NATO's 'Empty Words'
August 20, 2008; Page A18

"Empty words." That's how Moscow glibly dismissed NATO's criticism yesterday of Russia's continued occupation of Georgia. The Russians may be bullies, but like all bullies they know weakness when they see it.

The most NATO ministers could muster at their meeting in Brussels was a statement that they "cannot continue with business as usual" with Russia. There was no move to fast-track Georgia's bid to join NATO, nor a pledge to help the battered democracy rebuild its defenses.

By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 20, 2008; A01

The narrative of the presidential campaign appeared to be set on the issue of abortion: Sen. Barack Obama was the abortion-rights candidate who was reaching out to foes, seeking common ground and making inroads. Sen. John McCain was the abortion opponent whose reticence about faith and whose battles on campaign finance laws drew suspect glances from would-be supporters.

But both those impressions have been altered since the Rev. Rick Warren's Saddleback Civil Forum in California on Saturday.

By Susan Kinzie
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 20, 2008; B03

Scores of college presidents, including the head of Maryland's public university system and the president of Johns Hopkins University, have an unexpected request for legislators: Please, lower the drinking age.

The Amethyst Initiative, launched in July, is a coalition of college presidents who say that the legal drinking age of 21 encourages binge drinking on campuses. William Kirwan, chancellor of the University System of Maryland, William Brody, president of Johns Hopkins, C.D. Mote Jr. of the University of Maryland and the presidents of Washington and Lee, Sweet Briar, Towson, Randolph-Macon, Duke, Tufts, Dartmouth and others have signed on to the effort.

WASHINGTON -- The 110th Congress, whose term officially ends in January, hasn't passed any spending bills or attacked high gasoline prices. But it has used its powers to celebrate watermelons and to decree the origins of the word "baseball."

Barring a burst of legislative activity after Labor Day, this group of 535 men and women will have accomplished a rare feat. In two decades of record keeping, no sitting Congress has passed fewer public laws at this point in the session -- 294 so far -- than this one. That's not to say they've been idle. On the flip side, no Congress in the same 20 years has been so prolific when it comes to proposing resolutions -- more than 1,900, according to a tally by the nonpartisan Taxpayers for Common Sense.

By Ahmed Rashid
Tuesday, August 19, 2008;

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- The resignation of President Pervez Musharraf yesterday after nine years in office is a major victory for Pakistan's long-battered and still fragile democratic forces. But particularly given the meltdown the country has endured in recent weeks, there are still many obstacles to effective civilian governance. Although the United States will expect things to change in a hurry, they are unlikely to do so right away.

Three of Pakistan's past four military rulers have been driven from power by popular movements, but the politicians who followed the military all failed to take advantage of the people's desire for democracy and economic development and were eventually forced out by the military on charges of corruption and incompetence.

On Tuesday, a report describing a Stone Age graveyard in Niger was released. Although the ancient site was discovered back in 2000, according to Paul Sereno, a paleontologist of the University of Chicago, all this time was required for putting together all the information.

The team came across skeletons of humans and animals while engaged in a project focused on dinosaur fossils. Strangely enough, the site contains about two hundred graves that seem to have dug by two distinct civilizations at a time difference of possibly 1,000 years.

The people from one of the groups were called Kiffians; according to the research team, they were tall, strong hunter-gatherers who, about 8,000 years ago, had to leave the area because of a terrible drought that affected the local water supply.

'Exceptional Site' With Many Artifacts Indicates an Abundance of Food, Water

By David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 15, 2008; A06

The archaeological site at Gobero in the Eastern Sahara is not going to rewrite the history of Stone Age man, or even the history of settlement in North Africa, where desert and lake have played tag with each other for eons.

But it does illustrate how much amazing stuff is still out there in plain view on our planet's surface, waiting for the patient and the lucky to find it.

Peace-Promoting Leader of Separatist Movement Says Tensions May Lead to Violence in Region

By Emily Wax
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, August 18, 2008; A06

NEW DELHI, Aug. 17 -- On a recent four-month trek through hundreds of Kashmiri villages, separatist leader Yasin Malik called on people to adopt his new Gandhian philosophy of nonviolence. Malik, a secular Muslim, soon became an icon of peace to many youths in this turbulent region that India and Pakistan have fought over for decades.

But Malik's commitment to nonviolence is now being tested amid a wave of unrest in Indian-administered Kashmir. Over the past six weeks, tensions between Muslims and Hindus have left 34 people dead, most of them unarmed protesters shot by Indian security forces. Like many leaders here, Malik worries that Kashmir's separatist movement is once again on the verge of becoming an armed struggle.

Thursday’s issue of the Journal of Investigative Dermatology featured the results of a recent cancer related study conducted by researchers of Rutgers University; according to the findings, the use of certain moisturizing creams increases one’s chances of developing a form of skin cancer called squamous cell carcinoma.

In the study, Dr. Allan Conney and his team put a group of hairless mice through UVB radiation sessions two times a week for a period of twenty weeks. Four randomly chosen types of moisturizing creams that had been applied on the mice caused tumors to develop more rapidly and grow larger than they would have in normal conditions.

Sunday, August 17, 2008; A05

Pelosi Might Consider Offshore Drilling

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi signaled on Saturday her willingness to consider opening more coastal areas to oil and gas exploration.

In the Democratic Party's weekly radio address, Pelosi (Calif.) said opening portions of the Outer Continental Shelf for drilling will be part of energy legislation that House Democrats intend to put forward in the coming weeks to address oil dependence and high gasoline prices.