The Seattle Times

Are the bad old days back? Read the headlines and you'd think so: "Violent Crime Blazing Back in America" and "Big-city murders way up since '04..."Let's assume the recent rise is serious. What's happening? Lots of competing explanations get offered: Gang problems are now growing in smaller cities. Gun laws are loose and the politicos fear to stiffen them. Because we have the world's highest incarceration rate, rising numbers of inmates are being released from prisons — far… more

WASHINGTON -- In devastating testimony before a Senate panel yesterday, a whistle-blower at the Food and Drug Administration shocked a packed hearing room when he listed five drugs now on the market that he thinks are dangerous and accused the agency of stifling its own scientists who raise safety questions.

Dr. David Graham, an FDA drug-safety official, said the agency and drug giant Merck, didn't move fast enough to take the painkiller Vioxx off the market.

He said that because… more

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- In an apparent affirmation of church tradition, Bishop William Skylstad of Spokane yesterday was elected president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops at its annual fall meeting.

The election came just five days after Skylstad announced his diocese would file for bankruptcy within the month, and amid clamor by critics in Spokane that Skylstad should not be elected president because he had failed in the past to deal firmly with complaints about sexually abusive clergy.

Skylstad,… more

Last January, during a major policy address on science and technology, President Clinton proposed a new $500 million National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI). A nanometer is one-billionth … more