Back in the News: Cancer Sticks & Horse Doping

Cigarettes

• Post: E-Cigarettes & Buckley's Thank you for Smoking 
• Article: "New York City moves to outlaw cigarette sales to smokers under 21:"

New York City took the first step on Monday in outlawing sales of cigarettes to anyone under age 21, in an effort to reduce smoking among the age group in which most smokers take up the habit.

The bill, which was introduced by the city council and has the backing of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, would make New York City, which already has the highest cigarette taxes in the nation, the first big city or state to set the smoking age at 21. Currently, individuals must be 18 to buy cigarettes.

Eight in 10 adult smokers in the city started smoking regularly when they were below the age of 21, and most smokers who are under age 18 obtain cigarettes from individuals who are just a few years older than them, city officials said.

Horse Racing

• Post: The Kentucky Derby & David Francis' Dead Cert 
• Article: "Top stable in horse doping inquiry:"

Eleven horses from the Godolphin stable have tested positive for anabolic steroids in one of the biggest doping scandals in British racing history.

Godolphin trainer Mahmood Al Zarooni will attend a British Horseracing Authority inquiry after irregularities were discovered in 11 of 45 racehorses. Al Zarooni has admitted making "a catastrophic mistake"...

The 11 horses, who together have won more than $2m (£1.31m) in prize money, include unbeaten Certify, who will not be allowed to run in next month's 1,000 Guineas at Newmarket.

Godolphin is the Maktoum family's private thoroughbred horseracing stable and is overseen by the constitutional monarch of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed, who appointed Al Zarooni three years ago.

Back in the News: Musharraf's Arrest & Hanif's A Case of Exploding Mangoes

From Thursday's BBC article, "Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf: Court orders ex-ruler's arrest:"

A court has ordered the arrest of Gen Pervez Musharraf over his attempt when Pakistan's military ruler to impose house arrest on judges in March 2007.

Mr Musharraf was present at the Islamabad High Court when the judges issued the order. He had been seeking to extend bail in the case. Police present made no attempt to arrest him as he left the court.

A statement from his office described the court order as "ill-conceived and unwarranted judicial activism". It said that the order was "seemingly motivated by personal vendettas" since Mr Musharraf's return to Pakistan to participate in general elections in May. An appeal is being made to the Supreme Court, the statement said.

When I posted about Musharraf last month, shortly after his return to Pakistan, I recommended A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif:

Ali Shigri, Pakistan Air Force pilot and Silent Drill Commander of the Fury Squadron, is on a mission to avenge his father's suspicious death, which the government calls a suicide. Ali's target is none other than General Zia ul-Haq, dictator of Pakistani. Enlisting a rag-tag group of conspirators...Ali sets his elaborate plan in motion. There's only one problem: the line of would-be Zia assassins is longer than he could have possibly known.

Back in the News: Another Mars Voyage in the Works

Look out, Inspiration Mars Foundation: Dutch organization Mars One has thrown its hat in the ring for the race to send a manned voyage to the Red Planet.

Here's today's BBC article, "Applicants wanted for a one-way ticket to Mars:"

Want to go to Mars? Dutch organisation Mars One says it will open applications imminently. It would be a one-way trip, and the company hopes to build a community of settlers on the planet.

Uncharted waters, mountains or far away lands have always drawn explorers. History books show that desire for adventure, even in the face of extreme danger, did not deter the likes of Columbus or Magellan. So it is perhaps not surprising that Mars One has already received thousands of prospective applicants. But there is no return - unlike the mission which hopes to fly to Mars and back in 2018.

The novel I recommended when I posted about this space race last month was Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson:

For eons, sandstorms have swept the barren desolate landscape of the red planet. For centuries, Mars has beckoned to mankind to come and conquer its hostile climate. Now, in the year 2026, a group of one hundred colonists is about to fulfill that destiny. John Boone, Maya Toitavna, Frank Chalmers, and Arkady Bogdanov lead a mission whose ultimate goal is the terraforming of Mars. For some, Mars will become a passion driving them to daring acts of courage and madness; for others it offers and opportunity to strip the planet of its riches. And for the genetic "alchemists, " Mars presents a chance to create a biomedical miracle, a breakthrough that could change all we know about life...and death. The colonists place giant satellite mirrors in Martian orbit to reflect light to the planets surface. Black dust sprinkled on the polar caps will capture warmth and melt the ice. And massive tunnels, kilometers in depth, will be drilled into the Martian mantle to create stupendous vents of hot gases. Against this backdrop of epic upheaval, rivalries, loves, and friendships will form and fall to pieces--for there are those who will fight to the death to prevent Mars from ever being changed.

