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To: RMF who wrote (91)	6/5/2008 11:19:57 AM
From: one_less	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3816

Proactive mgt would be to begin relocating to higher ground but old urban business will wait and react to a crisis, and that will involve tax payer bail outs or dams and levies.

To: RMF who wrote (91)	6/5/2008 2:25:33 PM
From: one_less	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 3816

Current arguments for reform of UK Abortion Act Women's Health News The 40th anniversary in October this year of the passing of the UK Abortion Act is certain to be marked by attempts to reopen the debate about lowering the upper limit for legal terminations. In a special report in this week's British Medical Journal, journalist Jonathan Gornall examines current arguments for reform. Any challenge to the upper limit of 24 weeks poses big questions about viability, infant suffering, and the capabilities of neonatal care, writes Gornall - and the danger is that this vital debate is taking place increasingly on emotional rather than scientific grounds. The ProLife Alliance can take much of the credit for having put abortion back on the public and political agenda over the past decade. The organisation was set up in 1996 as a political party to show "the reality of abortion" and was also behind the ultimately failed attempt in 2003 by Joanna Jepson, a trainee vicar, to have police prosecute two doctors over the late abortion of a fetus with a cleft lip and palate. Now the alliance has turned its attention away from pictures of dead babies to 4D ultrasound images of live ones in the womb. The technique was pioneered by Stuart Campbell, head of obstetrics and gynaecology at St George's Hospital, London, who is convinced that his 4D images have undermined the validity of the current time limit for abortion. But Maria Fitzgerald, professor of developmental neurobiology at University College London and scientific director of the WellChild Pain Research Centre says it is wrong to suggest that the fetus might feel pain in the same way as the born child. But whether or not fetuses feel pain in the same way as infants, another debate is raging over the survival rates of extremely premature infants and the viability of such survivors. The British Medical Association believes that the 1967 Abortion Act is a humane piece of legislation, and guidelines recently issued by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics suggest that below 22 weeks, "no baby should be resuscitated." Its proposals came as a disappointment to anti-abortion campaigners. Most recently, the anti-choice lobby has been emphasising the risk to the physical or mental health of women who have abortions. If the upper limit for abortion is reduced this year, it seems it will be in response to public opinion informed not by scientific and medical realities but by sentimental pictures - and on the back of occasionally misleading polls, writes Gornall. A Conservative MP is currently promoting a bill to reduce the abortion limit to 20 weeks, and this seems to represent the anti-choice lobby's best chance of lowering the upper limit in the act's anniversary year. But there is concern that her position seems to reflect the ethical and medical confusion that threatens to overwhelm clear debate in the year ahead. Forty years after the law was changed, the pro-choice lobby ask why shouldn't abortion be treated like any other operation, where the doctor gives one the information to make an informed choice about whether to undergo surgery? They believe we need to move the focus from the fetus to the woman, Gornall concludes. news-medical.net

To: RMF who wrote (91)	6/6/2008 3:30:37 PM
From: one_less	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 3816

U.S. climate bill dies; hope for 2009 Fri Jun 6, 2008 12:46pm EDT powered by SphereBy Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. carbon-capping bill aimed at curbing climate change died on Friday in the Senate but its supporters looked to the next president to enact a global warming law as early as 2009. The bill aimed to cut total U.S. global warming emissions by 66 percent by 2050. Opponents said it would cost jobs and raise fuel prices in an already pinched American economy. Far from being discouraged, Sen. Joe Lieberman said international observers would be gratified that the measure got support from a majority in the Senate, including presumptive presidential nominees John McCain and Barack Obama. "I think people around the world are going to be greatly encouraged by the fact that 54 members of the U.S. Senate are saying they want to support a real response to global warming," Lieberman, the independent senator from Connecticut who sponsored the bill, said after the measure ended with a procedural vote. The vote showed 48 senators favored the bill with 36 opposed. Six more senators, including Illinois Democrat Obama and Arizona Republican McCain, wrote letters saying they would have voted in favor if they had been in town to vote. Sixty votes were needed to take the bill to the next stage of consideration. "In America change doesn't happen overnight, it takes time to turn the ship of state," said Sen. Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat who shepherded the bill. She noted that Senate climate change legislation was first introduced in 2003 and the 2005 version got only 38 votes. "This is coming," Boxer said. She said supporters planned to start work next week on a "roadmap" for the next president President George W. Bush has consistently opposed any economy-wide cap-and-trade plan and had vowed to veto this bill if Congress approved it. Senate leaders opposed to the bill used a variety of tactics during weeklong debate on the Senate floor, including a rare maneuver by Republicans that forced clerks to read an updated version of the 491-page bill aloud. That took 10 hours. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky discounted the vote's importance. "This whole exercise will have had no effect on either climate change or gas prices," he said. Environmental groups were jubilant, even as the bill was defeated. "Today's vote sets the stage for a new president and Congress to enact strong legislation that will more effectively build a clean energy economy and prevent the worst consequences of global warming," a coalition of green groups, including Environmental Defense Fund, National Wildlife Federation and Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a statement. The statement accused lawmakers allied with the coal and oil industries of blocking progress on the measure. The Climate Security Act would have cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by about 2 percent per year between 2012 and 2050, based on 2005 emission levels, its proponents said. The bill would have capped carbon emissions from 87 percent of U.S. power plants, oil refineries and other pollution sources, cutting emissions to 19 percent below current levels by 2020 and 71 percent below current levels by 2050. These are more modest targets than those set by the Kyoto Protocol. The United States is alone among major industrialized nations in rejecting the Kyoto pact. Carbon dioxide, which contributes to the climate-warming greenhouse effect, is emitted by fossil-fueled vehicles, coal-fired power plants and natural sources, including human breath. (Editing by Frances Kerry and Bill Trott)