Editorial: Active euthanasia and physician assisted suicide should be legalised British Medical Journal [via EurekAlert]

Bin Laden: “Yes, I did it” Telegraph UK

Oh, no, Kesey is gone at 66. New York Times obituary

“As I’ve often told Ginsberg, you can’t blame the President for the state of

the country, it’s always the poets’ fault. You can’t expect politicians to

come up with a vision, they don’t have it in them. Poets have to come up

with the vision and they have to turn it on so it sparks and catches hold.”

–Ken Kesey

Web woos Nessie — ‘Fans of the Loch Ness monster who hope to catch a glimpse of the legendary creature could be in luck thanks to a moving Webcam now filming the murky depths of the Scottish lake.’ globetechnology.com

Better Killing through Chemistry: ‘Buying chemical weapons material through the mail is quick and easy… “It’s a cinch” to obtain off-the-shelf chemicals needed to make sarin nerve gas, as Scientific American editor George Musser found out.

Study reveals self-esteem inflation among US kids: ‘According to the report, in a recent issue of Personality and Social Psychology Review, self-esteem among America’s youth in general and college students in particular has been on the rise for the past 30 years. Meantime, societal indicators that these feelings are warranted, such as higher SAT scores and lower rates of teen pregnancy, have not kept pace with attitudes.’ Self-esteem ‘based on nothing,’ as the study’s author puts it, sets people up for disappointment. ‘(He) blames the trend on the self-esteem movement in schools, which teaches children slogans and affirmations such as “I am lovable and capable.” ‘ Reuters Health

Terminally ill patients spend too much time alone with few visits from medical personnel or family members, researchers report. Reuters Health

Call for Action – Safeguard Communications Privacy:

• President Bush has asked the head of the European Union to
  
  amend privacy laws in Europe so as to allow law enforcement
  
  access to records of personal communications

• The proposal is contrary to international human rights norms
  
  and has been rejected by European Privacy Commissioners and
  
  by Members of the European Parliament

• The proposal also adversely impacts the privacy interests
  
  of US citizens
  

• US and European groups are asked to endorse the letter to
  
  EU President Guy Verhofstadt expressing respectful but
  
  firm opposition to proposal

• To endorse: send name of organization and URL, email and fax
  
  for contact person to eu_letter@epic.org.
  
  If questions, contact Cedric Laurant [chlaurant@epic.org]. [via Declan McCullagh’s Politech newsletter]

Journal issues treatment guidelines: ‘Anthrax infection became part of doctors’ daily repertoire yesterday as the world’s most influential medical journal published detailed guidelines on diagnosing and treating the deadly bacteria.

Doctors are now expected to consider anthrax as a possible cause for the thousands of skin lesions and flu-like symptoms they encounter every day.

The guidelines [link lead to .pdf of article –FmH], published yesterday on the New England Journal of Medicine‘s Web site, are based on close study of the 17 Americans stricken with the disease in recent weeks.

…”Most physicians haven’t ever seen a case of anthrax. [The article] was to bring people up to speed in a medical sense,” said the article’s author, Dr. Morton Swartz of Massachusetts General Hospital’s department of medicine.’ Boston Globe

U.S. Army gassed the turnpike in ’50s

For two decades, from 1949 to 1969, the federal government conducted biological warfare experiments without warning in locations stretching from the New York City subway to San Francisco Bay. Instead of a deadly germ, the Army used dust or bacteria that were thought at the time to be harmless.

But some of the substances ultimately turned out to be not so harmless after all – with one death and 10 additional cases of pneumonia or related infections often blamed on a fog spewed over San Francisco in 1950. Philadelphia Daily News

New York wildlife group calls hunting a terror threat. Protesters call for the suspension of New York State’s hunting season this year; ‘aghast that being armed and disguised in camouflage is legally permitted in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Hunting “is just a wonderful opportunity for someone who would want to do a terrorist act,” (Anne Muller of Wildlife Watch) said. “They don’t have to report their whereabouts and can be lurking anywhere. They can lurk in groups.” ‘ Fox News

Charles’ ‘attacker’ could get 15 years: ‘The schoolgirl who slapped Prince Charles round the face with a flower faces a draconian 15-year sentence for her protest.’ This is London

Orlando Sentinel columnist says: America needs a briefing consolidation: ‘There will be hell to pay if, in the process of trying to topple an extremist Islamic government in Afghanistan, we inadvertently install one in Pakistan, which has a fine army and nuclear weapons. That?s why the president of Pakistan is urging us to move fast. He knows that the longer the bombing campaign goes on, the stronger the opposition will grow.

Unfortunately, the picture emerging in Washington is one of confusion. One day the Pentagon says that we bombed Red Cross food warehouses a second time by mistake and that central command is investigating to determine how the mistake was made. The next day the central command says we bombed the warehouses on purpose because the Taliban is stealing the food. Don?t the joint chiefs know what the central command is doing? Apparently not.’

Red Cross Collected Unneeded Blood — too much to store; thousands of pints of blood collected after the emergency, perhaps 1:5 of the pints collected overall, will be destroyed now they’re reaching the end of their shelf life. Washington Post

Police state: A coalition of liberals and conservatives begins to coalesce around disquiet about the absurdly-named USA PATRIOT — “Uniting and Strentghtning America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism” — (honest!) Act.

Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, one of only three Republican lawmakers to buck the House leadership and the Bush administration to vote against this legislation, is outraged not only by what is contained in the antiterrorism bill but also by the effort to stigmatize opponents. Paul tells Insight, “The insult is to call this a ‘patriot bill’ and suggest I’m not patriotic because I insisted upon finding out what is in it and voting no. I thought it was undermining the Constitution, so I didn’t vote for it ? and therefore I’m somehow not a patriot. That’s insulting.”

Paul confirms rumors circulating in Washington that this sweeping new law, with serious implications for each and every American, was not made available to members of Congress for review before the vote. “It’s my understanding the bill wasn’t printed before the vote ? at least I couldn’t get it. They played all kinds of games, kept the House in session all night, and it was a very complicated bill. Maybe a handful of staffers actually read it, but the bill definitely was not available to members before the vote.”

And why would that be? “This is a very bad bill,” explains Paul, “and I think the people who voted for it knew it and that’s why they said, ‘Well, we know it’s bad, but we need it under these conditions.'” Meanwhile, efforts to obtain copies of the new law were stonewalled even by the committee that wrote it. Insight Magazine

King of Jordan calls for all-Arab deal with Israel: ‘The Arab world must be prepared to offer a collective guarantee of Israel?s security and integration into the Middle East in return for the setting up of a Palestinian state, King Abdullah of Jordan told The Times yesterday.’ Times of London

Why Trade Center Towers Stood, Then Fell — ‘Exactly which failure began the sequence — which occurred under extraordinary conditions never envisioned in the buildings’ design — remains a matter of intense debate. Some analysts hold that too much evidence was destroyed in the collapses to say for certain.

But a leading theory has emerged as teams have sifted through the wreckage, examined photographs and videos and run computer simulations on aspects of the disaster. Many engineers now believe that relatively lightweight steel trusses holding up the reinforced concrete floors sagged in the heat and failed first when the connections that held them to the tightly spaced palisade of steel columns on the outside of the buildings gave way.’ NY Times [“FMHreader”, “FMHreader”]

Britain placed under state of emergency Observer UK

Britain placed under state of emergency Observer UK