Iran’s Plan to Phase Out Subsidies For Staple Items Holds Risks
The outside world may be focused on Iran’s intensifying confrontation with the West over its nuclear program. But at home, Iranians are more concerned with an ambitious and risky new effort to overhaul the country’s troubled economy.
Shorts (left)
Ten journalists and 48 officials have been charged with taking bribes to cover up a mining disaster last year, according to a report published on Monday in China Daily, an official English-language newspaper.
As Manhunt Widens in Killings, Threat to ‘Shoot Some Cops’
The search for a man suspected of fatally shooting four uniformed officers south of Tacoma, Wash., expanded to this city and beyond on Monday with a flurry of police sweeps and SWAT team investigations. Details also emerged that the suspect had told people that he planned to “shoot some cops,” the police said.
Weather Roller Coaster
Weather certainly has its ups and downs, and the last two months have been no exception. Comparing October and November as a whole for Massachusetts, October’s mean temperature ranked in the 18th percentile while November’s mean temperature will most likely rank around the 95th percentile. In fact, the temperatures at both Logan Airport and our campus weather station have yet to dip below freezing this autumn. The latest freeze in recorded history at Logan Airport was December 2nd in 1975 and we have a good chance of breaking that record, though it will be close call this morning.
Sounds During Sleep May Aid Memory, Study Says
<i>Science</i> has never given much credence to claims that you can learn Chinese or French by having the instruction CDs play while you sleep. If any learning happens that way, most scientists say, the language lesson is probably waking the sleeper up, not causing nouns and verbs to seep into a sound-asleep mind.
Autistic Runaway Youth Spent 11 Days On Subway
Day after day, night after night, Francisco Hernandez Jr., 13 years old, rode the subway. He had an electronic fare card, $10 in his pocket and a bookbag on his lap. As the human tide flowed and ebbed around him, he sat impassively, a gangly boy in glasses and a red hoodie, speaking to no one.
Proton Beams Are Back on Track at Collider
Physicists returned to their future on Friday. About 10 p.m. outside Geneva, scientists at CERN, the European Center for Nuclear Research, succeeded in sending beams of protons clockwise around the 17-mile underground magnetic racetrack known as the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s biggest and most expensive physics experiment.
The Gloves Come Off At Amazon and Wal-Mart
Ali had Frazier. Coke has Pepsi. The Yankees have the Red Sox.
Shorts (right)
Bernard Madoff’s enormous Ponzi scheme ended on Dec. 11, 2008, when he was arrested at his Manhattan penthouse. But for some early victims, the date his crime started could matter much more than when it stopped.
Shorts (left)
The particles that ferry cholesterol through the bloodstream are known as “bad” or “good”: bad if they deposit cholesterol on vessel walls, potentially clogging them; good if they carry the cholesterol on to the liver for excretion.
Iran Expanding Effort To Stifle the Opposition
After last summer’s disputed presidential election, Iran’s government relied largely on brute force — beatings, arrests and show trials — to stifle the country’s embattled opposition movement.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Thanksgiving is just a few days away, which means that winter is on the horizon. Thanks to El Niño, the National Weather Service is predicting a warmer-than-average winter across much of the western and central US, but a cooler-than-average winter across the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic.
Guidelines Push Back AgeFor Cervical Cancer Tests
New guidelines for cervical cancer screening say women should delay their first Pap test until age 21, and be screened less often than recommended in the past.
U.S. Takes A New Look At Terrorism Air Defenses
The commander of military forces protecting North America has ordered a review of the costly air defenses intended to prevent another Sept. 11-style terrorism attack, an assessment aimed at determining whether the commitment of jet fighters, other aircraft and crews remains justified.
Air Traffic System Fails, Causing Delays in Flight in Eastern U.S.
Flights over much of the eastern United States were delayed Thursday by a predawn failure in a fairly new communications system, which led to the shutdown of a computer that accepts flight plans from the airlines and feeds them to air traffic controllers.
Senate Bill Covers Fewer Than House Version, Costs Less
The Senate version of health reform legislation would cover 5 million fewer people than a companion bill passed by the House, but it would cost less, in part because Senate Democratic leaders said they believed they had to win support from fiscally conservative members of their party.
Shorts (right)
First the reviled Yankees won the World Series; now Shake Shack, the New York burger joint, might stake a claim in one of Boston’s most sacred spaces.
Shorts (left)
Emily Keller, a Watervliet, N.Y., high school senior, has read the four “Twilight” books 28 times.
A Medical Culture Clash of Science and Practice
This week, the science of medicine bumped up against the foundations of American medical consumerism: that more is better, that saving a life is worth any sacrifice, that health care is a birthright.
Rise to the Occlusion
Today’s weather will be influenced by the passage of an occluded front, as the center of a low pressure system passes to our north. An occluded front is formed in a mature cyclone (low pressure system) when the cold front associated with the system overtakes the warm front, causing the two fronts to merge. Unlike a cold or warm front, an occluded front usually does not result in a large temperature difference at the surface upon its passage, since there is relatively cold air on either side of it. However, there is often a pocket of warm air pushed aloft in association with the occluded front, which can lead to precipitation along the frontal boundary.