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Houston, TX (AHN) - In an era when deadly school shootings seem to happen at an alarming rate, some schools like Spring Independent School District in suburban Houston, have decided to take security measure into their own hands. Every morning, some 16,000 students swipe their ID tags as they climb onto the school bus, while a radio frequency tag tracks them, as it does when they arrive at school and as they leave the building. Furthermore, nearly 1,000 cameras watch them all day. Every visitor-from parents, volunteers, to the guy who fills the Coke machine - must surrender his or...

Clutching her Hermes holiday bag under her arm, Susan Barrington, a 52-year-old housewife from Buckinghamshire, can't help smiling as she leaves the exclusive clinic in London's Wimpole Street. She has been given the final go-ahead to travel abroad for a cutting edge nonsurgical treatment that promises to make her look ten years younger. She doesn't care if the treatment is expensive, involves babies and is so controversial that it is not allowed to be performed in this country - among her well-heeled friends, this is the ultimate new elixir of youth. The attractive brunette has opted for a controversial stem-...

52 REASONS NOT TO MOW 37 WAYS TO HELP TREES Please download with 100% cotton, rice, recycled, or scrap paper Ron Howard, director of A Beautiful Mind and many other films,made his first film at age 8.. an anti mowing film which showed the nature of mowers' attacks on lawns. Art Buchwald: People shouldn't be judged by the length of their grass. In 2003 through now, the world has seen floods, famine, fire, mudslides, hurricanes, tornados and other disasters created by the unprecedented destruction of trees around the world. Trees are nature's weather stabilizers. We need trillions of trees.. new...

CHICAGO -- This week, a series of public forums on a program requiring all pregnant women and children through age 18 years to be tested for mental health needs is being held this week in five different locations statewide. One group of parents learned about the state's plans to proceed with this program and on Monday issued an alarm asking for parents and citizens concerned about the new program to voice their opinions at the forums. "We're moving toward social training over academic training with this program," Larry Trainor, a Mt. Prospect parent of four children and a contact for...

“We were all an embryo at one point, and we ought to as a society be very careful about being callous about the wanton destruction of embryos, of life,” White House aide Karl Rove told the Denver Post this week. He was explaining why President Bush is committed to casting his first-ever veto against a bill--which may pass the Senate as early as next week--that would give tax dollars to researchers who deliberately kill human embryos to extract their stem cells. “The president is emphatic about this,” Rove said. This veto threat is necessary because of Senate Majority Leader Bill...

A woman left infertile after cancer treatment cannot use her frozen embryos to have a baby, the European Court of Human Rights has ruled. Natallie Evans started IVF treatment with her then partner Howard Johnston in 2001 but he withdrew consent for the embryos to be used after they split up. Ms Evans went to the Strasbourg court after exhausting the UK legal process. She now hopes to appeal to the Grand Jury of the European Court, but still wants her ex-fiancé to change his mind. Ms Evans said: "I'm still as determined to do whatever it takes to have...

THESE ARE THE SENATORS WHO VOTED TO GIVE SOCIAL SECURITY BENEFITS TO ILLEGAL ALIENS REGARDLESS OF POLITICAL PARTY, THESE POLITICIANS NEED TO BE DEFEATED IN 2006, 2008 OR 2010, WHENEVER THEY NEXT COME UP FOR OFFICE. SEND THIS TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW; THE ENTIRE POPULATION OF THE UNITED STATES NEEDS TO KNOW THIS INFORMATION -- THAT IS, UNLESS THEY DO NOT MIND SHARING THEIR SOCIAL SECURITY WITH FOREIGN WORKERS WHO NEVER PAID INTO IT AND AMERICAN CITIZENS ARE BEING LEFT OUT. Grouped by Home State Alabama: Alaska: Stevens (R-AK), Yea Arizona: McCain (R-AZ), Yea Arkansas: Lincoln (D-AR), Yea Pryor (D-AR),...

VeriChip reveals its colours By Nick Farrell: Thursday 01 June 2006, 15:41 AFTER YEARS OF insisting that VeriChip RFID technology will not be used for Big Brother purposes, the company's chairman has proposed tagging immigrant and guest workers in the United States. Scott Silverman, Chairman of the Board of VeriChip Corporation seems to have got carried away when being interviewed on "Fox & Friends" when responding to the Bush administration's call to know "who is in our country and why they are here". He suggested that if foreigners were tagged using VeriChip RFID implants at the border, the technology could...

I am curious why none of the media covers the most important aspect of the Malvo shootings. If you look at Newspapers on the dates when the shootings are underway you discover something I find quite interesting. The shootings begin to dominate the news the day before the debate on the Iraq war starts and they catch them the day after the declaration of war??? If you ask most people "do you remember the debate about starting the second Iraq war", they will all answer "yes of course". But if you followup with the question "name one point in the...

