A new study by radiologists reports on teenage girls embedding needles, glass, and other objects in their flesh. While subdermal implants are nothing new in the realm of extreme body modifications, the researchers at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio suggest that the increasing number cases they've seen are actually a form of self-injury similar to cutting. From the Chicago Tribune: Personnel at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, report extracting 52 foreign objects that 10 teenage girls deliberately embedded in their arms, hands, feet, ankles and necks over the last three years, including needles, staples, wood, stone, glass, pencil lead and a crayon. One patient had inserted 11 objects, including an unfolded metal paper clip more than 6 inches long... The study, presented Wednesday at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America in Chicago, is the first to report on this type of self-inflicted injury among teenagers, the researchers said. They call the behavior "self-embedding disorder." Dr. William E. Shiels II, the study's principal investigator and the hospital's chief of radiology, said that uncovering the behavior was unexpected but that researchers are now hearing about cases in other cities. The hospital recently set up a national registry to track incidents and conduct research. "Radiologists uncover, label new teen affliction" (Thanks, Gil Kaufman!)...br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=9c46f321a1e57f8406d8d1148db58104p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=9c46f321a1e57f8406d8d1148db58104p=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=9c46f321a1e57f8406d8d1148db58104" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/18937?ns=guardianpageName=World+news%3A+US+report+predicts+nuclear+or+biological+attack+by+2013ch=World+newsc3=guardian.co.ukc4=Terrorism+-+international%2CAl-Qaida+%28News%29%2CObama+White+House+%28News%29%2CUS+news%2CPakistan+%28News%29%2CWorld+newsc5=Not+commercially+useful%2CUS+Electionsc6=Ewen+MacAskillc7=2008_12_03c8=1128278c9=articlec10=GUc11=World+newsc12=Global+terrorismc13=c14=h2=GU%2FWorld+news%2FGlobal+terrorism" width="1" height="1" //divpA congressional investigation into weapons of mass destruction today offered a chilling prediction of terrorists mounting an attack using biological or nuclear weapons within the next five years./ppThe six-month inquiry singles out Pakistan as one of the likeliest sources of such an attack. The target could be the US or some other part of the world./ppThe report, by the bipartisan Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction, concludes that "unless the world community acts decisively and with great urgency, it is more likely than not that a weapon of mass destruction will be used in a terrorist attack somewhere in the world by the end of 2013"./ppIt adds that "terrorists are more likely to be able to obtain and use a biological weapon than a nuclear weapon"./ppPresident George Bush welcomed the report, saying the threat posed was the greatest facing the US and was "dangerously real". He said that after the 9/11 attacks, he had put in place policies tackling the threat and he was leaving a good foundation for his successor./ppThe incoming Barack Obama administration, which is to make proliferation of weapons of mass destruction a priority, was briefed on Capitol Hill today about the findings in the 132-page report./ppThe commission, which was led by the former Democratic senator Bob Graham and by former Democratic senator Jim Talent, was given six months to complete the report. It follows on from the work of the commission that investigated the 9/11 attack./ppGraham told reporters at the press conference that a biological or nuclear attack within the next five years was not inevitable and the commission's reports included a series of recommendations, that if implemented, could diminish the threat. Recommendations include creation of a White House post focusing on proliferation and more emphasis on diplomatic efforts./ppThe team's remit ranged from lack of security at biological labs in the US to the safety of nuclear stockpiles in Russia. It conducted 250 interviews with scientists, analysts, intelligence agencies and the military./ppThe report concludes the risk from biological or nuclear weapons is higher than sceptical foreign policy and defence analysts have suggested. Those analysts had pointed to the complexity of transporting biological or nuclear weapons and the limitations of a nuclear "dirty" bomb, whose radius of damage is minimal compared with missile-delivered warheads./ppThe report disagrees, saying: "No mission could be timelier. The simple reality is that the risks that confront us today are evolving faster than our multilayered responses. Many thousands of dedicated people across all agencies of our government are working hard to protect this country, and their efforts have had a positive impact. But the terrorists have been active, too and in our judgment America's margin of safety is shrinking, not growing."/ppIt adds that much dangerous biological and nuclear material around the globe is "poorly secured and thus vulnerable to theft by those who would put these materials to harmful use, or would sell them on the black market to potential terrorists."