[LA Times 07-09-08] Vice President Dick Cheney's office worked to alter sworn congressional testimony provided by a federal official in order to play down the threat of global warming and head off regulation of greenhouse gas emissions, a former government official said in a new accusation Tuesday.

Burnett appeared at a news conference Tuesday with Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who said his statements could boost efforts by California and other states to implement their own vehicle emission standards over White House opposition. Boxer plans to call Burnett to testify later this month before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, which she chairs.

His charges are likely to give Bush administration critics new ammunition in their efforts to portray executive-branch actions on the environment as driven by politics, rather than science.

Administration pressure also was cited in changes to testimony by the head of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in October and in an attempt to prevent the EPA from taking a step toward regulating greenhouse gas emissions in December.

The Supreme Court ruled last year that the EPA was required to evaluate whether greenhouse gas emissions posed a risk and, if so, implement regulations on polluters. President Bush has opposed mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, oil refineries and other polluters, contending such steps would drive up energy costs and hurt the economy.

But White House efforts to edit testimony were "clearly misconduct, in terms of interfering with scientific information," said Bettina Poirier, staff director for the environment committee. However, she said, she was still examining whether those actions violated the law.

For Cheney, the new accusation, coming as he winds down his time in Washington, is similar to criticism he faced early in his vice presidency over private meetings he held to shape national energy policy. Then, as now, the White House refused to turn over documents sought by congressional investigators.

Cheney spokeswoman Lea Anne McBride responded: "We won't discuss internal deliberations."

Burnett resigned as the EPA's associate deputy administrator last month. He also has contributed $4,600 to Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's campaign.

EPA Administrator Johnson, in testimony before Boxer's committee in January, planned to tell senators that "greenhouse gas emissions harm the environment."

However, Burnett said in a letter to Boxer, "an official in the office of the vice president called to tell me that his office wanted the language changed." He said he didn't make the change. Johnson delivered the testimony as planned.

In one of the previous instances, administration officials extensively edited testimony in October by Dr. Julie L. Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, removing six pages she planned to deliver.

Administration efforts to alter her testimony have been previously reported. But, in a new allegation, Burnett charged Tuesday that Cheney's office had been involved in efforts to delete portions of her testimony on the health risks of climate change. He declined to identify who in the vice president's office had sought the changes.

In December, Burnett said, he sent the White House an e-mail finding, in response to the Supreme Court ruling, that greenhouse gas emissions pose a risk, a step toward regulation. But shortly after, Burnett said, "I was asked to send a follow-up note saying that the e-mail had been sent in error."

"I explained that I could not do this because it was not true," he said.

The new charges of political interference come as California works to overturn a federal decision in December denying California and other states permission to impose stricter emission standards than the federal government.

Congressional Democrats have tried to get records of White House communications with the EPA on the issue, but the White House recently invoked executive privilege in refusing to turn over documents to a congressional committee investigating the EPA's decision to deny California's request.

But with Burnett, a Stanford-trained environmental economist, Democrats have a star witness who may be able to offer new insight into the White House's role in a number of EPA decisions at the planned July 22 Senate hearing.

Boxer said the White House was trying to prevent the government from acting on a threat to human health and the environment. She said: "History will judge this Bush administration harshly for recklessly covering up a real threat to the people they're supposed to protect."

[Columbus Ohio Dispatch 06-19-08] A Mount Vernon teacher undermined science instruction in the public school district by discrediting evolution in his classroom and focusing on creationism and intelligent design, a probe has found.

Eighth-graders who were taught by John Freshwater frequently had to be re-taught in high school what they were supposed to have learned in Freshwater's class, according to outside investigators hired by the district.

"There is a significant amount of evidence that Mr. Freshwater's teachings regarding subjects related to evolution were not consistent with the curriculum of the Mount Vernon City Schools and state standards," the consultants reported.

Freshwater had been told to stop teaching intelligent design and creationism, but he continued, the report found.

HR on Call Inc., the consultants who investigated allegations against Freshwater, released their findings today. Mount Vernon school board members will meet today to discuss the report and decide what, if any, action they will take.

