Bush Seeks
Immunity for Companies in Spy Case
MSNBC
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration
wants the power to grant legal immunity to telecommunications
companies that are slapped with privacy suits for cooperating with
the White House’s controversial warrantless eavesdropping program.
The authority would effectively shut down dozens of lawsuits filed
against telecommunications companies accused of helping set up the
program.
The vaguely worded proposal would shield any person who allegedly
provided information, infrastructure or “any other form of
assistance” to the intelligence agencies after the Sept. 11, 2001
terror attacks. It covers any classified communications activity
intended to protect the country from terrorism...
Republicans say immunity is necessary
to protect the companies that responded to legal presidential orders
to thwart terrorists in the years after 9/11. Yet some Democrats
fear the administration’s proposal would do much more than
advertised, potentially protecting anyone who gave broad categories
of aid to the government as part of a spy program that monitors
communications.
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Back to the
Future, via a Donut-Shaped Vacuum?
by Judy Siegel-Itzkovich,
Jerusalem Post
Could all our blunders be
reversed, our failings eliminated? Perhaps so, if an Israeli
scientist's research is to be believed. With the help of Prof.
Amos Ori, we might just be able to go back and stop the
screw-ups from happening in the first place.
Ori, a physicist from the Technion-Israel Institute of
Technology in Haifa, has come up with what he says are practical
solutions to overcome the hindrances that experts have long
regarded as stopping us from traveling back in time.
In a paper published in the latest
issue of the Physical Review journal, the scientist offers a
theoretical model, based on mathematical equations describing
conditions that, if established, could help lead to the
development of a time machine of sorts. But rather than building
an actual device, Ori explains that "the machine is space-time
itself."
Time travel research is based on bending space-time so far that
the time lines actually warp back on themselves to form a
loop...
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Scientists
Interpret Physics Behind Invisibility Cloaks
by
Lisa Zyga, Physorg.com
Is a perfect invisible cloak
theoretically possible? Are there certain wavelengths—such as
those in the visible spectrum—that can’t be made invisible? How
will using imperfect materials affect the performance of a
cloak? Scientists from Zhejiang University and MIT have recently
analyzed the physics behind invisibility cloaks in an attempt to
answer some of these questions.
Hongsheng Chen, Bae-Ian Wu, Baile
Zhang, and Jin Au Kong have published their research on
invisibility cloaks in a recent issue of Physical Review
Letters. The group analytically demonstrated how electromagnetic
waves interact with invisibility cloaks made of metamaterials,
an interaction that is often different from conventional
scattering with regular particles. Their findings will hopefully
be useful for cloak design and applications, an exciting
research area that is still in its early stages.
“When an electromagnetic wave is incident onto a conventional
sphere, part of the radiation will be scattered in all
directions; while for a metamaterial cloak, the incident wave
will smoothly pass through the cloak undeflected,” Chen
explained to PhysOrg.com. “It is very interesting that a perfect
metamaterial cloak shows no reflection or absorption but rather
allows the Poynting power to bypass the hidden object. Our
research also shows that the Poynting power inside of the cloak
is not uniform: when close to the inner boundary of the cloak,
the power flow density is close to zero, while near the outer
boundary of the cloak, the power flow density becomes large...”
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Brooklyn Street
Proves Yes, We All Can Get Along
by Robert Deutsch, USA Today
That's what Brooklyn College
sociologist Jerry Krase wonders as he rides the B68 bus along
this 5-mile commercial strip, which is populated at various
stops by pockets of West Indians, Latinos, Pakistanis, Indians,
Orthodox Jews, Chinese, Russians, Israelis and Ukrainians.
How do so many different kinds of people live so closely yet so
peacefully?
As the bus moves south from
Prospect Park toward Brighton Beach, the store signs change from
English to Arabic to Hebrew to Chinese to Cyrillic. Bearded
ultra-Orthodox Jewish men in black coats and fedoras share the
sidewalks and store aisles with veiled Muslim girls and
sari-clad Hindu women...
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Kalamazoo School Chief Leaves With
Promise Secret Intact
by Katherine Yung, Detroit Free Press
For the last 21 months, the
departing superintendent of the Kalamazoo Public School system
has steadfastly refused to answer the question that many of the
city's nearly 73,000 residents — and many far away from town —
have pondered:
Who are the wealthy donors making it possible for every
Kalamazoo child to attend college in Michigan without paying a
dime?
Brown says she's still the only one who knows.
That knowledge gives her a unique role in carrying out the
Kalamazoo Promise, a widely admired scholarship program that
began nearly two years ago.
Brown, 58, serves as the link between the donors and the rest of
the world, meeting periodically with them in locations she won't
reveal. She sees herself as the Promise's spokeswoman, traveling
anywhere from Miami to Arkansas to talk to economic development
groups and the many cities and states eager to emulate the
program...
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