/ppAs well as the threat from stateless militant groups, the commission expresses concern about the danger posed by proliferation of nuclear weapons to states such as Iran, saying the Obama administration must stop it from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability./ppIt points to Pakistan, both at the state level and among stateless groups, as one of the areas of most concern. "Were one to map terrorism and weapons of mass destruction today, all roads would intersect in Pakistan," the report says./ppTalent told the press conference in Washington today: "It is the epicentre of a lot of these dangers." He said the report had been drawn up before the Mumbai attacks./ppThe commission recommends that Pakistan be top priority for the Obama administration in terms of terrorism and proliferation. Proposals include eliminating terrorist safe havens through military, economic, and diplomatic means, securing nuclear and biological materials in Pakistan, countering and defeating extremist ideology, and constraining a nascent nuclear arms race in Asia./ppOther recommendations include strengthening the non-proliferation treaty and other international safeguards, creating a US national security force appropriate to the 21st century and developing a more coherent strategy for countering ideologies that leads to terrorism./ppAt home, the commission was disturbed at the apparent lack of security at laboratories dealing with dangerous biological materials. Government investigators, sent to check on the vulnerability of such sites were able gain access to the outside of these buildings and observe work inside./ppIt was lucky that they were from the government and not al-Qaida operatives as these were precisely the lethal trove that the terrorists have been seeking for years, the report says./ppThe government investigators watched a pedestrian simply stroll into one of the buildings through an unguarded loading bay./ppThe commission recommended tighter oversight of the 400 research facilities and 15,000 staff engaged in such work. Another recommendation is the establishment of an anthrax preparedness strategy./pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/terrorism"Global terrorism/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/alqaida"Al-Qaida/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/obama-white-house"Obama White House/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/usa"United States/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/pakistan"Pakistan/a/li/ul/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/5ayVmDk13JpnMX1fJUUSKCdWnYI/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/5ayVmDk13JpnMX1fJUUSKCdWnYI/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

pstrong1984:/strong Poison gas leaks from a Union Carbide pesticide factory in Bhopal, India. It spreads throughout the city, killing thousands of people outright and thousands more subsequently in a disaster often described as the worst industrial accident in history./p pUnion Carbide chose Bhopal, a city of 900,000 people in the state of Madhya Pradesh, because of its central location and its proximity to a lake and to the country's vast rail system./p pThe plant opened in 1969 and produced the pesticide carbaryl, which was marketed as Sevin. Ten years later the plant began manufacturing a href="http://www.epa.gov/ttn/atw/hlthef/methylis.html"methyl isocyanate/a, or MIC, a cheaper but more toxic substance used in the making of pesticides./p pIt was MIC gas that was released when water leaked into one of the storage tanks late on the night of Dec. 2, a href="http://www.bhopal.org/whathappened.html"setting off the disaster/a. Gas began escaping from Tank 610 around 10:30 p.m. although the main warning siren didn't go off for another two hours./p pThe first effects were felt almost immediately in the vicinity of the plant. As the gas cloud spread into Bhopal proper, residents were awakened to a blinding, vomiting, lung-searing hell. Panic ensued and hundreds of people died in the chaotic stampede that followed./p pAn exact death toll has never been established. Union Carbide, not surprisingly, set the toll on the low end at 3,800, while municipal workers claimed to have cleared at least 15,000 bodies in the immediate aftermath of the accident. Thousands have died since and an estimated 50,000 people became invalids or developed chronic respiratory conditions as a result of being poisoned./p pRegardless of the numbers, all a href="http://www.american.edu/ted/bhopal.htm"evidence pointed to Union Carbide/a and its Indian subsidiary, as well as the Indian government, its partner in the factory, being responsible, mainly through negligence, for what occurred. Despite the extreme volatility and toxicity of the chemicals in use at the factory, safeguards known to be substandard were ignored rather than fixed./p pIn the subsequent investigations and legal proceedings, it was determined, among other things, that:/p ul class="list1" lipStaffing at the plant had been cut to save money. Workers who complained about codified safety violations were reprimanded, and occasionally fired./p/li lipNo plan existed for coping with a disaster of this magnitude./li/p lipTank alarms that would have alerted personnel to the leak hadn't functioned for at least four years./li/p lipOther backup systems were either not functioning or nonexistent./li/p lipThe plant was equipped with a single back-up system, unlike the four-stage system typically found in American plants./li/p lipTank 610 held 42 tons of MIC, well above the prescribed capacity. (It is believed that 27 tons escaped in the leak.)