The report confirms that Freshwater burned crosses onto students' arms, using an electrostatic device, in December. Freshwater told investigators the marks were Xs, not crosses. But all of the students interviewed in the investigation reported being branded with crosses. The investigation report includes a photo of one student's arm with a long vertical line and a short horizontal line running through it.

The family of one student who was burned filed a federal lawsuit last week against Freshwater and the district, saying the student's civil rights were violated.

Today, the family's attorney, Jessica Philemond, said it was unfortunate that the school district didn't do anything sooner to stop Freshwater.

"These concerns had been going on for at least 11 years and the school had not done anything," she said.

A teacher who worked in Freshwater's classroom last year also reported to investigators that Freshwater told his class that homosexuality is a sin.

Neither Freshwater nor his attorney, Roger Weaver, could be reached for comment last night. Freshwater's friend, Dave Daubenmire, defended him.

"With the exception of the cross-burning episode ... I believe John Freshwater is teaching the values of the parents in the Mount Vernon school district,'' he said.

Daubenmire is a former London High School football coach whose district was sued in 1999 by the American Civil Liberties Union because he led his players in prayer at games, practices and meetings.

"Do you think there are other teachers in the public classroom that are trying to drive their opinions in the classroom?'' Daubenmire asked. "I don't care who you are. You cannot separate your value system from your teaching.''

The debate about Freshwater's actions became public in April after he refused to remove a Bible from his desk, as the district had ordered.

The report says he was insubordinate for failing to remove the Bible and other religious materials from his classroom but also found other issues about his teaching and behavior.

[NY Times 06-25-08] The White House in December refused to accept the Environmental Protection Agency's conclusion that greenhouse gases are pollutants that must be controlled, telling agency officials that an e-mail message containing the document would not be opened, senior E.P.A. officials said last week.

This week, more than six months later, the E.P.A. is set to respond to that order by releasing a watered-down version of the original proposal that offers no conclusion. Instead, the document reviews the legal and economic issues presented by declaring greenhouse gases a pollutant.

Over the past five days, the officials said, the White House successfully put pressure on the E.P.A. to eliminate large sections of the original analysis that supported regulation, including a finding that tough regulation of motor vehicle emissions could produce $500 billion to $2 trillion in economic benefits over the next 32 years. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter.

Both documents, as prepared by the E.P.A., "showed that the Clean Air Act can work for certain sectors of the economy, to reduce greenhouse gases," one of the senior E.P.A. officials said. "That's not what the administration wants to show. They want to show that the Clean Air Act can't work."

The Bush administration's climate-change policies have been evolving over the past two years. It now accepts the work of government scientists studying global warming, such as last week's review forecasting more drenching rains, parching droughts and intense hurricanes as global temperatures warm (www.climatescience.gov).

But no administration decisions have supported the regulation of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act or other environmental laws.

Tony Fratto, a White House spokesman, refused to comment on discussions between the White House and the Environmental Protection Agency. Asked about changes in the original report, Mr. Fratto said, "It's the E.P.A. that determines what analysis it wants to make available" in its documents.

The new document, a road map laying out the issues involved in regulation, is to be signed by Stephen L. Johnson, the agency's administrator, and published as early as Wednesday.

The derailment of the original E.P.A. report was first made known in March by Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The refusal to open the e-mail has not been made public.

In early December, the E.P.A.'s draft finding that greenhouse gases endanger the environment used Energy Department data from 2007 to conclude that it would be cost effective to require the nation's motor vehicle fleet to average 37.7 miles per gallon in 2018, according to government officials familiar with the document.

About 10 days after the finding was left unopened by officials at the Office of Management and Budget, Congress passed and President Bush signed a new energy bill mandating an increase in average fuel-economy standards to 35 miles per gallon by 2020. The day the law was signed, the E.P.A. administrator rejected the unanimous recommendation of his staff and denied California a waiver needed to regulate vehicle emissions of greenhouse gases in the state, saying the new law's approach was preferable and climate change required global, not regional, solutions.

California's regulations would have imposed tougher standards.

The Transportation Department made its own fuel-economy proposals public almost two months ago; they were based on the assumption that gasoline would range from $2.26 per gallon in 2016 to $2.51 per gallon in 2030, and set a maximum average standard of 35 miles per gallon in 2020.

