Responding to testimony by his former chief of staff, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales defended his previous characterization of his role in the dismissal of United States attorneys.
A study published yesterday in the New England Journal of Medicine gives asthma sufferers reason to hope there might someday be a new way to fight back. By singeing away smooth muscle from the bronchial airways in a procedure called bronchial thermoplasty, researchers were able to significantly reduce symptoms in people with moderate to severe asthma. "It's the beginning of a whole new category of treatment for asthma," predicts John Miller, head of thoracic surgery at St. Joseph's Healthcare Hamilton in Hamilton, Ontario, and coleader of the study (which was paid for by Asthmatx, the company that owns the proprietary technology used in the procedure).
Here's some encouraging news for ex-smokers: Research featured in this week's Hypertension: Journal of the American Heart Association found that those who had put more than a decade between themselves and that last cigarette could see arteries stiffened by the unhealthy habit restored to the pliancy of people who had never smoked.
Congressional Quarterly is reporting that George Foresman, the current DHS Undersecretary for Preparedness will submit his resignation this evening to the Department of Homeland Security. (Note: Subscription required.) The news comes just two days before DHS must meet a Congressional mandate to majorly reorganize the department and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
AP - Attorney General Alberto Gonzales vowed Friday to remain on the job, digging in even as lawmakers questioned whether he could effectively run the Justice Department with no letup in the controversy over the firings of prosecutors
AP - President Bush apologized to troops face to face on Friday for shoddy conditions they have endured at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. He shook the artificial hand of a lieutenant and cradled a newborn whose daddy is nursing his remaining, severely injured leg back to health.
AP - A captive Royal Marine was shown in new TV footage Friday apologizing for being in Iranian waters, and Tehran made public a third letter supposedly written by the only woman prisoner among 15 Britons seized by Iran's Revolutionary Guards.
Iran on Friday released a third letter allegedly written by detained British sailor Faye Turney, in which she claims to have been "sacrificed" and urges both countries to withdraw from Iraq. In a video broadcast Friday on Al Alam TV, Nathan Summers, another of the 15 personnel held in Iran, confessed to "entering your waters without permission."
A suspect in the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen alleges he was tortured into admitting responsibility for that attack and others, according to a hearing transcript the Pentagon released Friday.
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