Back in the News, April Omnibus Edition

Several issues I previously reported on are now back in the news. Here are the latest headlines, along with the novels I recommended:  


Genome Patents

• The new headline: The US Supreme Court has heard arguments questioning whether the human genome can be claimed as intellectual property. 
• Original post: Patenting Human Genes & Crichton's Next 
• Description of the recommended novel, Michael Crichton's Next:

Bestseller Crichton (Jurassic Park) once again focuses on genetic engineering in his cerebral new thriller, though the science involved is a lot less far-fetched than creating dinosaurs from DNA. In an ambitious effort to show what's wrong with the U.S.'s current handling of gene patents and with the laws governing human tissues, the author interweaves many plot strands, one involving a California researcher, Henry Kendall, who has mixed human and chimp DNA while working at NIH.

Nuns

• The new headline: The Pope has approved a report criticising the leadership of the largest group of American nuns. 
• Original post: Nuns & Salzman's Lying Awake 
• Description of the recommended novel, Mark Salzman's Lying Awake:

Sister John's cloistered life of peace and prayer has been electrified by ever more frequent visions of God's radiance, leading her toward a deep religious ecstasy. Her life and writings have become examples of devotion. Yet her visions are accompanied by shattering headaches that compel Sister John to seek medical help. When her doctor tells her an illness may be responsible for her gift, Sister John faces a wrenching choice: to risk her intimate glimpses of the divine in favor of a cure, or to continue her visions with the knowledge that they might be false-and might even cost her her life.

Bird Flu

• The new headline: A girl of seven is being treated in hospital in Beijing, in the first case of H7N9 "bird flu" reported by Chinese officials in the capital.  
• Original post: New Bird Flu Virus & Kalla's Pandemic 
• Description of the recommended novel, Daniel Kalla's Pandemic:

Right now, in a remote corner of rural China, a farmer and his family are sharing their water supply with their livestock: chickens, ducks, pigs, sheep. They share the same waste-disposal system, too. Bird viruses meet their human counterparts in the bloodstreams of the swine, where they mix and mutate before spreading back into the human population. And a new flu is born.... Dr. Noah Haldane, of the World Health Organization, knows that humanity is overdue for a new killer flu, like the great influenza pandemic of 1919 that killed more than twenty million people in less than four months. So when a mysterious new strain of flu is reported in the Gansu Province of mainland China, WHO immediately sends a team to investigate...

Food Safety

• The new headline: Animal rights activists in the US have told the BBC that so-called "ag-gag" laws could be copied in other countries including the UK. 
• Original posts: British Horsemeat Scandal & Sinclair's The Jungle 
• Description of the recommended novel, Upton Sinclair's The Jungle:

1906 bestseller shockingly reveals intolerable labor practices and unsanitary working conditions in the Chicago stockyards as it tells the brutally grim story of a Slavic family that emigrates to America full of optimism but soon descends into numbing poverty, moral degradation, and despair. A fiercely realistic American classic that will haunt readers long after they've finished the last page.

Back in the News: Firefighter Hostages & Emerson's Vertical Burn

I've previously blogged about firefighters and gun-toting nuts, but I did not expect to encounter a news story that incorporated them both. But today a crazy, heavily-armed Georgian took five firefighters hostage. Here's the latest from the New York Times:

A heavily armed man is dead after the police stormed his suburban Atlanta home to rescue four firefighters taken hostage when they responded to a 911 call for medical attention to the house on Wednesday, officials said at the scene in Suwanee, GA.

A police spokesman said that a SWAT team used explosives to enter the home and take the gunman by surprise after negotiators believed that the lives of the firefighters were in “imminent danger.” The authorities said there was an exchange of gunfire.