The White House, which did not oppose the Transportation Department proposals, has become more outspoken on the need for a comprehensive approach to greenhouse gases, specifically rejecting possible controls deriving from older environmental laws.

In a speech in April, Mr. Bush called for an end to the growth of greenhouse gases by 2025 -- a timetable slower than many scientists say is required. His chairman of the Council of Environmental Quality, James Connaughton, said a "train wreck" would result if regulations to control greenhouse gases were authorized piecemeal under laws like the Clean Air Act and the Endangered Species Act.

White House pressure to ignore or edit the E.P.A.'s climate-change findings led to the resignation of one agency official earlier this month: Jason Burnett, the associate deputy administrator. Mr. Burnett, a political appointee with broad authority over climate-change regulations, said in an interview that he had resigned because "no more constructive work could be done" on the agency's response to the Supreme Court.

He added, "The next administration will have to face what this one did not."

The House Select Committee for Energy Independence and Global Warming, led by Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, has been seeking the discarded E.P.A. finding on the dangers of climate change.

After reading it last week, Mr. Markey's office sent a letter to Mr. Bush saying, "E.P.A. Administrator Stephen Johnson determined that man-made global warming is unequivocal, the evidence is compelling and robust, and the administration must act to prevent harm rather than wait for harm to occur."

Simultaneously, Mr. Waxman's committee is weighing its response to the White House's refusal to turn over subpoenaed documents relating to the E.P.A.'s handling of recent climate-change and air-pollution decisions. The White House, which has turned over other material to the committee, last week asserted a claim of executive privilege over the remaining documents.

In an interview on Sunday, Mr. Fratto, the White House spokesman, said the committee chairmen did not understand the legal precedent underlying executive privilege. "There is a long legal history supporting the principle that the president should have the candid advice of his advisers," Mr. Fratto said.

Last week Oklahoma Gov. Brad Henry (D) vetoed the Religious Viewpoints Antidiscrimination Act, which purported to protect the expression of religious viewpoints in classrooms but could have negatively impacted science education by allowing creationism and intelligent design (ID) into science classes. AAAS had written a letter to the governor encouraging his veto. Anti-evolution legislation also died in South Carolina, where state Sen. Michael Fair, a longtime ID supporter, had hoped to move his "academic freedom" bill before the end of the session on June 5.

But academic freedom bills-bills that single out evolution as a controversial topic-are alive in Louisiana and Michigan. In Louisiana, the bill has already passed the Senate and is expected on the House floor Wednesday, June 11. Should the bill pass the House, the Senate would likely approve it, as would Gov. Bobby Jindal (R), making it state law. Meanwhile, in Michigan, the Senate now has a companion bill to the House academic freedom bill, which has not progressed since it was introduced in late April.

In other evolution news, the now Texas-based Institute for Creation Research (which moved from California last year) is appealing a Texas higher education board’s rejection of its bid to offer master’s degrees in science education, reportedly in preparation for a court battle.

[NY Times 05-22-08] On campuses nationwide, professors and administrators have passionately debated whether their universities should accept money for research from tobacco companies. But not at Virginia Commonwealth University, a public institution in Richmond, Va.

That is largely because hardly any faculty members or students there know that there is something to debate -- a contract with extremely restrictive terms that the university signed in 2006 to do research for Philip Morris USA, the nation's largest tobacco company and a unit of Altria Group.

"There is restrictive language in here," said Francis L. Macrina, Virginia Commonwealth's vice president for research, who acknowledged that many of the provisions violated the university's guidelines for industry-sponsored research. "In the end, it was language we thought we could agree to. It's a balancing act."

But the contract, a copy of which The New York Times obtained under the Virginia Freedom of Information law, is highly unusual and raises questions about how far universities will go in search of scarce research dollars to enhance their standing. It also brings a new dimension to the already divisive debate on many campuses over whether it is appropriate for universities to accept tobacco money for research.

Dr. Macrina would not specify how much money Philip Morris gave for the restricted research. Historically, the company has not been a major contributor to the university. Last year, it gave $1.3 million in research grants that included the restricted contract and a more traditional independent grant, Dr. Macrina said.

