You know how we love to rag on VeriChip, but we really can’t complain about the do-gooder nature of this chip patent awarded to its sister company, Digital Angel Corp. The described glucose-sensing RFID chip would allow for quick, painless and purportedly more accurate glucose concentration readings for diabetics who have the chip implanted. Of course, ever with an eye for commercialization, Digital Angel says the chips could also work for tracking diabetic livestock, an apparently common and costly problem. (more…)

A Chinese court has thrown out a guilty verdict against Chen Guangcheng, an activist who raised concerns about forced abortions.

“It was found that there have been serious violations in the legal procedures,” said Mr Chen’s lawyer.

Mr Chen, 34, was found guilty of public order offences in August, and sentenced to more than four years in jail.

His case drew international criticism, with rights advocates saying he did not receive a fair trial. (more…)

The United States has said there is “mounting evidence” that Syria, Iran and Hezbollah are planning to topple the Lebanese government.
The White House said Syria hoped to stop the formation of an international tribunal to try suspects in the killing of former Lebanese PM Rafik Hariri.

Spokesman Tony Snow said any attempt to destabilise the Lebanese government would violate UN resolutions.

Syria’s ambassador to the US rejected the allegations as “ridiculous”.

This just in…Democrats seek to topple the GOP-controlled government. Who is the White House trying to kid here? Hasn’t Israel done a thorough enough job of decimating the Lebanese government as-is? (more…)

A pioneer of Britain’s DNA database said on Wednesday it may have grown so far beyond its original purpose that it now risks undermining civil rights.

Professor Alec Jeffreys told BBC radio that hundreds of thousands of innocent people’s DNA was now held on the database, a disproportionate number of them young black men.

The database, set up in 1995, has expanded to 3.6 million profiles, making it the largest in the world.

Everyone who has ever been arrested by the police, even if not charged, is obliged to provide a DNA sample for the database, which also includes victims of crime and others who have volunteered a sample to help a criminal investigation. (more…)

Germany has suspended four more soldiers for their involvement in the desecration of human skulls in Afghanistan, taking the total number of suspensions to six, a Defense Ministry spokesman said on Wednesday.

The number of suspects being investigated had risen to 23 from 20, the spokesman told reporters at a regular government news conference. Of those, 16 are active soldiers, he added.

A week ago, top-selling Bild newspaper printed pictures of German soldiers in Afghanistan posing with human remains, including skulls. The paper said the pictures had been taken more than three years ago. (more…)

NEW YORK — At another contentious daily briefing at the White House today, as the election rhetoric heats up, Press Secretary Tony Snow was asked about charges and charges by Vice President Cheney and Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY), which culminated today with Rangel calling Cheney an S.O.B. in the New York Post.

Snow suggested that “Charlie” Rangel and other Democrats have an “anger management problem.” He also ripped Sen. John Kerry for bleak statements on Iraq, and boldly predicted that the GOP would carry the elections, not what everyone believes.

The briefing ended with a tough exchange over whether the White House was charging that insurgents in Iraq were carrying out violence to help the Democrats win next week — and how the president could possibly offer “assurances” of victory in Iraq. (more…)

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An internal ABC Radio Networks memo obtained by Media Matters for America, originally from a listener to The Peter B. Collins Show, indicates that nearly 100 ABC advertisers insist that their commercials be blacked out on Air America Radio affiliates. According to the memo, the adverstisers insist that “NONE of their commercials air during AIR AMERICA programming.” Among the advertisers listed are Bank of America, Exxon Mobil, Federal Express, General Electric, McDonald’s, Microsoft, Wal-Mart, and the U.S. Navy.

Source: Media Matters

The White House and Sen. John Kerry traded their harshest accusations since the 2004 presidential race on Tuesday, with President Bush accusing the Democrat of troop-bashing and Kerry calling the president’s men hacks who are “willing to lie.”

The war of words, tough even for this hard-fought campaign season, came after Kerry told a group of California students on Monday that those unable to navigate the country’s education system “get stuck in Iraq.”

