The symptoms of chronic fatigue syndrome have been compared to those of a really bad hangover: extreme weakness, inability to think straight, disrupted sleep and headache. But unlike a hangover, the symptoms linger for years, devastating people’s lives.

While nobody doubts CFS exists, just about every aspect of it is controversial. Some say it is the same as myalgic encephalomyelitis, or ME; others disagree. Many specialists are convinced it does have a biological basis, but pinning down physical abnormalities common to all patients has proved tough. People with CFS have often received little sympathy from doctors who dismiss it as ‘all in the mind’.” (New Scientist)

…Police expressed regret for the tragedy and named the innocent victim as Jean Charles de Menezes, a 27-year-old electrician who had been living in London for three years.

…Anti-terrorism expert Robert Ayers of the Royal Institute of International Affairs said police have “demonstrated that they are operating on the premise right now that if they suspect that someone is a bomber, and that the public is going to be endangered by him, they have shoot-to-kill orders.”” (Boston Globe)

Emergency medicine begins at home, say disaster preparedness experts. Every household should have some basic first-aid supplies on hand to cope with minor emergencies.” (MedPageToday)

But on Wednesday, an investigation by the Entertainment Software Ratings Board concluded that Take Two was, in fact, responsible for the sex content, which was found in all three versions of San Andreas: the PC, Xbox and PlayStation2 discs. Wildenborg’s Hot Coffee download merely made the scenes accessible.

The industry group revoked the game’s M rating, which labeled it appropriate for players 17 or older, and re-filed it under AO for ‘adults only’ — raising the minimum age to 18, the year at which a delicate teen becomes less susceptible to the harmful influence of computer-generated cartoon sex.” (Wired News )

So all we know about him for sure is that he can’t dance and he probably doesn’t know who Jay-Z is. Other than that, he is a blank slate. Tabula rasa. Big zippo. Nada. Oh, yeah … We also know he’s argued cases before the Supreme Court. Big deal; so has Larry Flynt’s attorney.

But unfortunately, other than that that, we don’t know much about John Roberts. Stealth nominees have never turned out to be a pleasant surprise for conservatives. Never. Not ever. “

For sure you don’t say, ”Oh honey, it’s only a book.’” (Boston Globe)

Hallucinations, disorientation, dizziness and anxiety, feelings of vertigo: on a trip to Florence in 1817 the writer Stendhal suffered what later became known as Stendhal’s syndrome, a kind of overwhelming panic in the face of too much great art. Whether it was the masterpieces of the Uffizi that triggered it, or lack of sleep, the rigours of 19th-century travel, too many grappas or some instability that lurked within the author, we shall never know. Perhaps Stendhal didn’t know either…” (Guardian.UK)

The discomfort is designed to prompt people caught in the microwave beam to move away from it, thereby allowing riot-control personnel to break up and manage a crowd.

But New Scientist magazine reported Wednesday that during tests carried out at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico, participants playing the part of rioters were told to remove glasses and contact lenses to protect their eyes. In another test they were also told to remove metal objects such as coins from their clothing to prevent local hot spots from developing on their skin.

‘What happens if someone in a crowd is unable for whatever reason to move away from the beam?’ asked Neil Davison, coordinator of the nonlethal weapons research project at Britain’s Bradford University. ‘How do you ensure that the dose doesn’t cross the threshold for permanent damage? Does the weapon cut out to prevent overexposure?’

