The Baltimore Sun

Pollution Bill Attacked (The Baltimore Sun)

...Environmentalists, scientists, public health experts and alternative energy companies also pledged their support for the Global Warming Solutions Act during a Senate hearing yesterday. The supporters argue that state limits are necessary to spur federal action and will help to prevent deadly floods and economic chaos brought by climate change. ...

...Former California Environmental Protection Agency Secretary Terry Tamminen said costs for most customers and businesses would go down because regulations created by the state would encourage conservation.… more

More Money, Less Health (The Baltimore Sun) 

A few years ago, health journalist Shannon Brownlee was going through some global health statistics. She noticed that even as U.S. health care costs were rising steadily, Americans were not getting healthier. How to explain this apparent paradox?

Brownlee became fascinated and began to collect data in search of answers. The result is Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer, her analysis of how American health care has… more

Over the past century, assassinations of heads of state and other prominent leaders such as the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King Jr. in the United States and Rabin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in the Middle East have shifted the course of history one way or another.

The full consequences of yesterday's assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto remain to be seen. But some experts worry what impact the event will have in an era where conflict driven… more

At Camp David, Egyptian President Anwar el Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin held secret talks that led to a historic peace between their nations.

On the banks of the Wye River, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to give back part of the West Bank in return for concessions from Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Now, Annapolis becomes the third Maryland locale to take a turn in the international spotlight as a venue in the long search for peace in the… more

With a proposed Mideast peace conference in Annapolis only weeks away, the lofty goals outlined by President Bush seem to be fading beyond reach, with the meeting likely to be scaled back to a single day, according to senior U.S. officials and outside analysts.

The conference, originally expected to be set for late November, might not be held until mid-December, a State Department official hinted yesterday. Bush's spokeswoman called preparations for the conference "tenuous right now." ...

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice… more

With their efforts to win more government funding stymied in Washington, medical researchers at the Johns Hopkins University and elsewhere are taking their lobbying campaign on the road -- and into the presidential campaign.

The doctors and scientists plan to raise the profile of their issue by advertising and organizing in the early voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina. It is the latest move in an effort to reverse an erosion of federal funding for… more

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have left little room for news coverage or informed discussion of what is going on in the rest of the world and how it relates to U.S. security interests. This goes double for Africa, which was largely ignored in policymaking circles even before Iraq and 9/11 began to dominate the foreign policy agenda.

Thus, few Americans are likely aware that the U.S. relationship with Africa has become increasingly militarized. In the long run, such… more

In a few days, Congress will return to reauthorize the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP. The program will pay for expanded coverage for children through an increase in cigarette taxes. The logic is to raise revenue while discouraging a behavior harmful to child health. Instead of a cigarette tax, however, Congress should address the health problem that research indicates is the greatest crisis facing America’s young people by taxing junk food instead.

The new epidemic facing American children… more

Before he could begin to lead the fifth-largest school district in Maryland, Eric J. Smith was told he needed to make time to speak with one Severna Park family: the Sniders.Smith sat across the dining table from Terra Ziporyn and Jim H. Snider, parents of three school-age children, and got an earful about the value of the arts and the need for new algebra textbooks and greater transparency in the district's decision making."They cared… more

What if the wrong candidate wins France’s presidential election? If the wrong candidate were to win because of electoral fraud -- stuffing of ballot boxes or rigging of votes -- all of France would be up in arms, and the international media would shine a glaring spotlight.

But a different specter hangs over French voters today: that the wrong candidate will win because of an antiquated method for electing their president. The current method, a first-round free-for-all… more