Over all last year, Virginia Commonwealth, with nearly 32,000 students, received $227 million in research grants from government and private sources, a sum dwarfed by the amounts the nation's largest research universities take in. For example, the University of Washington received $1 billion in grants last year, while Johns Hopkins got $1.4 billion in federal money alone.

Philip Morris, based in Richmond, is a likely source for Virginia Commonwealth in its hunt for dollars from a finite number of corporations. Among tobacco companies, Philip Morris is the leader in investing in academic research. And for Virginia Commonwealth, expanding ties with its neighbor could produce other benefits like additional grants and support for other university functions.

About a dozen researchers and research ethicists from other universities were astonished at the restrictions in the contract, when they were told about it.

"When universities sign contracts with these covenants, they are basically giving up their ethos, compromising their values as a university," said Sheldon Krimsky, a professor at Tufts University who is an expert on corporate influence on medical research. "There should be no debate about having a sponsor with control over the publishing of results."

Stanton A. Glantz, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine who has lobbied for banning tobacco money on campuses, said, "University administrators who are desperate for money will basically do anything they have to for money."

Although Dr. Macrina would not discuss many details of the research, Philip Morris officials were less reticent.

Rick Solana, the senior vice president for research and technology, said university scientists were studying how to identify early warning signs of pulmonary disease, and how to reduce nitrogen and phosphorus drained into rivers from processing tobacco leaves.

Dr. Solana also said the contract represented a new focus on developing tobacco products with reduced risks, a shift in strategy in underwriting university research that requires more confidentiality to protect the corporation's intellectual property rights. And he said Philip Morris had similar arrangements with other universities -- although he declined to say how many or which ones.

About 15 public health and medical schools no longer accept donations from the tobacco industry, and many major research universities continue to do so only if guaranteed independence to carry out the research and publish the results.

The business school at the University of Texas at Austin decided in December to stop accepting tobacco money. The University of California system tightened its oversight of tobacco-financed research last fall, after rejecting a proposal for a ban.

Virginia Commonwealth's president, Eugene P. Trani, declined to be interviewed. But Dr. Macrina defended the contract, saying it struck a reasonable balance between the university's need for openness and Philip Morris's need for confidentiality, even though it violated Virginia Commonwealth's own rules.

"These restrictive clauses seek to protect the rights and interests of multiple parties in the agreement," Dr. Macrina said, pointing out that Virginia Commonwealth scientists would be working with other researchers.

Virginia Commonwealth's guidelines for industry-sponsored research state, "University faculty and students must be free to publish their results." The guidelines also say the university must retain all patent and other intellectual property rights from sponsored research.

Under the agreement, though, Philip Morris alone decides whether the researchers can publish because the contract defines "without limitation all work product or other material created by V.C.U." as proprietary information belonging to the company.

"We would have discussions, and there could well be agreements that could ultimately result in the publication of proprietary information," Dr. Macrina said.

Dr. Solana agreed, saying that once the company determined that its competitive interests were protected, it could permit researchers to publish.

"We have to start out with is anyone's intellectual property going to be compromised?" Dr. Solana said. "Once the intellectual property is protected, then it's usually O.K. to publish.

"Something being proprietary does not mean something cannot be published. We try to be very supportive in the health area of work being published."

The contract also includes a longer than usual time for Philip Morris to review any possible publications by the researchers for potential patent or other proprietary problems -- 120 days, with the option to continue for 60 days more. Again, this violates university guidelines, which call for reviews of no more than 90 days.

"When you have multiple parties involved at the level of the sponsor, we're willing to agree to more time than we usually would," Dr. Macrina said.

Dr. Macrina also defended the requirement that the university decline comment and tell the company if asked about the agreement by news organizations and other third parties.

"Language like that occurs in agreements like this because the sponsor wants to be sure there are no slip-ups, that things will not be released inadvertently," he said.

Dr. Solana said the prohibition was intended to prevent participants in the research, both at the university or at other companies, from using the relationship with Philip Morris to promote themselves.

At Virginia Commonwealth, few professors appeared to know about the contract; when told about it, a number of them said they were concerned about its secretiveness.