The magazine said a vehicle-mounted version of the weapon named Sheriff was scheduled for service in Iraq in 2006 and that U.S. Marines and police were both working on portable versions.” (c/net thanks to walker)

Still, should Ms. Joyce, the St. Louis circuit attorney, demonstrate Mr. Griffin was not the killer, as the report and even some members of the victim’s family contend, it would be the first proven execution of an innocent person, so far as death penalty advocates or opponents can recall.” (New York Times )

By then, the men in charge of the C.I.A. were “dying to help out, and make sure the election went the right way,” the recently retired C.I.A. official recalled. It was known inside the intelligence community, he added, that the Iranians and others were providing under-the-table assistance to various factions. The concern, he said, was that “the bad guys would win.”” — Seymour Hersh (The New Yorker)

Perhaps no country was affected as profoundly by the radicalism of the times as the Netherlands. In less than 15 years, most forms of traditional authority and hierarchy, the counterbalancing forces that made Dutch tolerance possible, were undermined. Hence today’s image of Dutch tolerance: marijuana served at coffee shops, police officers with hair as long as the Grateful Dead, full nudity on public television and, for those who prefer not to work, a government package of benefits that makes a toil-free life entirely feasible.” (IHT)

… But what may be a boon for wandering Web surfers could quickly become a threat to wireless providers. ‘The premise is one person buys an air card and one person uses the service, not an entire neighborhood,’ said Jeffrey Nelson, executive director for corporate communications at Verizon Wireless. ‘Giving things away for free doesn’t work anymore. It never did.’

Unlimited service on cellular modem cards for PC’s costs about $80 a month. The carriers are clearly worried about a technology that could destroy that business, but they have not formed a united front against Junxion.

… The commercial version of the box retails for $699. They plan a less expensive consumer version next year.” (New York Times )

Her lawyer accuses the authorities of criminalising childhood behaviour. ‘They’re treating her like a violent parole offender,’ Richard Beshwate said. ‘It’s not a felony, it’s an 11-year-old acting like an 11-year-old.’

The girl is due back in court at the beginning of next month.

Police say they had to investigate as the boy who was hit by the stone she threw suffered a deep gash to his head and needed hospital treatment. He has reportedly acknowledged to officers that he started the fight in late April.

The confrontation happened in a poor district of Fresno, in central California, where Maribel Cuevas lives with her Spanish-speaking family.” (BBC)

Dilpazier Aslam, who has been allowed to report on the London bombings from Leeds and was also given space to write a column in last Wednesday’s edition of The Guardian, is a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir, a radical world organisation which seeks to form a global Islamic state regulated by sharia law.

It is understood that staff at The Guardian were unaware that Mr Aslam was a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir until allegations surfaced on ‘The Daily Ablution’, a blog run by Scott Burgess. Speculation is mounting that it may have been a sting by Hizb ut-Tahrir to infiltrate the mainstream media.

Late on Friday The Guardian released a statement to The Independent on Sunday saying: ‘Dilpazier Aslam is a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir, an organisation which is legal in this country. We are keeping the matter under review.’ The paper refused to comment further.” (Independent.UK)

Even so, we shouldn’t get hung up on him – or on most of the other supposed leading figures in this scandal thus far. Not Matt Cooper or Judy Miller or the Wilsons or the bad guy everyone loves to hate, the former CNN star Robert Novak. This scandal is not about them in the end, any more than Watergate was about Dwight Chapin and Donald Segretti or Woodward and Bernstein. It is about the president of the United States. It is about a plot that was hatched at the top of the administration and in which everyone else, Mr. Rove included, are at most secondary players.”

Most people with depression are often initially prescribed an antidepressant by their doctor. Prescriptions for these medications have risen dramatically in the last decade.

In an interview with Reuters Health, Dr. Joanna Moncrieff, an author of the report, said, ‘I do not think there is such a thing as a drug that will specifically relieve depression. I think so-called antidepressants are just drugs that do other things, such as sedating or stimulating people.’ In fact, she continued, “I am skeptical as to whether there is a biochemical syndrome of depression despite the portrayal by the drug companies and some psychiatric literature.”

Moncrieff, a lecturer at the University College London and co-chair of the Critical Psychiatry Network, describes depression as a condition that “should be dealt with without drugs, because it’s something people need to learn to deal with themselves.” (Reuters Health)

Tourists visiting Disney theme parks in Central Florida must now provide their index and middle fingers to be scanned before entering the front gates. The scans were formerly for season pass holders but now everyone must provide their fingers, Local 6 News reported. They have reportedly been phased in for all ticket holders during the past six months, according to a report.