/li/p lipWater sprays designed to dilute escaping gas were poorly installed and proved ineffective./li/p lipDamage known to exist, such as to piping and valves, had not been repaired or replaced because the cost was considered too high. Warnings from U.S. and Indian experts about other shortcomings at the plant were similarly ignored./li/p /ul pThe aftermath of the disaster was almost as chaotic. Union Carbide was a href="http://www.bhopal.com/ucs.htm"initially responsive/a, rushing aid and money to Bhopal. Nevertheless, faced with a $3 billion lawsuit, the company dug in, eventually agreeing to a $470 million settlement, a mere 15 percent of the original claim. In any case, very little money ever reached the victims of the disaster./p pa href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Anderson_(chairman)"Warren Anderson/a, Union Carbide's CEO, went before Congress in December 1984, pledging his company's renewed commitment to safety, a promise that rang hollow in India (and probably to Congress as well)./p pAnderson was subsequently charged with manslaughter by Indian prosecutors but managed to evade an international arrest warrant and disappeared. Investigators from Greenpeace, which has kept up an active interest in the case, found Anderson in 2002, alive and well and living comfortably in the Hamptons. The United States has shown no inclination to hand him over to Indian justice, and most of the serious charges against him have been dropped./p pUnion Carbide, meanwhile, was acquired by the Dow Corporation in 2001, which refused to assume any additional liability for Bhopal, arguing that the debt had already been paid through various court settlements. It did go on to settle another outstanding claim against Union Carbide, this one for $2.2 billion made by asbestos workers in Texas./p pA few outstanding legal claims from Bhopal remain to be settled, both in India and the United States, but most of the court wrangling is over./p pThe victims of the disaster, those who live on, continue dealing with various health problems — including chronic respiratory problems, vision problems and an increased incidence of cancer and birth defects — and an environment that remains contaminated to this day./p pemSource: Various/em/pbr style="clear: both;"/ a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:48cc9eb4b8a8482354ecc6b56f151739:kxhhkz4DUffnSCf8jv%2B7v44x8l4BKie%2FYRo4WeJY732GnQ4nDiD9BSvaR%2FQPx6QqXmVG%2FC4uDPtx5g%3D%3D'img border='0' title='Add to Facebook' alt='Add to Facebook' src='http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/facebook.gif'//a a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:82d4523a8b02e3ad5a3995ca5fc1b80a:EqId8d3OpbVpu5JWckWNEKCSVVRnt0hq%2BaWV4fey0vi21Cfh7%2BMXf3MEEmEyIGm9e3q%2BakzFEHYE'img border='0' title='Add to Reddit' alt='Add to Reddit' src='http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/reddit.png'//a a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:3e70225b1b8097a8e45bf4a0f1ec3f03:yaaCBCPr4Rb0oyJuBEhz5kWJYlyLLEYFk6mELMdBJdK9RvClF8CQSsBwFbqLfl%2FmsvR0IYczZDjw'img border='0' title='Add to digg' alt='Add to digg' src='http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/digg.gif'//a a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:36a75e658ce232fbdd9cef6c864d7290:a7hJ2TLNUU1aJrJ1PeiO23adVkCz6dOjIxMmjfiP8xK%2B3QyQ%2FI6OAovRTJzMHk9aSvuehIeaQg5W'img border='0' title='Add to Google' alt='Add to Google' src='http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/google.png'//a br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=d01f67d641f166da738dda1f9d2c8941p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=d01f67d641f166da738dda1f9d2c8941p=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=d01f67d641f166da738dda1f9d2c8941" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/ pa href="http://feeds.wired.com/~a/wired/index?a=8GVQjD"img src="http://feeds.wired.com/~a/wired/index?i=8GVQjD" border="0"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~4/473261698" height="1" width="1"/

A call to the Secret Witness tip line helped police break CNN's first featured cold case: the slaying of college student Brianna Denison, investigators say. James Michael Biela, a 27-year-old construction worker with an alleged thong fetish was arrested last week. Biela is charged with murdering Denison by strangulation.div class="feedflare" a href="http://rss.cnn.com/~f/rss/cnn_topstories?a=9jY8A1UG"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/rss/cnn_topstories?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://rss.cnn.com/~f/rss/cnn_topstories?a=wxRdrx8g"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/rss/cnn_topstories?d=50" border="0"/img/a a href="http://rss.cnn.com/~f/rss/cnn_topstories?a=HR2sdnRG"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/rss/cnn_topstories?i=HR2sdnRG" border="0"/img/a a href="http://rss.cnn.com/~f/rss/cnn_topstories?a=xmhFaf6V"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/rss/cnn_topstories?d=52" border="0"/img/a a href="http://rss.cnn.com/~f/rss/cnn_topstories?a=BupIjCaV"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/rss/cnn_topstories?i=BupIjCaV" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/rss/cnn_topstories/~4/a2aFIDJEV2A" height="1" width="1"/

A sports-team owner, a financial-firm executive and residents of Hong Kong and Saudi Arabia were among 2,702 millionaire recipients of farm payments from 2003 to 2006 - and it's not even clear they were legitimate farmers, congressional investigators reported Monday. nbsp; nbsp; They probably were ineligible, but the Agriculture Department can't confirm that, since officials never checked their incomes, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said.

