Drones Kill Fewer "Terrorists" & More Civilians

A decade after the US-led invasion in Iraq, RT and John Prescott, the former UK Deputy Prime Minister at the time, reflect on the campaign.

Fewer Countries Execute More People: Amnesty

Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia led a surge in the use of the death penalty last year, according to Amnesty International.

More than three-quarters of the 360 executions officially recognised by Tehran were for drugs offences. Amnesty believes hundreds of others were also put to death.

China, it says, executed more people than the rest of the world put together. The details are a state secret but the human rights group believes thousands were killed.

"There is no independent judiciary in China for example," said Amnesty International's Secretary General, Salil Shetty. "In Iran, in Saudi Arabia all of these happen in secret trials and they invariably also end up targeting particular groups of people, often those who are politically opposed to the regimes."

Amnesty, a long-term campaigner against the death penalty, is encouraged by the fact that the number of countries using it is in decline.

In 1961, when Amnesty was launched, only nine countries had abolished the death penalty for all crimes. Last year only 20 countries carried out executions.

The rights group describes the US as "shameful" for being the only western democracy to execute people. The only European country to do so was Belarus.

In the French presidential election campaign, Marine Le Pen of the Front National has called for a referendum on the reintroduction of the death penalty.

Study: Fewer Children In US Lack Health Insurance

By KELLI KENNEDY, Associated Press

MIAMI (AP) -- Even with more children living in poverty because of the rough economy, the number of children without health insurance in the U.S. has dropped by 1 million in the past three years, according to a report released Tuesday by Georgetown University.

Many states have expanded eligibility for, and simplified access to, the children's Medicaid program. This has helped shrink the number of uninsured children from 6.9 million in 2008 to 5.9 million in 2010. Experts say the Affordable Care Act, the federal health care overhaul that requires states to maintain income eligibility levels and discourages other barriers to coverage, has played a key role in the improvement.

Overall, 34 states had a significant decrease in the rate of uninsured children.

Florida made the most progress, dropping from 667,758 to 506,934 during that time period, although the state still has one of the highest rates of uninsured children in the nation.

Minnesota, Kansas and Wisconsin saw an increase in the number of uninsured children.

Nevada has the highest rate of uninsured children while Massachusetts has the lowest, according to the report.

The findings are based on an analysis of new health insurance data from the Census Bureau. It was done by the Georgetown University Health Policy Institute's Center for Children and Families.

The news comes as the number of uninsured adults has risen in the past few years.

High unemployment rates and the increasing cost of private insurance are driving more families to the federal-state Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance Programs, also known as CHIP. Both programs provide health insurance for children, but come from different funding streams and allow states more flexibility in how they run their programs.

President Barack Obama signed an extension of CHIP and provided $87 billion to help states pay for Medicaid in the 2009 economic stimulus, and experts say a bipartisan national commitment aimed at covering children has given states new tools and incentives to follow through. For example, some states once required face-to-face interviews; now many states have online applications.

The Affordable Care Act should also help preserve these gains going forward, said Joan Alker, co-executive director of the Georgetown University research center.

"We will move to a culture of coverage. The presumption is everyone has insurance," she said. "Families will feel there's an option out there for them."

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear arguments challenging the constitutionality of the historic health care overhaul next year.

Florida led the nation in reducing the number of uninsured children, in part because the state's Medicaid rolls swelled as the economy soured. But legislation passed in 2009 has also simplified the process and reduced penalties for those who don't pay premiums.

South Carolina is trying to make it easier for low-income children who already qualify for health care coverage to enroll in Medicaid. The state's Medicaid director is requesting an additional $35 million from the state for next year's budget. Nearly $30 million of that would pay to add an estimated 70,000 children to Medicaid rolls by streamlining the application process.

While Tuesday's report is promising, experts worry that increased enrollment may be difficult to sustain as state lawmakers slash budgets, especially for big-ticket expenses such as health care.

"These gains are fragile and could quickly be reversed if state or federal support erodes," Alker said.

More than 128,000 children are on the waiting list in Arizona after officials froze their KidsCare program enrollment in 2010 to help balance the state budget. The program now has approximately 15,000 children — down from 45,820. The state recently submitted a two-year plan for federal approval that would allow enrollment of 19,000 children now on a waiting list.

Still, Arizona was able to drop from 258,339 uninsured children in 2008 to 207,967 in 2010, according to the report.

Wisconsin state officials are looking to move 215,000 Medicaid-eligible children into a stripped-down version of the program with reduced benefits.

Texas also decreased the number of uninsured children, but some health advocates fear major state cuts to address that state's massive budget crisis. In 2003, when the state was facing a smaller shortfall, more than 200,000 children were kicked off of the Children's Health Insurance Program.

Minnesota saw the largest increase in uninsured children, jumping from 72,493 in 2008 to 84,165 in 2010, according to the report.