Five firefighters were initially held hostage. One was released shortly after he was taken captive to move the firetruck, leaving four in the house when the police entered it with grenades. The authorities said one police officer was wounded in the exchange of gunfire.

For a novel about arson and firefighters, try Vertical Burn by Earl Emerson:

Six months after firefighter John Finney fought his way out of a burning Seattle warehouse to get help, no one remembers him giving the directions that pinpointed his partner’s position inside. No one can remember anything about Finney except that he left his friend to die.

But Finney doesn’t believe the fire was an accident. And he doesn’t believe the campaign against him is one either. Trying to reconstruct the events from that tragic day, Finney uncovers suspicious actions by men at the scene.

With only one person on his side—a female firefighter who is herself an outcast in the department—Finney begins to piece together an astounding conspiracy that will turn friends into suspects and every man inside the department into a potentially deadly enemy. And the most horrific fire is yet to burn.

Back in the News: Ag-Gag Laws & Sinclair's The Jungle

In February I posted about Upton Sinclair's The Jungle in relation to the British horse-meat scandal. Now questionable food-production methods are back in the news -- this time in the US.

Here's last week's Washington Times editorial "Ag-gag bills: Criminalizing whistleblowing on factory farms:"

“Ag-gag” bills are laws that criminalize whistleblowing on factory farms. Even though ag-gag bills differ from state to state, they share a few common elements including criminalizing the taking of pictures or video at a factory farms without authorization, banning investigators from taking jobs at factory farms, and compelling mandatory reporting within short timelines that would make it impossible to establish punishable patterns of abuse.

Ag-gag bills have been introduced in Arkansas, California, Indiana, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Vermont. Iowa and Utah have already passed ag-gag laws...

Why do factory farms, slaughterhouses, meatpacking plants, and livestock ranches want to hide abuse? According to Cody Carlson in a recent piece in The Atlantic, footage and pictures of inhumane treatment (like the 2008 video of a California meatpacking plant’s employees prodding and pushing sick cows into the slaughter pit with forklifts) result in public outcry, plant closures, expensive recalls, heavy fines, and even criminal charges for employees of factory farms.

Unlike Europe, where farmers are protected from being undercut by those who would use inhumane practices, in the U.S. there is no such protection. Honest, humane farmers who treat their animals with dignity cannot compete with large companies that cut the beaks off chickens and use gestation crates where pigs cannot turn around for their entire lives to cut a few cents off their products.

Back in the News: US-Canada ecstasy smuggling ring and Lynch's Border Songs

I don't like to post twice about the same book, but this article is just too dead-on to pass up.

Last month I posted about Jim Lynch's Border Songs, a novel all about a border patrol agent who busts drug smugglers along the Canada-Washington state border.

Flash forward to this morning, when the BBC ran the article "US border agents bust US-Canada 'ecstasy smuggling ring':"

Four people are in custody in the US and Canada after a suspected drug smuggler fired on US border agents and fled, sparking a day-long manhunt. 

The incident began on Tuesday morning when border agents encountered two men carrying backpacks five miles (8km) east of Sumas, Washington, in the US. Authorities say agents interrupted an attempt to smuggle a load of MDMA, or ecstasy, from Canada to San Francisco... 

On Tuesday morning, US border agents ordered the two men they encountered near the border to halt, officials said. One of the men dropped his backpack, fired a weapon at the agents, and ran, according to a criminal complaint filed in US federal court in Washington on Wednesday. 

The officers took the other man, identified as Jeffrey Laviolette, into custody immediately. Canadian and US police searched for the fugitive on foot and by helicopter, putting up road blocks. Nathan Hall, a Canadian citizen, was arrested by the Abbotsford Police Department in British Columbia early on Wednesday morning. According to border patrol agents, the backpacks Mr Hall and Mr Laviolette were carrying contained a total of 58lb (26kg) of ecstasy.... 

The wooded area a few miles east of a highway border crossing is a well-known smuggling route for drugs and firearms, and a spokeswoman for the US attorney for the Western District of Washington told the BBC smuggling prosecutions are "a large part of our practice".

Newsworthy Novels: bringing you tomorrow's news today!