Backed by the unusual endorsement of 48 Nobel laureates, Senator John Kerry on Monday accused the Bush administration of letting ideology trump science, and he promised to lift the ban on federal funding for stem-cell research and to build an economy "based on innovation, ingenuity and imagination."
Kerry and his scientific supporters echoed a 38-page report issued in February by the Union of Concerned Scientists, which criticized the administration for "manipulation, suppression and misrepresentation of science" on issues like biotechnology, global warming and nuclear power.
The group of scientists had complained that the White House heavily edited an report on the environment to remove almost any finding pointing to a human link to global warming.
PHOTO: EPA
Kerry also invoked the recent death of former president Ronald Reagan from Alzheimer's disease and echoed Nancy Reagan's call for stem-cell research "to tear down every wall today that keeps us from finding the cures of tomorrow."
"We need a president who will again embrace the tradition of looking toward the future and new discoveries with hope based on scientific facts, not fear," Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, said.
"Presidents are supposed to think big and dream big and help our nation to do so," he said, citing Franklin Roosevelt's creation of the national laboratories, John Kennedy's commitment to put a man on the moon, and Bill Clinton's support for mapping the human genome. "When America sees a problem or a possibility of greatness, it is in our collective character to set our sights on the horizon and not stop working until we get there," Kerry said.
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed his pledge to replace India’s religion-based marriage and inheritance laws with a uniform civil code if he returns to office for a third term, a move that some minority groups have opposed. In an interview with the Times of India listing his agenda, Modi said his government would push for making the code a reality. “It is clear that separate laws for communities are detrimental to the health of society,” he said in the interview published yesterday. “We cannot be a nation where one community is progressing with the support of the Constitution while the other
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Committee is to gather in July for a key meeting known as a plenum, the third since the body of elite decisionmakers was elected in 2022, focusing on reforms amid “challenges” at home and complexities broad. Plenums are important events on China’s political calendar that require the attendance of all of the Central Committee, comprising 205 members and 171 alternate members with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at the helm. The Central Committee typically holds seven plenums between party congresses, which are held once every five years. The current central committee members were elected at the
CODIFYING DISCRIMINATION: Transgender people would be sentenced to three years in prison, while same-sex relations could land a person in jail for more than a decade Iraq’s parliament on Saturday passed a bill criminalizing same-sex relations, which would receive a sentence of up to 15 years in prison, in a move rights groups condemned as an “attack on human rights.” Transgender people would be sentenced to three years’ jail under the amendments to a 1988 anti-prostitution law, which were adopted during a session attended by 170 of 329 lawmakers. A previous draft had proposed capital punishment for same-sex relations, in what campaigners had called a “dangerous” escalation. The new amendments enable courts to sentence people engaging in same-sex relations to 10 to 15 years in prison, according to the