"It's a controversial area, and I personally prefer transparency," said Richard P. Wenzel, chairman of the department of internal medicine at the university's medical school, who had not heard of the contract before a reporter's call.

Dan Ream, the president of the Faculty Senate, said he, too, knew nothing about the contract.

"It hasn't come up as an issue of debate in the Faculty Senate at all," said Mr. Ream, who works in the university's library. "I'm highly committed to open access to information. That's one of the tenets of librarianship."

A tenured scientist at Virginia Commonwealth, who would not be interviewed for attribution because he said he feared retribution against his junior colleagues, called the contract's restrictions, especially the limitations on publication, "completely unacceptable in the research world."

For most of the decade, Philip Morris financed conventional research grants, using a scientific panel to select worthy research proposals from professors. The company granted independence to the professors whose work it sponsored and left them free to publish.

Even so, opponents of smoking opposed the grants, arguing that universities should not take money from tobacco companies because of the public health impact of smoking and what they viewed as the industry's misuse of scientific research.

Last fall, Philip Morris began phasing out this program to switch to developing new products, said Dr. Solana, the company vice president. Some of the new research will be conducted internally, he said, at a new company research center in Richmond, and some will be contracted out to universities and corporations case by case.

The restricted contract with Virginia Commonwealth, Dr. Solana said, was part of what he hopes will be a new and different relationship between the company and universities. But scientists said such restrictions -- especially the constraints on publication and what university officials can say publicly -- are contrary to the open discussion essential to university research.

"It's counter to the entire purpose and rationale of a university," said David Rosner, a professor of public health and history at Columbia University. "It's not a consulting company; it's not just another commercial firm."

[Washington Post 02-18-08] CHICAGO -- The lead author and peer reviewers of a government report raising the possibility of public health threats from industrial contamination throughout the Great Lakes region are charging that the report is being suppressed because of the questions it raises. The author also alleges that he was demoted because of the report.

The House Committee on Science and Technology is investigating De Rosa's reassignment, in light of allegations that it was related to the Great Lakes report and his push to publicize the possibility of a cancer risk from formaldehyde fumes in Federal Emergency Management Agency trailers housing victims of Hurricane Katrina.

De Rosa said his agency cited the Great Lakes report being below expectations as one of the reasons for his removal from the post he had held since 1992. The ATSDR is housed within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. CDC spokesman Glen Nowak said he could not discuss personnel issues.

The Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit investigative group, has obtained a copy of the draft report and posted portions on its Web site.

Nowak said that there was no set date for publication, and that the release was delayed to address concerns raised by the Environmental Protection Agency and other reviewers last summer.

"Unfortunately the draft (De Rosa) thought was final wasn't provided to the senior scientists and managers of ATSDR until about a week or two before he thought it would be published," Nowak said. "At that point, very senior people not typically in the review process got a copy and had some significant questions and concerns."

Among those concerns was the use of county health data covering a much wider area than locations adjacent to contaminated sites. "Those concerns had been raised previously but did not appear to have been addressed by De Rosa," Nowak said.

Michael Gilbertson, an Ontario biologist who peer-reviewed the report, said political motives are behind the delay.

"This information, which really should have been distributed more than a year ago, is inconvenient to the administration," Gilbertson said. "All science has limitations, but to stress the limitations at the expense of getting this kind of information out to the research community is not in the public interest at all."

The report does not purport to allege cause-and-effect relationships between discharges and disease. But it uses material from government databases to describe toxic contaminants and releases in the Great Lakes region and looks at health indicators, including cancer incidence and infant mortality, in the surrounding counties compared with those in "peer counties" with similar socioeconomic indicators.

The ATSDR initiated the report in 2001 at the request of the International Joint Commission, an independent body that advises the U.S. and Canadian governments on Great Lakes water use and quality issues. In 2000, the Canadian government released a similar report on 17 areas of concern in Canada.

"You can't make cause-and-effect conclusions based on this kind of material, but you can raise questions," said peer reviewer Peter Orris, a professor of occupational and environmental medicine at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Portions of the report posted on the Center for Public Integrity's Web site say that of more than 100 hazardous waste sites surveyed, two pose "urgent public health hazards" that could cause health problems with less than a year of exposure and 29 pose "public health hazards" that could problems with more than a year of exposure.