Disney officials said the scans help keep track of who is using legitimate tickets, Local 6 News reported. …Disney officials said the finger scans do not take an actual fingerprint. The scan recognizes certain points and outlines visitor’s fingers, officials said. Critics of the new scanning technology do not agree with Disney and said the scans border on a violation of privacy.

I think it’s a step in the wrong direction,’ Civil Liberties Union spokesman George Crossley said. ‘I think it is a step toward collection of personal information on people regardless of what Disney says.’ Crossley said they will be looking into the scans.”

…Perhaps that idea of terrorists with a cause and defenders with doubts influenced the discomfort felt in the current film as well. At any rate, the novel was more rigorous. It saw the similarities between victim and attacker but also what was at stake and what effect the attacks ultimately had. Through them, Wells writes, humanity was robbed ‘of that serene confidence in the future which is the most fruitful source of decadence.'” (New York Times )

But a number of cases that are likely to reach the court in the next few years, including the latest versions of the ban on the procedure that critics call partial-birth abortion, may give a new set of justices the opportunity to restrict abortion in significant ways.” (New York Times )

‘I think it would be very tempting if the president said to Justice O’Connor, ‘You could help the country now,’ ‘ Mr. Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania and a pivotal player in any confirmation hearings, said in an interview on the CBS program ‘Face the Nation.’ ‘She has received so much adulation that a confirmation proceeding would be more like a coronation, and she might be willing to stay on for a year or so.’

Although Mr. Specter’s seeming endorsement of the idea was highly speculative – Justice O’Connor, 75, has announced her retirement, while Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, 80, has not stepped down – it was the clearest of his several recent signals that he plans to steer his own course as he oversees hearings on a replacement for Justice O’Connor, independent of the president and of his party’s conservative base.” (New York Times )

A police source told The Times: “Our main fear is that this group is out there still sitting on a cache of high explosives knowing that their bomb designs worked.” (Times of London)

Being abused as an infant outweighs any primarily genetic trait, such as an anxious temperament, in fostering abusive parenting by female monkeys, says primatologist Dario Maestripieri of the University of Chicago.” (Science News)

At the same time, approximately one-fifth (22%) of adults believe ‘human beings evolved from earlier species’ (evolution) and 10 percent subscribe to the theory that ‘human beings are so complex that they required a powerful force or intelligent being to help create them’ (intelligent design). Moreover, a majority (55%) believe that all three of these theories should be taught in public schools, while 23 percent support teaching creationism only, 12 percent evolution only, and four percent intelligent design only.

These are some of the results of a nationwide Harris Poll of 1,000 U.S. adults surveyed by telephone by Harris Interactive® between June 17 and 21, 2005.” (Yahoo! News)

Self-styled Taliban spokesman Mullah Abdul Latif Hakimi told AFP the soldier was killed on Saturday and his body was left on a mountainside in the northeastern province of Kunar.

An American navy SEAL has been missing in Kunar after the rescue attempt of a four-man team ended in the downing of a US military helicopter on June 28, killing 16 people. One soldier was rescued but the other two are dead.” (Agence France-Presse)

And it’s no use Mr Blair telling us yesterday that ‘they will never succeed in destroying what we hold dear’. ‘They’ are not trying to destroy ‘what we hold dear’. They are trying to get public opinion to force Blair to withdraw from Iraq, from his alliance with the United States, and from his adherence to Bush’s policies in the Middle East. The Spanish paid the price for their support for Bush – and Spain’s subsequent retreat from Iraq proved that the Madrid bombings achieved their objectives – while the Australians were made to suffer in Bali.” — Robert Fisk (Independent.UK)

The three bombs went off nearly simultaneously at about 8:50 a.m. Thursday, said Deputy Assistant Commissioner Brian Paddick said, revising earlier accounts that they occurred within a 26-minute span. An explosion tore through a double-decker bus nearly an hour later.