I recently received a reply to a post that stated: "This should be beneath a "freeper". Sad." So I asked.. what is it that makes a FReeper? My reply (and I will admit was tasteless) was also questioning. It stirred controversy and was removed? Why Moderators? Can you not tell me? Did it not meet with your "FReeper" mentality? According to all posted guidelines it should be listed but no, you chose to delete it. Yes.. I'm the first one IBTZ, I'm sure you'll nick me for speaking up..

Note: This commentary may not be suitable for young children. Please use parental discretion. Leann Mischel, a Pennsylvania college professor, was ready to have a second child. And she wanted the new baby to have the same father her son did. The problem was that Mischel had no idea who he was: The father of her son was “Donor 401” at a sperm bank. And the bank had sold out of Donor 401’s genetic material. But Mischel was in luck. As the Washington Post put it, Carla Schouten, another sperm-bank mother from San Jose, had “the gift of a lifetime...

(CBS) CHICAGO It's a trend that some fear may have long-term consequences. More unmarried women over the age of 25 are not waiting for Mr. Right. As CBS 2's Alita Guillen reports, these ladies are having children on their own. The fantasy father at their fingertips is a sperm donor with all the right stuff. Katherine Gehl and April Lashbrook had successful careers and dated, but they didn't have husbands. They heard their biological clocks ticking loudly. "It was like a time bomb," April said. "I need to go and have a baby and be a mother, and so I...

Computers are taking over in the classroom — and nobody is challenging them. IN RAY BRADBURY’S apocalyptic tale Fahrenheit 451 firemen are employed to burn all books, driving underground those who cherish them. That such a stark warning of what happens in a bookless society should appear in the very medium made illicit in the tale is an irony not lost on his readers. We return Bradbury’s book to the shelf alongside the Orwell, Huxley and Atwood, safe in the comforting knowledge that we are far too wise in the real world to allow anything of such magnitude to happen....

Anyone for tennis, at the age of 150? Ronald Bailey Scientific progress promises us far longer, happier lives. Yet the 'bioconservatives' want to stop it BY THE END of this century, the typical European may attend a family reunion in which five generations are playing together. Great-great-great grandma, at 150 years old, will be as vital, with muscle tone as firm and supple, skin as elastic and glowing, as her 30-year-old great-great-granddaughter with whom she’s playing tennis. After the game, while enjoying a plate of vegetables filled with not only a solid day’s worth of nutrients but medicines she needs...

Britain's first IVF "designer baby" clinic is to charge about £6,000 for a made-to-order infant. The £5 million centre will bring pioneering embryo screening techniques for the creation of "saviour siblings" to Britain. In addition, it will offer testing for up to 100 inherited gene disorders such as muscular dystrophy and cystic fibrosis. Embryos found to be carrying rogue genes will be discarded and only "healthy" embryos implanted into their mothers. Controversially, doctors at the centre have already obtained the first British licence to treat a couple with an inherited form of bowel cancer in the hope that their baby...

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - The Dutch government is furious after an Italian minister this week branded the country's euthanasia laws as akin to the policies of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, according to Dutch news agency ANP. Dutch Prime Minister Balkenende is expected to raise the matter with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi next week at a European summit, ANP said. "This is scandalous and unacceptable... it is not the way to get along in Europe," Balkenende said on Friday. Italian Parliamentary Relations Minister Carlo Giovanardi told a radio program on Thursday that Nazi thinking was re-emerging in Europe through Dutch...

How’s your 'Progenitor A?' By David Rennie, Europe Correspondent (Filed: 07/03/2006) Spain has taken another step in its journey from conservative to liberal bastion by creating new birth certificates to avoid discrimination against same-sex couples. According to an announcement in the Official Bulletin of State "The expression "father" will be replaced with "Progenitor A", and "mother" will be replaced with "Progenitor B"."The head of the national Civil Register, Pilar Blanco-Morales, told the newspaper ABC that the change took account of a new law on same-sex marriages passed by the socialist government in July. The move has prompted sharp criticism from...

An Ohio company has embedded silicon chips in two of its employees - the first known case in which US workers have been “tagged” electronically as a way of identifying them. CityWatcher.com, a private video surveillance company, said it was testing the technology as a way of controlling access to a room where it holds security video footage for government agencies and the police. Embedding slivers of silicon in workers is likely to add to the controversy over RFID technology, widely seen as one of the next big growth industries. RFID chips – inexpensive radio transmitters that give off a...

According to a December 10, 2005, Washington Post article, “Psychiatry Ponders Whether Extreme Bias Can Be an Illness,” it seems there is a serious move afoot to formally designate those who are repulsed by homosexual practice as suffering from a pathological neurosis—“homophobia.” In other words, a person who views the legitimization of homosexuality as sinful, immoral, or destructive to society may have a mental disorder!