Among the contaminants logged at different sites are now-banned DDT, as well as PCBs, mercury, lead, cyanide and dioxins.

Breast, lung and colon cancer, as well as infant mortality, were found to be above expected levels near many of the contaminated sites.

The report estimates that 230,000 "vulnerable" people -- defined as children under 6, the elderly and reproductive-age women -- live within a one mile of contaminated sites in the Great Lakes region, mostly around Lake Michigan.

Spots highlighted include the Fox River in Wisconsin, which continues to be a major source of contamination from polychlorinated biphenyls, though the release of PCBs stopped in 1970; the Cuyahoga River; and Presque Isle Bay, where 50 deteriorating hazardous waste drums are buried.

[Reuters 01-28-08] VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Benedict warned on Monday of the "seductive" powers of science that relegate man's spirituality, reviving the science-versus-religion debate which recently forced him to cancel a speech after student protests.

"In an age when scientific developments attract and seduce with the possibilities they offer, it's more important than ever to educate our contemporaries' consciences so that science does not become the criteria for goodness," he told scientists.

"Man is not the fruit of chance or a bundle of convergences, determinisms or physical and chemical reactions," Benedict told a meeting of academics of different disciplines sponsored by the Paris Academy of Sciences and Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

The Pope reiterated a plea, made in many speeches since he was elected in 2005, for mankind to be "respected as the centre of creation" and not relegated by more short-term interests.

But the conservative German-born Pope's public stand on issues such as abortion and embryonic stem-cell research lead critics to accuse him of holding antiquated views on science.

Students and teachers at Rome's La Sapienza university -- which was founded by a pope more than 700 years ago -- cited such views when they protested a papal speech scheduled for January 17 that it had to be cancelled.

In particular they criticised his views on science, saying a speech he gave in 1990 showed he would have favoured the Church's 17th century heresy trial against Galileo.

The Vatican said the protesters misunderstood that speech, made some 17 years ago when he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

[Reuters 01-17-08] WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Killings at U.S. schools have not risen in recent years, despite some highly publicized crimes, and are far lower than in the early 1990s, U.S. officials said on Thursday.

The rate remained stable from July 1999 to June 2006, CDC and other government researchers reported. During that time, an average of 16.5 students per year were killed on school campuses, going to or from school, or at school events.

Homicide is the second-leading cause of death in Americans aged 5 to 18, behind only accidents, but slightly fewer than 1 percent of these were school killings, the report showed.

About two-thirds of the homicides involved gunshot wounds, with other leading causes including stabbings and beatings, the CDC said. The average age of a victim was 15, the CDC said.

There was a higher homicide rate among male students and students in urban areas, the CDC said. Most of the school killings involved a single victim and a single attacker.

"Despite the occurrence of some high-profile events, schools remain relatively safe places for students. The vast majority of homicides among children and youth tend to occur outside of school hours and off school properties," CDC behavioral scientist Jeff Hall said in a telephone interview.

The study did not look at killings on college campuses, such as the one last year at Virginia Tech in which a student with a history of mental illness killed 32 people before shooting himself.

HIGH-PROFILE SHOOTINGS

High-profile school shootings in the United States, where gun control is often far less strict than in many countries, have grabbed international headlines in recent years.

In April 1999, two boys killed 12 students and a teacher at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, before killing themselves. In May 1998, a boy killed two students at Thurston High School in Springfield, Oregon. His parents were later found slain in their home.

In March 2005, a boy killed five students, a teacher and a security guard at a school at Minnesota's Red Lake Indian Reservation and also killed his grandfather and his grandfather's companion.

Hall said the study showed that multiple-victim incidents were not the norm.

The study found that from 1992 to 2006, student homicides at U.S. schools dropped from a rate of 0.07 per 100,000 students to 0.03 per 100,000.

From July 1999 to June 2006, 116 students died in school-associated homicides. Only eight of the 109 incidents resulted in more than one death.

William Modzeleski of the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools said he is encouraged.

"You have this constant drumbeat of news about these events," said Modzeleski, whose department took part in the study. "The perception is they're always occurring. The reality is they're not always occurring. They're damaging when they do occur. And even one school shooting is one too many."