New information about the timing of the explosions also suggested they were detonated with synchronized timers rather than by suicide bombers, although officials said nothing had been ruled out.” (New York Times )

‘The Red Planet is about to be spectacular.’

‘Earth is catching up with Mars [for] the closest approach between the two planets in recorded history.’

‘On August 27th … Mars will look as large as the full moon.’

And finally, ‘NO ONE ALIVE TODAY WILL EVER SEE THIS AGAIN.’

Those are snippets from a widely-circulated email. Only the first sentence is true. The Red Planet is about to be spectacular. The rest is a hoax.

Here are the facts: Earth and Mars are converging for a close encounter this year on October 30th at 0319 Universal Time. Distance: 69 million kilometers. To the unaided eye, Mars will look like a bright red star, a pinprick of light, certainly not as wide as the full Moon.

Disappointed? Don’t be. If Mars did come close enough to rival the Moon, its gravity would alter Earth’s orbit and raise terrible tides.

Sixty-nine million km is good. At that distance, Mars shines brighter than anything else in the sky except the Sun, the Moon and Venus. The visual magnitude of Mars on Oct. 30, 2005, will be -2.3. Even inattentive sky watchers will notice it, rising at sundown and soaring overhead at midnight.” (NASA)

It was one of the last entries in his Web log before he was arrested Saturday and then charged this week with two counts of kidnapping.” (New York Times )

…For the past several Sundays, the New Born Fellowship Christian Center in Rochester has conducted spiritual warfare. The congregation has been encouraged to wear fatigues and uniforms. Assistant Pastor Perdita Meeks said no one has found spiritual warfare to be over the top.” (WHAM-TV, Rochester NY via Uncle $cam)

Nevertheless, when I spotted Robertson in a lineup of celebrities including Brad Pitt, Bono, George Clooney and the also-never-boring Dennis Hopper, I was delighted to see him. He was in the One Campaign’s television ad asking for help in the crusade against poverty, starvation and AIDS in Africa and elsewhere.

In the commercial, Robertson says, ‘Americans have an unprecedented opportunity,’ and then Sean ‘P. Diddy’ Combs, of all people, finishes his sentence, concluding that ‘we can make history.’

On a recent ‘Nightline,’ Robertson showed up with his new best friend, Clooney. When asked if his group Operation Blessing would promote ‘the responsible use of condoms’ along with abstinence in its AIDS education program in Africa, Robertson answered, ‘Absolutely.’ Pat Robertson!” — Sarah Vowell (New York Times op-ed)

But, in fact, the living world is shot through with imperfection. Unless one wants to attribute either incompetence or sheer malevolence to such a designer, this imperfection — the manifold design flaws of life — points incontrovertibly to a natural, rather than a divine, process, one in which living things were not created de novo, but evolved. Consider the human body. Ask yourself, if you were designing the optimum exit for a fetus, would you engineer a route that passes through the narrow confines of the pelvic bones?” (LA Times op-ed)

Police and firefighters were called to a building site in south east London, after a passer-by spotted the girl.

The unnamed 15-year-old had apparently left her home near the site, climbed the crane and walked across a narrow beam while remaining fast asleep.” (BBC)

Demonstrators fought running battles with 1,000 police in the centre of the city, which was brought to a standstill for six hours.”

Over the last few years, Leo Stoller has written dozens of letters to companies and organizations and individuals stating that he owns the trademark to ‘stealth.’ He has threatened to sue people who have used the word without his permission. In some cases, he has offered to drop objections in exchange for thousands of dollars. And in a few of those instances, people or companies have paid up.

‘If a trademark owner doesn’t go up to the plate each day and police his mark, he will be overrun by third-party infringers,’ Mr. Stoller, a 59-year-old entrepreneur, said in a telephone interview from his office in Chicago. ‘We sue a lot of companies.’

Mr. Stoller owns and runs a company called Rentamark.com, which offers, among other things, advice on sending cease-and-desist letters and Mr. Stoller’s services as an expert witness in trademark trials. Through Rentamark, Mr. Stoller offers licensing agreements for other words he says he owns and controls, such as bootlegger, hoax and chutzpah, and sells t-shirts and other merchandise through what the Web site calls its ‘stealth mall.’

