Explosions rock flooded New Orleans - Massive explosions rocked the New Orleans riverfront a few kilometres south of the French Quarter on Friday. At about 4.35am (9.35am GMT), a series of massive explosions along the riverfront a few miles south of the French Quarter jolted residents awake.

 

US indicts four on terror charges - Four men have been indicted on terror charges in the US for allegedly planning attacks on military bases and synagogues in the Los Angeles area. The men are also accused of plotting to attack the Israeli consulate and Israeli airline El-Al. Prosecutors allege the plot was headed by a man in prison. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4204664.stm  

Video shows bomber before London attack - http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050902/NEWS06/509020517/1012/NEWS06

 

Bayer Seeks Reprieve For Animal Antibiotic - By Marc KaufmanWashington Post Staff Writer- Friday, September 2, 2005; Page A04 - Bayer Corp. has asked the Food and Drug Administration to allow it to keep selling its controversial animal antibiotic, Baytril, while it fights an agency ban on the drug in federal court.  Almost five years after the FDA first moved to ban the drug -- which the agency had concluded was contributing to a decrease in the effectiveness of closely related human antibiotics -- FDA Commissioner Lester M. Crawford issued a final rule in July ordering the drug off the market as of Sept. 12.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/01/AR2005090101896.html

 

Battling against Parkinson’s - UB scientists find new target to treat neurological disease - Neuroscientists from UB have described for the first time how rotenone, an environmental toxin linked specifically to Parkinson's disease, selectively destroys the neurons that produce dopamine, the neurotransmitter critical to body movement and muscle control. Microtubules, intracellular highways that transport dopamine to the brain area that controls body movement, are the crucial target, they report.  Damage to microtubules prevents dopamine from reaching the brain's movement center, causing a back-up of the neurotransmitter in the transport system, the researchers found. The backed-up dopamine accumulates in the body of the neuron and breaks down, causing a release of toxic free radicals, which destroy the neuron.  http://www.buffalo.edu/reporter/vol37/vol37n1/articles/FengParkinson.html

 

Global Eye - Dream Weaver - It was the one great fear that trumped all the others, the nightmare scenario that overrode reason, skepticism, and all political debate, stampeding the nation into war: the thought of terrorists wielding weapons of mass destruction -- "dirty bombs" packed with cancerous nukestuff and gene-warping chemical poisons that would kill, maim and deform the innocent.  This was the horror that President George W. Bush and his supporters held up -- and still hold up -- before the American people as the moral imperative behind his invasion of Iraq, and the justification for any so-called "abuses" that might be committed in his desperate, noble, no-holds-barred defense of the realm against this ungodly terror.  And despite all the critics and nay-sayers, the president has indeed proven to be a prophet: The nightmare has come true. There are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq -- dirty bombs and poison shells -- and they are being used by terrorist leaders to kill and maim Americans, including newborn children. But the "liberal media" are completely burying the story, in a shameless act of treasonous complicity with these enemies of civilization.  In fact, the U.S. media elite spent last weekend fawning on the radical extremist who unleashed these deadly weapons, gathering for an "intimate dinner" at his secluded desert redoubt, The Washington Post reports. While they noshed and joshed with the man of blood, his poisons were deforming the babies of American soldiers, irradiating the bones and organs of thousands of innocent civilians, and bonding chemical toxins to the very DNA of his victims, laying the foundation for generations of anguish and early death, as the In These Times web site reports.  This WMD attack was no piecemeal effort cobbled together by an isolated band of cranks, but a sustained, relentless onslaught delivered by a highly sophisticated military machine: more than 6 million pounds of radioactive weaponry exploding in every part of the country, its deadly residue raining on plowed fields and playgrounds, swirling in the dust of close-packed cities, winging through vast rural expanses, settling in lungs, coursing through veins, biting into the ground, floating on the water.  The country, of course, is Iraq, where the radical extremist George W. Bush has used more than 3,000 tons of depleted uranium -- the radioactive residue of atomic weapons production and nuclear plants -- in everything from missiles and bombs to rifle and pistol shells. As ITT notes, each DU explosion releases clouds of poison particles that disperse over a wide area and stay radioactive for billions of years. This dispersal pattern means that the American soldiers handling and firing DU ammo -- or just walking through areas blasted by the shells -- get just as poisoned as the thousands upon thousands of Iraqi civilians stricken by Bush's WMD.  Yes, Bush is now committing the same war crime that he himself cites as the prime example of Saddam Hussein's bottomless evil: using chemical weapons against his own people. And make no mistake: DU ammo is a chemical weapon of fearsome properties. After Daddy Bush dumped 300 tons of DU on Iraq in the first Gulf War, the Pentagon's own studies showed it to be an uncontrollable hazard, an indiscriminate tormentor of civilians and combatants alike. But the military brass love those malignancy-spawning munitions, which can cut through stone and steel like paper. So they ignored the studies, denounced their own experts -- and expanded the DU arsenal instead. http://context.themoscowtimes.com/story/155779/  Please also see:

BRITISH GROUPS MASS MILLIONS OF MEMBERS TO HALT GLOBAL WARMING -  LONDON, UK, September 1, 2005 (ENS) - Some of the largest British campaign organizations, united their millions of supporters today to demand action on climate change. Eighteen groups have joined forces to launch the biggest climate change coalition in British history. Five hundred volunteers formed a giant human banner on London's South Bank to mark the launch of the new movement, called Stop Climate Chaos.