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/31756?ns=guardianpageName=World+news%3A+Mumbai+attacks%3A+India+demands+Pakistan+hand+over+terror+suspectsch=World+newsc3=guardian.co.ukc4=Mumbai+terror+attacks+%28News%29%2CIndia+%28News%29%2CPakistan+%28News%29%2CWorld+news%2CUS+newsc5=Not+commercially+usefulc6=Julian+Borger%2CVikram+Dodd%2CMark+Tranc7=2008_12_02c8=1127301c9=articlec10=GUc11=World+newsc12=Mumbai+terror+attacksc13=c14=h2=GU%2FWorld+news%2FMumbai+terror+attacks" width="1" height="1" //divpIndia today downplayed the possibility of military action in response to the Mumbai attacks but demanded that Islamabad hand over suspected terrorists believed to be in Pakistan./pp"Nobody is talking of military action," India's foreign minister, Pranab Mukherjee, told reporters when asked what action might be taken./ppIndian investigators have said the attacks that killed at least 172 people last week were carried out by militants from Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Kashmiri extremist group based in Pakistan./ppMukherjee said a list of about 20 names was given to Pakistan's high commissioner to India at a meeting last night. India has already demanded that Pakistan take "strong action" against those responsible for the attacks, and the US has put pressure on Islamabad to cooperate./ppCondoleezza Rice yesterday called for full Pakistani cooperation with the investigation into the Mumbai attacks, saying they represented a "critical moment" in the new civilian government's efforts to stamp its authority on Pakistan's security services./ppThe outgoing secretary of state said she did not want to "jump to conclusions", but made it clear during a visit to London that she expected Islamabad would have to answer for the attacks./ppRice, who is due to arrive in India tomorrow, urged its government to focus on the investigation of the attacks, and to avoid actions that might have "unintended consequences", such as troop manoeuvres./ppThe Indian government has claimed the attackers trained in Pakistan./ppIslamabad has denied any involvement, but has warned that it might have to transfer forces from its western tribal areas, where they are fighting Islamic extremist groups, to its eastern border with India if there were threatening moves by Indian troops./ppThe Indian authorities have been releasing parts of their case against Pakistan to the media. Yesterday Indian media reported intelligence sources as saying an email claiming responsibility for the attack had been traced to an internet address in Lahore./ppThere were signs yesterday that India was winning the diplomatic tussle. A western diplomatic source said India's claims that extremist elements in Pakistan were involved in the attack were being widely believed, and that Pakistan's warning that it would have to move troops away from the Afghan border was being interpreted as "a threat" to western interests./ppSpeaking to reporters in London yesterday, Rice directed most of her remarks to the newly elected government of President Asif Ali Zardari./pp"President Zardari has said rightly that extremism in any form is a threat to Pakistan as well as India. So I fully expect the commitment of Pakistan to absolute transparency and wherever the leads go, to follow them up," Rice said./ppThe civilian government's control over Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) came into question last week when the prime minister, Yousef Raza Gilani, announced he would dispatch the agency's new director general, Lieutenant General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, to India to discuss the attack, only for the offer to be withdrawn within hours. A more junior ISI representative was promised instead./ppMost foreign observers believe at least some ISI officers still harbour sympathy for Islamic extremist groups and turn a blind eye to their terrorist activities./ppRice did not mention the ISI yesterday but made clear she believed the time had come for Pakistan's government to ensure different parts of its security apparatus were not pursuing separate agendas./pp"Everyone knows that you don't have day one with a military government and day two with a civilian government," Rice said. "But this is a critical moment for Pakistan to bring all its institutions into a common strategy to defend Pakistan. And defending Pakistan means rooting out extremism, defending Pakistani interests means cooperating fully, defending Pakistani interests means investigating this so further attacks can be prevented."/ppRice said she was flying to New Delhi tomorrow "to show solidarity" and offer help with the investigation and counter-terrorism measures. She would also be discouraging the escalation of the situation./ppIndia's high commissioner in London said last night the attacks were "probably" aimed at derailing peace talks between India and Pakistan, which had been given a boost by the election of a new democratic government in Islamabad./ppShiv Shankar Mukherjee told Sky News that India had made no "aggressive moves" since the attack, but warned that the peace process between the two countries was "under pressure"./ppBut he added that "over the last few months we've been having a terrorist attack virtually every month in India. And we've leaned over backwards and have gone the extra mile ... to see that the dialogue succeeds, because there is no alternative, except peaceful dialogue to resolve our problems."/pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/mumbai-terror-attacks"Mumbai terror attacks/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/india"India/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/pakistan"Pakistan/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/usa"United States/a/li/ul/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/oAr-hPTX2E23WVHEq4DXYtND2eE/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/oAr-hPTX2E23WVHEq4DXYtND2eE/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

Two men who bred and trained pit bulls for fighting have been sentenced to state prison after animal cruelty investigators broke up their dogfighting ring, officials announced Monday.