He is currently in a legal dispute with Sony’s Columbia Pictures unit over a film that opens late this month. It is about elite Navy pilots and titled – what else? – Stealth.” (New York Times )

Scientists and engineers jumped in the air, pumped their fists and hugged one another. Not only had their mission to deliberately collide with a comet for the first time succeeded perfectly, but the prospect of a damp squib – with the impactor passing right through a diffuse, rubbly comet – had fizzled away.” (New Scientist )

Channing Phillips, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Washington, declined comment on whether any materials were seized in Friday’s raids, saying that the search warrants were under seal.

The Internal Revenue Service, the Pentagon’s Defense Criminal Investigative Service and the FBI have joined the U.S. Attorney’s office in the investigation of Cunningham and Mitchell Wade, who until recently was chief executive of MZM, a Washington-based government contractor that provides highly classified intelligence work for the Pentagon.

The investigation began after news reports that Wade had purchased Cunningham’s home in Del Mar, California, in late 2003 for more than $1.6 million and then sold it months later at a loss of $700,000. Cunningham also was living rent-free on Wade’s boat at the Capital Yacht Club on the Potomac River.” (New York Times )

Late last week, a delegation of conservative lawyers led by C. Boyden Gray and former Attorney General Edwin Meese III met with the White House chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., to warn that appointing Mr. Gonzales would splinter conservative support.

And Paul M. Weyrich, a veteran conservative organizer and chairman of the Free Congress Foundation, said he had told administration officials that nominating Mr. Gonzales, whose views on abortion are considered suspect by religious conservatives, would fracture the president’s conservative backers.

The groundswell of opposition to Mr. Gonzales was just one sign of the conflicting forces suddenly swirling around Mr. Bush this weekend as he headed to Camp David to begin considering a replacement for Justice O’Connor, a decision his aides said would not be announced before he returned from a trip to Europe at the end of next week.

Senate Democrats demanded that he consult them before making a choice and appoint a pragmatist in Justice O’Connor’s mold.

Conservatives, flexing their muscles in a battle they have spent a decade preparing for, described the nomination as a test of Mr. Bush’s convictions and past promises, and his biggest opportunity yet to assure that the Bush presidency will leave a conservative stamp for a generation to come.” (New York Times )

If you are a lawyer with a case at the court, pitch your arguments to her. If your issue is affirmative action, or religion, or federalism, or redistricting, or abortion, or constitutional due process in any of its many manifestations, you can assume that the fate of that issue is in her hands. Don’t bother with doctrinaire assertions and bright-line rules. Be meticulously prepared on the facts, and be ready to show how the law relates to those facts and how, together, they make sense.

And it is because Justice O’Connor has played such a pivotal role on the court for much of her 24-year tenure that her unexpected retirement is such a galvanizing event. Much more than the widely anticipated retirement of the predictably conservative Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, her departure creates an opportunity for President Bush to shape the court.”

What Congel has in mind is an outsize and extremely unusual mega-mall. Destiny U.S.A., the retail-and-entertainment complex he is building in upstate New York, aspires to be not only the biggest man-made structure on the planet but also the most environmentally friendly. Equal parts Disney World, Las Vegas, Bell Laboratories and Mall of America — with a splash of Walden Pond — the ”retail city” will include the usual shops and restaurants as well as an extensive research facility for testing advanced technologies and a 200-acre recreational biosphere complete with springlike temperatures and an artificial river for kayaking.” (New York Times )