In tracking school deaths, the researchers searched media data bases and confirmed the facts of each event with law enforcement authorities and schools, the CDC said.

The CDC said it encourages schools to reduce crowding, increase student supervision, take seriously threats of violence and respond to bullying incidents between students.

[NY Times 1-4-08] In 1984 and again in 1999, the National Academy of Sciences, the nation’s most eminent scientific organization, produced books on the evidence supporting the theory of evolution and arguing against the introduction of creationism or other religious alternatives in public school science classes.

On Thursday, it produced a third. But this volume is unusual, people who worked on it say, because it is intended specifically for the lay public and because it devotes much of its space to explaining the differences between science and religion, and asserting that acceptance of evolution does not require abandoning belief in God.

The panel, convened by the academy and the Institute of Medicine, its medical arm, was headed by Francisco Ayala, a biologist at the University of California, Irvine, and a former Dominican priest.

The 70-page book, “Science, Evolution and Creationism,” says, among other things, that “attempts to pit science and religion against each other create controversy where none needs to exist.” And it offers statements from several eminent biologists and members of the clergy to support the view.

In the book, which will be available on the Web site of the National Academies (www.nas.edu), the panel reports that evidence for the theory of evolution is overwhelming and growing. It cites findings from DNA research, fossil discoveries and the observations scientists have made about emerging diseases, like SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome.

The book also denounces the arguments for a form of creationism called intelligent design, calling them devoid of evidence, “disproven” or “simply false.”

[Reuters 12-19-07] VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The Vatican on Wednesday condemned the film "The Golden Compass," which some have called anti-Christian, saying it promotes a cold and hopeless world without God.

It was the Vatican's most stinging broadside against an author and a film since it roundly condemned "The Da Vinci Code" in 2005 and 2006.

"In Pullman's world, hope simply does not exist, because there is no salvation but only personal, individualistic capacity to control the situation and dominate events," the editorial said.

The film, which premiered earlier this month in the United States and stars Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig, is an adaptation of Pullman's acclaimed novel "Northern Lights".

The Vatican newspaper said "honest" viewers would find it "devoid of any particular emotion apart from a great chill."

In the fantasy world created by Pullman's trilogy, 'His Dark Materials', the Church and its governing body the Magisterium, are linked to cruel experiments on children aimed at discovering the nature of sin and attempts to suppress facts that would undermine the Church's legitimacy and power.

In the film version all references to the Church have been stripped out, with director Chris Weitz keen to avoid offending religious cinema goers.

Still, some Catholic groups in the United States have called for a boycott, fearing even a diluted version of the book might draw people to read the bestselling trilogy.

The Vatican newspaper said the film and Pullman's writings showed that "when man tries to eliminate God from his horizon, everything is reduced, made sad, cold and inhumane".

The U.S.-based Catholic League, a conservative group, has urged Christians not to see the movie, saying that its objective was "to bash Christianity and promote atheism" to children.

The Vatican newspaper called the movie "the most anti-Christmas film possible" and said that it was "consoling" that its first weekend ticket sales were a disappointing $26 million.

New Line Cinema, a unit of Time Warner Inc, had hoped the film would pull in between $30 million and $40 million. It is doing better overseas but New Line sold the foreign distribution rights to help cover the movie's cost.

A business trust is looking at sites for a Christian showplace to challenge the theory of evolution

[Observer 12-16-07] The latest salvo in creationism's increasingly ferocious battle with evolution is about to be fired in Lancashire. Not in a fiery sermon preached from the pulpit, but in the form of a giant Christian theme park that will champion the book of Genesis and make a multi-media case that God created the world in seven days.

The trust claims it already has a number of rich backers who are keen to invest in the project, which will boast two interactive cinemas, a cafeteria, six shops and a television recording studio, allowing it to produce its own Christian-themed films and documentaries.

The 5,000-capacity park will be the first of its kind in Britain, but not in the world. In Orlando, Florida, hundreds of thousands of visitors make pilgrimages to the Holy Land Experience, where they can see a bloodied Jesus forced to carry his cross by snarling Roman soldiers.

