NATIONAL & WORLD DIGEST - September 08, 2008

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New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/
Go to the links for the following articles:

-Editorial: John McCain's Energy Follies
The industries that create energy - coal, wind, nuclear, ethanol, and, ofcourse, oil and gas - all clamored to be heard at the Republican convention.At cocktail receptions and in hundreds of ads, each claimed to welcome thechallenge of creating a cleaner, greener energy future.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/opinion/07sun1.html?ref=opinion

-Op-Ed Columnist: Palin and McCain's Shotgun Marriage
SARAH PALIN makes John McCain look even older than he is. And he seemed morethan willing to play that part on Thursday night. By the time he sloggedthrough his nearly 50-minute acceptance speech - longer even than BarackObama's - you half-expected some brazen younger Republican (Mitt Romney,perhaps?) to dash onstage to give him a gold watch and the bum's rush.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/opinion/07rich.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin

-Op-Ed Columnist: Clash of the Titans
You know what I'm thinking, because you're thinking it, too. If BarackObama had chosen Hillary Clinton as his running mate, we would now belooking forward to the greatest night in the history of American politics:the Oct. 2 vice presidential debate between Ma Barker and Sarah Barracuda.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/opinion/07dowd.html?ref=opinion

-Op-Ed Columnist: Georgia on My Mind
On Wednesday, The New York Times on the Web flashed a headline that caughtmy eye: "U.S. to Unveil $1 Billion Aid Package to Repair Georgia." Wow, Ithought. That's great: $1 billion to fix Georgia's roads and schools. But asI read on, I quickly realized that I had the wrong Georgia.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/opinion/07friedman.html?ref=opinion

-US government takes on big role in mortgage market
Uncle Sam has just become the 800 pound gorilla in the U.S. mortgage market.The Bush administration announced Sunday it was seizing troubled mortgagegiants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in a bid to help reverse a prolongedhousing and credit crisis. But private analysts worried that it may not beenough to stabilize the slumping housing market given the glut of vacanthomes for sale, rising foreclosures, rising unemployment and weak consumerconfidence.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Mortgage-Giants-Crisis.html

-Bhutto's Widower, Viewed as Ally by U.S.,
Wins the Pakistani Presidency Handily
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of the assassinatedformer Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto who has little experience in governing,was elected president of Pakistan on Saturday by a wide margin.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/world/asia/07pstan.html

-Paralympic Athletes Add Equality to Their Goals
When he rolls to the starting line for the 1,500-meter wheelchair race atthe Paralympics, the Olympics for disabled athletes that begin Saturday inBeijing, Tony Iniguez will wear his Team USA uniform with pride. He willcompete for the United States's Olympic program. He is also suing it fordiscrimination.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/06/sports/othersports/06paralympics.html

-Arctic Ice Hints at Warming, Specialists Say
Leading ice specialists in Europe and the United States for the first timehave agreed that a ring of navigable waters has opened all around thefringes of the cap of sea ice drifting on the warming Arctic Ocean.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/science/earth/07arctic.html

-Atomic Club Votes to End Restrictions on India
The worldwide body that regulates the sale of nuclear fuel and technologyapproved a landmark deal on Saturday to allow India to engage in nucleartrade for the first time in three decades, after a pressure campaign by theBush administration and despite concerns about setting off an arms race inAsia.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/world/asia/07india.html

-Unboxed: When Academia Puts Profit Ahead of Wonder
"It is the policy and objective of the Congress to use the patent system topromote the utilization of inventions arising from federally supportedresearch or development" and "to promote collaboration between commercialconcerns and nonprofit organizations, including universities." -- TheBayh-Dole Act, a k a the University Small Business Patent Procedures ActTHE law of unintended consequences is perhaps less a "law" than a simplestatement of fact: We cannot accurately predict all the results of ouractions. We may do something with the best of intentions, and sometimes evenaccomplish the good toward which we aim. Yet, at the same time, we are alltoo often surprised by results that didn't occur to us beforehand.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/technology/07unbox.html


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Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Go to the links for the following articles:

-DISSENSION: Doubt, Distrust, Delay
by Bob Woodward
The Inside Story of How Bush's Team Dealt With Its Failing Iraq StrategyDuring the summer of 2006, from her office adjacent to the White House,deputy national security adviser Meghan O'Sullivan sent President Bush adaily top secret report cataloging the escalating bloodshed and chaos inIraq. "Violence has acquired a momentum of its own and is nowself-sustaining," she wrote July 20, quoting from an intelligenceassessment.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/06/AR2008090602691.html?hpid=topnews

-What's Fair Game With Sarah Palin?
Watching Gov. Sarah Palin explode onto the national scene over the last weekgot me thinking back to a cold evening earlier this year, just before theNew Hampshire primary. I was half-listening to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clintonspeak at an auditorium when a strange noise interrupted the event: two youngmen shouting, in muffled voices, "Iron my shirt!"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/05/AR2008090502656.html

-Declaring that clergy have a constitutional right to endorse political
candidates from their pulpits, the socially conservative Alliance DefenseFund is recruiting several dozen pastors to do just that on Sept. 28, indefiance of Internal Revenue Service rules.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/07/AR2008090702460.html

-Russia in legal bid to ban "extremist" U.S. cartoon
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Prosecutors in Russia want to ban the award-winningsatirical U.S. cartoon South Park, calling the series "extremist" afterreceiving viewer complaints, a spokeswoman said on Monday. South Park, acartoon aimed at adults and featuring a group of nine-year olds in aColorado ski town, has courted controversy from its 1997 debut, parodyingcelebrities, politicians, religion, gay marriage and Saddam Hussein.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/08/AR2008090800408.html

-Lawmaker Seeks Removal of Peer Leading Palin Probe
The Alaska lawmaker leading an investigation into Gov. Sarah Palin'sdismissal of her public safety commissioner should be removed because heappears to be manipulating the probe to damage her vice presidentialcandidacy, a Republican legislator said.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/06/AR2008090602983.html?hpid=sec-politics


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Sun-Sentinel
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/
Go to the links for the following articles:

-Why the Earth could end when the new collider fires up
When European physicists bring their monstrous supercollider to life, willit swallow up Fermilab? Could it even spell doom for planet Earth? Tribunescience reporter Jeremy Manier explains. Sounds like the premise of a bad sci-fi movie: Big-time physics experimentaccidentally destroys the Earth. Scientists really don't think that willhappen when the Large Hadron Collider fires up at the Swiss-French border onWednesday, but the fact it's being debated tells you how unprecedented thenew device is. Seven times more powerful than Fermilab's main particlecollider in Batavia, the new facility will smash together intense beams ofsubatomic protons, producing so much energy that some theories predict itcould form tiny black holes. That has led to two lawsuits-one filed inEurope, one in Hawaii-seeking to halt the project and save the planet.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/chi-fermilab-explainer_bd07sep07,0,7273662.story

-Medicare guidelines for drugs not met
About 85 percent of the marketing materials that private insurers use fortheir prescription drug plans fail to meet all of Medicare's guidelines forthose products, federal auditors said Thursday. The marketing productsinclude enrollment applications for the Medicare drug benefit orexplanations of a plan's benefits and rules. The Centers for Medicare andMedicaid Services has dozens of requirements for how the information issupposed to be presented to the elderly and disabled. Auditors found thatthe materials routinely violated one or more of those requirements.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/nationworld/sfl-flamedicare0905sbsep05,0,2812616.story

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