The two parties are searching for any edge amid indications Democrats could take back the House and possibly win control of the Senate in next week’s midterm elections. Though neither Bush nor Kerry is on any ballot, the bitterness with which they fought each other as 2004 rivals spilled over as both campaign hard for their parties in a race shaped in large measure by public doubts about the Iraq war. (more…)

Apparently Diebold’s problems aren’t limited to Maryland, Georgia or Alaska — what a shocker. Down in the Sunshine State, during a week of early voting before next week’s nationwide midterm election, certain Diebold machines have been registering some votes for Democrats as selections for the Republican candidate.

For instance, Gary Rudolf, a voter at a polling site near Ft. Lauderdale, tried to vote for gubernatorial candidate Jim Davis (D); however, when the Diebold machine gave him the final review screen, it showed his vote was about to be cast for Charlie Crist (R). (more…)

Conservative columnist Ann Coulter has refused to cooperate in an investigation into whether she voted in the wrong precinct, so the case will probably be turned over to prosecutors, Palm Beach County’s elections chief said Wednesday.

Elections Supervisor Arthur Anderson said his office has been looking into the matter for nearly nine months, and he would turn over the case to the state attorney’s office by Friday.

Coulter’s attorney did not immediately return a call Wednesday. Nor did her publicist at her publisher, Crown Publishing.

Knowingly voting in the wrong precinct is a felony punishable by up to five years in prison. (more…)

The true stories of how American troops, killed in Iraq, actually died keep spilling out this week. On Tuesday, we explored the case of Kenny Stanton, Jr., murdered last month by our allies, the Iraqi police, though the military didn’t make that known at the time. Now we learn that one of the first female soldiers killed in Iraq died by her own hand after objecting to interrogation techniques used on prisoners.

She was Army specialist Alyssa Peterson, 27, a Flagstaff, Az., native serving with C Company, 311th Military Intelligence BN, 101st Airborne. Peterson was an Arabic-speaking interrogator assigned to the prison at our air base in troubled Tal-Afar in northwestern Iraq. According to official records, she died on Sept. 15, 2003, from a “non-hostile weapons discharge.” (more…)

Yahoo!’s snitching to Beijing over pro-democracy activity on the internet refuses to go away. Leading campaigner Wei Jingsheng sigled out the portal on Monday for actions which directly led to a journalist being imprisoned in 2004.

He made the attack on Monday at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan, Computerworld reports.

In 2004, Yahoo!’s burgeoning Chinese tentacle provided the neccessary files to connect an email received by a New York-based pro-democracy website to its sender, a reporter on Hunan Province’s Contemporary Business News. Shi Tao leaked internal Communist Party documents revealing how the regime planned to suppress coverage of the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. (more…)

The Justice Department plans to dispatch more than 800 federal observers and monitors to 20 states to protect voting rights in potentially troubled polling locations, officials announced Tuesday.

That is a record number of federal officials watching polling stations in an off-year election.

“Yes, the anticipated closeness of races is one factor in our decisions about where we’ll be sending people,” said Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Wan Kim.

Kim said he would not identify until Monday the more than 65 cities and counties to which the observers will be sent. (more…)

The surviving portion of the Deep Impact space probe that watched as its other half smashed into a comet on July 4 is being sent on a mission to study another comet.

NASA announced Tuesday that it has accepted a proposal by the University of Maryland, which developed and manages Deep Impact, to send the vehicle on an extended mission to intercept Comet Boethin.

Researchers hope information gathered from Boethin will help further the understanding of how comets formed and evolved and if they played a role in the emergence of life on Earth. (more…)

A new study has found a “substantial” drop in U.S. men’s testosterone levels since the 1980s, but the reasons for the decline remain unclear. This trend also does not appear to be related to age.

The average levels of the male hormone dropped by 1 percent a year, Dr. Thomas Travison and colleagues from the New England Research Institutes in Watertown, Massachusetts, found. This means that, for example, a 65-year-old man in 2002 would have testosterone levels 15 percent lower than those of a 65-year-old in 1987. This also means that a greater proportion of men in 2002 would have had below-normal testosterone levels than in 1987.

“The entire population is shifting somewhat downward we think,” Travison told Reuters Health. “We’re counting on other studies to confirm this.” (more…)