Peter Jones, one of the Lancashire theme park's trustees, said the emphasis would be on multimedia rather than the costume re-enactments of famous biblical scenes favoured at Holy Land. 'It will be a halfway house for youngsters,' Jones said. 'Today all they do is binge drink. We will be able to offer them an alternative.'

By producing its own films, the trust believes it will be able to provide an antidote to modern culture. It says on its website: 'On television today there is so much sex and violence, it is no wonder our youth are binge drinking ... This is a revolutionary scheme requiring innovative people with the vision to bring about change and a new direction.'

It declined to say who the backers were, but admitted it is talking to a number of businessmen who have invested in city academies, leading to speculation that it may have approached Sir Peter Vardy, who has given millions of pounds to advance the claims of creationism - the belief that God created the world and that Darwin's theory of evolution is wrong.

While the plans for the park are still in their infancy, the trust has big ambitions. A business plan available to prospective investors suggests the park could bring in £4.8m a year - apparently 10 times its estimated overhead costs.

The trust also says it plans to apply for government grants and European funding to help it realise its dream of turning the television studio into 'an international leader in promoting family-oriented Christian programmes'.

Although concerns about the direction of modern society are the trust's main motivation for building the theme park, it is also in response to what the trustees identify as a sense of drift within the Church of England.

'The church in this country is in crisis and many church leaders living in Australia, America and Canada have openly proclaimed that God has left the church in England,' the trust states on its website.

'Evolution has falsely become the foundation of our society and we need the television studio to advocate Genesis across this land in order to remove this falsehood, which presently is destroying the church foundation.'

The theme park's anti-evolution bias and its emphasis on Genesis has raised eyebrows among planning officials, according to Jones, who originally wanted to build the park at the site of an old B&Q store but was refused permission by the council.

'Wigan council slammed the door in our faces. You mention the C [Christian] word, and people don't want to know,' Jones said.

[NY Times 10-31-07] In a radio advertisement playing in New Hampshire and in speeches along the campaign trail, Rudolph W. Giuliani has cited statistics to cut at the heart of his Democratic rivals’ health care proposals, which he has derided as European-style “socialist” plans that will lower the standard of care in the United States.

Mr. Giuliani’s Democratic rivals would argue that they are not advocating government-run health care in their plans to extend coverage to the uninsured. But, beyond that, the 44 percent figure that Mr. Giuliani has been citing is in dispute.

The Office for National Statistics in Britain says the five-year survival rate from prostate cancer there is 74.4 percent. And doctors also say it is unfair to compare prostate cancer statistics in Britain with those in the United States because in the United States the cancer is more likely to be diagnosed in its early stages.

“Certainly, if you intensively screen for prostate cancer, you will find early disease,” said Dr. Ian M. Thompson, chairman of the department of urology at the University of Texas at San Antonio. “And simply because you find it earlier, you will always have longer survival after the disease is diagnosed.”

Maria Comella, a spokeswoman for Mr. Giuliani, said yesterday that the 44 percent figure came from an article in City Journal, a publication of the Manhattan Institute, a conservative research organization.

“The citation is an article in a highly respected intellectual journal written by an expert at a highly respected think tank which the mayor read because he is an intellectually engaged human being,” Ms. Comella said in an e-mail message.

That article, titled “The Ugly Truth About Canadian Health Care,” was written by Dr. David Gratzer, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and an adviser to the Giuliani campaign.

In an interview, Dr. Gratzer said the statistic came from the Commonwealth Fund, a nonprofit group in New York specializing in health care policy issues, but he acknowledged that it was seven years old and “crude.”

But the Commonwealth Fund said yesterday that Dr. Gratzer had misused its research by calculating a five-year survival rate based on data on prostate cancer incidence and mortality rates in the United States and Britain.

“Five-year survival rates cannot be calculated from incidence and mortality rates, as any good epidemiologist knows,” the group said in a statement.

Dr. Gratzer dismissed the Commonwealth Fund’s statement, saying the group had “an ideological bias.” Asked if Mr. Giuliani would continue to repeat the statistic, and if the advertisement would continue to run, Ms. Comella responded by e-mail: “Yes. We will.”