For years, Minnesota has operated under a federal waiver that differed from other states. The waiver said that children eligible for the state's insurance program were not also eligible for the federal program, meaning the state lost out on enhanced matching funds. In the past several years, the state has made cuts. For example, the program used to allow children born on Medicaid to remain on the program until age 2 regardless of circumstances. Now a child can remain until age 1, Berglin said.

The state has attempted improvements such as creating gap coverage between Medicaid and Minnesota care, but the federal government didn't sign off, she said.

"Doing the things that other states have done is more costly for Minnesota," said former Minnesota Sen. Linda Berglin, a longtime champion of health care services. "It makes me sad. Obviously I believe having all children insured is a goal we should be striving for. If we are going to implement federal reform that will take care of a lot of the problem."

WISE Finds Fewer Asteroids

NASA Space Telescope Finds Fewer Asteroids Near Earth

NEOWISE observations indicate that there are at least 40 percent fewer near-Earth asteroids in total that are larger than 330 feet, or 100 meters. Our solar system's four inner planets are shown in green, and our sun is in the center. Each red dot represents one asteroid. Object sizes are not to scale. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech, Click To Enlarge

PASADENA, California -- New observations by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, show there are significantly fewer near-Earth asteroids in the mid-size range than previously thought. The findings also indicate NASA has found more than 90 percent of the largest near-Earth asteroids, meeting a goal agreed to with Congress in 1998.

Astronomers now estimate there are roughly 19,500 -- not 35,000 -- mid-size near-Earth asteroids. Scientists say this improved understanding of the population may indicate the hazard to Earth could be somewhat less than previously thought. However, the majority of these mid-size asteroids remain to be discovered. More research also is needed to determine if fewer mid-size objects (between 330 and 3,300-feet wide) also mean fewer potentially hazardous asteroids, those that come closest to Earth.

The results come from the most accurate census to date of near-Earth asteroids, the space rocks that orbit within 120 million miles (195 million kilometers) of the sun into Earth's orbital vicinity. WISE observed infrared light from those in the middle to large-size category. The survey project, called NEOWISE, is the asteroid-hunting portion of the WISE mission. Study results appear in the Astrophysical Journal.

"NEOWISE allowed us to take a look at a more representative slice of the near-Earth asteroid numbers and make better estimates about the whole population," said Amy Mainzer, lead author of the new study and principal investigator for the NEOWISE project at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "It's like a population census, where you poll a small group of people to draw conclusions about the entire country."

WISE scanned the entire celestial sky twice in infrared light between January 2010 and February 2011, continuously snapping pictures of everything from distant galaxies to near-Earth asteroids and comets. NEOWISE observed more than 100 thousand asteroids in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter, in addition to at least 585 near Earth.

WISE captured a more accurate sample of the asteroid population than previous visible-light surveys because its infrared detectors could see both dark and light objects. It is difficult for visible-light telescopes to see the dim amounts of visible-light reflected by dark asteroids. Infrared-sensing telescopes detect an object's heat, which is dependent on size and not reflective properties.

Though the WISE data reveal only a small decline in the estimated numbers for the largest near-Earth asteroids, which are 3,300 feet (1 kilometer) and larger, they show 93 percent of the estimated population have been found. This fulfills the initial "Spaceguard" goal agreed to with Congress. These large asteroids are about the size of a small mountain and would have global consequences if they were to strike Earth. The new data revise their total numbers from about 1,000 down to 981, of which 911 already have been found. None of them represents a threat to Earth in the next few centuries. It is believed that all near-Earth asteroids approximately 6 miles (10 kilometers) across, as big as the one thought to have wiped out the dinosaurs, have been found.

"The risk of a really large asteroid impacting the Earth before we could find and warn of it has been substantially reduced," said Tim Spahr, the director of the Minor Planet Center at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass.

The situation is different for the mid-size asteroids, which could destroy a metropolitan area if they were to impact in the wrong place. The NEOWISE results find a larger decline in the estimated population for these bodies than what was observed for the largest asteroids. So far, the Spaceguard effort has found and is tracking more than 5,200 near-Earth asteroids 330 feet or larger, leaving more than an estimated 15,000 still to discover. In addition, scientists estimate there are more than a million unknown smaller near-Earth asteroids that could cause damage if they were to impact Earth.

"NEOWISE was just the latest asset NASA has used to find Earth's nearest neighbors," said Lindley Johnson, program executive for the Near Earth Object Observation Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "The results complement ground-based observer efforts over the past 12 years. These observers continue to track these objects and find even more."

WISE is managed and operated by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The principal investigator, Edward Wright, is at the University of California, Los Angeles. The WISE science instrument was built by the Space Dynamics Laboratory in Logan, Utah, and the spacecraft was built by Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo. Science operations and data processing occur at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology.

This chart shows how data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, has led to revisions in the estimated population of near-Earth asteroids. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech, Click To Enlarge

This chart illustrates how infrared is used to more accurately determine an asteroid's size. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech, Click To Enlarge

This chart illustrates why infrared-sensing telescopes are more suited to finding small, dark asteroids than telescopes that detect visible light. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech, Click To Enlarge

For more information about the mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/wise.