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Earth’s crust
You seldom see a necktie inside Arlington National
Cemetery.
For that matter, you don't often see a dress.
I suppose that shouldn't seem so surprising. We live in a casual age;
formality often seems not just endangered, but extinct.
And Arlington National Cemetery, especially in summer, can be very hot.
But somehow — as you spend time among the more than 300,000 souls who
are buried in the cemetery near the Potomac River — you can't help
feeling that we who visit can do a little better. If anyone has earned
our decorum, it's those 300,000.
What do you see when you're there?
In Arlington National Cemetery you see women in cut-off blue jeans. You
see young people walking past the headstones with their mouths moving to
the songs being pumped into their ears by their iPods.
You see men in T-shirts with gag messages. One of the T-shirts I saw
said: "The only reason I'm nodding is I hope you'll go away." Another —
worn by a fellow in a cowboy hat — showed a picture of a handgun,
accompanied by the words: "I don't call 9-1-1." A tough guy, apparently
— amid the graves of some men who were truly tough.
There are cell phones everywhere. Next to the headstones of soldiers
whose names you've never heard, next to the eternal flame of John F.
Kennedy. People calling their offices, chatting with friends.
The odd thing is, they seem genuinely not to know they're being
disrespectful. This is just another tourmobile stop — or so they seem to
believe.
I mentioned that you seldom see neckties, seldom see dresses. There are
times, though, when you do. They are worn by families who come to this
place not as tourists — but to bury their own soldiers. Soldiers who
have come home from our current war.
There are signs at the entrance. They say:
"Welcome to Arlington National Cemetery ... Our Nation's Most Sacred
Shrine. Please Conduct Yourself with Dignity and Respect at All Times.
Please Remember These Are Hallowed Grounds."
You wouldn't think we'd need reminding.
We do not need the Senate immigration bill to secure the
border.
Congress has already passed laws authorizing border security, but the
Homeland Security Department has failed to fully implement them. The
administration already has the authority to build hundreds of miles of
border fencing, hire and train 6,000 border patrol agents (bringing the
total number of agents to 18,000), end catch and release, and create a
national employment verification database. Essentially, all of the
security benchmarks in the current Senate bill are already law.
Unfortunately, proponents of this bill would have us believe that none
of these security measures can be implemented unless we pass a bill that
grants amnesty to 12 million to 20 million illegal immigrants. In short,
security is being held hostage in return for amnesty.
What's worse is that backers of this bill are hoping Americans have a
short memory.
In 1986, the government was trying to figure out how to deal with a
porous southern border and roughly 3 million illegal aliens who resided
in America as a result.
It was decided that granting amnesty was acceptable as long as the
border was made secure and immigration laws on the books were enforced.
Looking back, we see that amnesty was granted, but the border was never
secured.
Now here we are, more than two decades later, with a new generation of
Washington politicians pushing a similar proposal but expecting
different results. Only this time, the illegal population has
skyrocketed and unsecured borders pose a far graver national security
threat in an age of terrorism.
This is a completely backward approach. Common sense demands that we put
first things first. That means shelving amnesty proposals and making
national security our first priority. Before we address the problem of
the illegal population, we need to prove to the American people that we
will keep our word.
Those who support this bill tell us we must pass it because the status
quo is unacceptable. True. Millions of illegal aliens and a
dysfunctional immigration system have created huge problems for our
nation. But the most pervasive problem now is the 20-plus years of
broken promises to secure the border and enforce our immigration laws.
Americans agree this status quo must be rejected, and we must enforce
our laws.
It is time for our government to do right by America. It's past time to
right the wrong of 1986. Only then will we have the credibility to
address the problem of the current illegal population.
As the saying goes, fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice
A teenage schoolgirl will appeal to the High Court on
Friday to overturn a ban on her wearing a "purity ring" at school to
symbolize her decision to abstain from sex before marriage.
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Lydia Playfoot, 16, from West Sussex, says the silver ring is an
expression of her faith and should be exempt from the school's rules on
wearing jewellery.
"It is really important to me because in the Bible it says we should do
this," she told BBC radio. "Muslims are allowed to wear headscarves and
other faiths can wear bangles and other types of jewellery. It feels
like Christians are being discriminated against."
Playfoot's lawyers will argue that her right to express religious belief
is upheld by the Human Rights Act.
There have been a series of rows in schools in recent years over the
right of pupils to wear religious symbols or clothing, such as
crucifixes and veils.
Last year, the Law Lords rejected Shabina Begum's appeal for permission
to wear a Muslim gown at her school in Luton. That case echoed a debate
in France over the banning of Muslim headscarves in state schools.
Lydia Playfoot's parents help run the British arm of the American
campaign group the Silver Ring Thing, which promotes abstinence among
young people.
Members wear a ring on the third finger of the left hand. It is
inscribed with "Thess. 4:3-4," a reference to a Biblical passage from
Thessalonians which reads: "God wants you to be holy, so you should keep
clear of all sexual sin."
Lydia's father, Phil Playfoot, said his daughter's case was part of a
wider cultural trend towards Christians being "silenced."
"What I would describe as a secular fundamentalism is coming to the
fore, which really wants to silence certain beliefs, and Christian views
in particular," he said.