Jacques Audiard’s film The Beat That My Heart Skipped, which relocates Mr. Toback’s violent, willfully unstable psychodrama from 70’s New York to 21st-century Paris, has to be one of the unlikeliest remakes in the history of the movies, and not only because The Beat That My Heart Skipped, which opened Friday in New York and Los Angeles, is actually a strong picture in its own right. It’s also unusual in that the original film is not the sort of proven, marketable commodity that generally inspires (if that’s the word) the urge to remake: Fingers was a box-office flop in the United States, and although it attracted some critical enthusiasm in France, it quickly, Mr. Audiard says, ‘fell into a kind of purgatory’ – largely forgotten and rarely revived. And it’s practically unheard of for a French filmmaker to redo an American movie. Even the auteurs of the French New Wave maintained a reverential, hands-off attitude toward the work of their Hollywood idols; they contented themselves with homages, fleeting evocations of the manner, rather than the matter, of the movies they loved.” (New York Times )

Channing Phillips, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Washington, declined comment on whether any materials were seized in Friday’s raids, saying that the search warrants were under seal.

The Internal Revenue Service, the Pentagon’s Defense Criminal Investigative Service and the FBI have joined the U.S. Attorney’s office in the investigation of Cunningham and Mitchell Wade, who until recently was chief executive of MZM, a Washington-based government contractor that provides highly classified intelligence work for the Pentagon.

The investigation began after news reports that Wade had purchased Cunningham’s home in Del Mar, California, in late 2003 for more than $1.6 million and then sold it months later at a loss of $700,000. Cunningham also was living rent-free on Wade’s boat at the Capital Yacht Club on the Potomac River.” (New York Times )

They call it the Junk Fax Prevention Act, but as you can see from the bill text and testimony at the link at the bottom of this page, it will do just the opposite… it will legalize the sending of junk faxes from qualifying advertisers.

The way they are doing this is to allow unlimited faxing of ads (until you get sick enough of it to complain and your complaint meets certain requirements) if you have an ‘Existing Business Relationship,’ but the definition of an EBR is so loose that it will be trivial for junk faxers to establish an EBR with virtually any business or consumer. A spammer can establish an EBR with your company just by visiting your website, calling your phone, or sending an email (provided someone replies, even an auto-responder). That gives them the right to LEGALLY send advertising to your fax machine.

Not only that, the current bill creates a never-ending EBR, so they can junkfax you forever until you opt out. So someone who spoke with you 20 years ago can legally send you junk faxes as soon as this bill passes. And, like spam, once you’ve opted out, you’ve just proven that it’s a real fax number and you look at your faxes…now your number is more valuable to sell to others.” (The J-Walk Blog )

The printing is large and easy to read from a distance. The cards are tabbed and arranged by topic, so you can find the right message fast.

The book includes a variety of uncensored and censored messages (for those with slightly smaller balls). We’ve included a message for just about every annoying driver you’ll encounter (43 messages in all), and we’ve also included some blank pages for you to write your own messages!”

A road rager can become upset because you accidentally cut in front of him or her, or other reasons that were not intentional. A key factor in reversing the process is an apology. Over 85 percent of road ragers said that they would drop the matter if the other ‘careless’ driver simply apologized. Instead, road ragers claim, the ‘careless’ driver seems to be unconcerned about what they just did and, therefore, needs to be taught a lesson. In a car, only one method is effective in conveying an apology: A sign.”

This 4th of July is payback time. For the first time in history, Earth gets to strike back. The weapon: a NASA spacecraft named Deep Impact. The target: a 10-mile wide comet named Tempel 1.

Deep Impact is going to shoot an 820-pound projectile into the rocky, icy nucleus of Comet Tempel 1. The 23,000 mph collision will form a big crater, and Deep impact will observe the stages of its development, how deep it gets and how wide it becomes. Researchers expect a plume of gas and dust to spray out of the crater. Deep Impact will measure its composition and record what the billowing plume does to the comet’s atmosphere. In all, Deep Impact should be able to peer into the new crater for almost 15 minutes before the craft speeds away, continuing, like its cometary quarry, to orbit forever around the Sun.” (NASA)

We’ve launched an urgent petition to take your voice straight to your senators in this critical time to show Congress, the president and the media that the American people are engaged and ready to fight for our rights. Please sign today.” (MoveOn)