of death was unclear.