Leon Nettley, head teacher of Millais School in Horsham, denies
discrimination, saying the ring contravenes the school's rules on
wearing jewellery.
"The school is not convinced pupils' rights have been interfered with by
the application of the uniform policy," he told the Brighton-based Argus
newspaper. "The school has a clearly published uniform policy and sets
high standards."
The mystery surrounding the end to fictional British boy
wizard Harry Potter's saga deepened on Wednesday with a computer hacker
posting what he said were key plot details and a publisher warned the
details could be fake.
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The hacker, who goes by the name "Gabriel," claims to have taken a
digital copy of author J.K. Rowling's seventh and final book, "Harry
Potter and the Deathly Hallows," by breaking into a computer at
London-based Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.
For months now, leading up to the book's July 21 release, legions of
"Harry Potter" fans have debated whether Rowling killed Harry or one of
his best friends, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, in the final book.
Gabriel has posted information at Web site InSecure.org that, if true,
would answer that question.
"We make this spoiler to make reading of the upcoming book useless and
boring," Gabriel said in the posting.
"Harry Potter" publishers have taken great pains to keep the conclusion
a secret and preserve the multibillion-dollar entertainment enterprise
surrounding the boy wizard.
A Bloomsbury spokesman declined comment on the hacker's claims.
Kyle Good, a spokesman for U.S. distributor Scholastic Corp., would not
say whether the posting was accurate, but did warn readers to be
skeptical about anything on the Web that claims to have inside
information on the book's plot.
"There is a whole lot of junk flying around," she said. "Consider this
one more theory."
David Perry, a spokesman for computer security company Trend Micro, said
there was a good chance Gabriel's claim could be a hoax.
"We've had hypes like this on the last couple of Harry Potter books," he
said. "There is a very high level of spurious information in the hacker
world."
But if true, it could be a problem for Bloomsbury. The "Harry Potter"
books have been global best-sellers with fans buying some 320 million
versions worldwide, and anticipation for "Deathly Hallows" is high.
In April, U.S. retailer Barnes & Noble said advance orders for the book
had already topped 500,000 copies, setting a chain record. Scholastic
plans to release a record 12 million copies of "Deathly Hallows" to meet
demand.
A stolen copy of the sixth Harry Potter novel, "Harry Potter and the
Half-Blood Prince" surfaced in Britain about a month before its official
release in July 2005. Two people were charged after reportedly trying to
sell a copy to the London tabloid the Sun.
Four "Potter" movies made by Warner Bros. film studio, a division of
Time Warner Inc., have brought in $3.5 billion in global ticket sales,
and a fifth film is due in theaters in early July.
Using antiviral Tamiflu could halve the potential death
toll from an influenza pandemic if it was used both to treat and prevent
the disease, its maker Roche said on Friday.
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Research presented by Beate Sander of the University of Toronto, Canada,
showed a stockpile of Tamiflu sufficient to cover 65 percent of a
country's population could cut deaths by approximately half, Roche said.
Tamiflu is seen as one of the best defenses against a possible bird flu
pandemic. It is recommended by the World Health Organization as a
first-line defense, and governments and are stockpiling the drug.
Some governments are now planning stockpiles sufficient to will allow
them to provide Tamiflu preventatively to people who have been in close
contact with infected individuals, Roche said.
"The reality is that country stockpiles of Tamiflu are limited and are
targeted at treatment only rather than treatment and prevention," the
Roche statement said.
"However, some governments are now planning for sufficient antiviral
stockpiles that will allow them to provide Tamiflu preventatively to
close contacts of infected individuals, it said."
Details were presented at an influenza conference in Toronto.
Scientists have spotted a thick layer of melted rock
beneath the Earth’s crust that could be part of a fluid band of hot
magma circling the globe. The magma ring has until now remained a
theory.
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The molten-rock layer is 10 miles thick and can’t be seen, felt or smelt
from the surface. Researchers Daniel Toffelmier and James Tyburczy of
Arizona State University found the layer using a relatively new
technique that measures changes in weak electrical currents flowing
through the Earth’s mantle rock.
The current is created when the solar wind, a continuous flow of charged
atomic particles emitted by the sun, interact with Earth’s magnetic
field, called the magnetosphere.
The chemical make-up of the rocks affects their conductivity. By
measuring changes in the current at different depths, the scientists
were able to detect distinct rock layers, including the "invisible"
magma layer.
“Rocks are semiconductors,” Tyburczy said. “And rocks with more hydrogen
embedded in their structure conduct better, as do rocks that are
partially molten.”
The discovery, detailed in the June 21 issue of the journal Nature,
partially confirms a recent hypothesis by two Yale University
geoscientists, which states that a band of molten magma circles the
Earth about t 250 miles beneath the planet’s crust, near a hypothetical
“transition zone” separating the planet’s two mantle layers.
The idea is that as the rock rises from the lower mantle to the upper
mantle, it expels all the water in its crystal structure and melts.
The researchers detected the molten layer beneath Tucson, Arizona. They
aren’t sure how far the sheet extends, but say there is little chance
any of the molten rock will erupt at the surface.
The discovery only partially confirms the Yale scientists’ idea, since
it reveals a molten magma layer only beneath one spot on the Earth. But
“finding that sheet of melt-rock tells us we’re on the right track,”
Tyburczy said.
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