Overexposed: Imaging tests boost U.S. radiation dose | Reuters

Americans are exposed to seven times more radiation from diagnostic scans than in 1980, a report found on Tuesday as experts said doctors are overusing the tests for profit and raising health risks for patients.

The findings, issued by National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurement, add to already mounting evidence that doctors are ordering too many diagnostic tests, driving up the cost of healthcare in the United States and potentially harming patients.

While diagnostic scans give doctors valuable information and many times are necessary, doctors fear too much radiation exposure can cause cancer, especially in younger people.

A collision between U.S. and Russian satellites in early February may have been a test of new U.S. technology to intercept and destroy satellites rather than an accident, a Russian military expert has said.

According to official reports, one of 66 satellites owned by Iridium, a U.S. telecoms company, and the Russian Cosmos-2251 satellite, launched in 1993 and believed to be defunct, collided on February 10 about 800 kilometers 500 miles above Siberia.

However, Maj. Gen. Ret. Leonid Shershnev, a former head of Russias military space intelligence, said in an interview published by the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper on Tuesday that the U.S. satellite involved in the collision was used by the U.S. military as part of the “dual-purpose” Orbital Express research project, which began in 2007.

Interesting article but could it actually be disinformation intended to obscure the fact that this was a Russian search-and-destroy mission. Why would anyone use an Iridium bird? And which country would be more irked about a satellite over Siberia?

Found by Joe Carlson.

FOXNews.com – Russian Scholar Says U.S. Will Collapse Next Year — Yeah, right.

If you’re inclined to believe Igor Panarin, and the Kremlin wouldn’t mind if you did, then President Barack Obama will order martial law this year, the U.S. will split into six rump-states before 2011, and Russia and China will become the backbones of a new world order.

Panarin might be easy to ignore but for the fact that he is a dean at the Foreign Ministry’s school for future diplomats and a regular on Russia’s state-guided TV channels. And his predictions fit into the anti-American story line of the Kremlin leadership.

“There is a high probability that the collapse of the United States will occur by 2010,” Panarin told dozens of students, professors and diplomats Tuesday at the Diplomatic Academy — a lecture the ministry pointedly invited The Associated Press and other foreign media to attend.

The prediction from Panarin, a former spokesman for Russia’s Federal Space Agency and reportedly an ex-KGB analyst, meshes with the negative view of the U.S. that has been flowing from the Kremlin in recent years, in particular from Vladimir Putin.

Putin, the former president who is now prime minister, has likened the United States to Nazi Germany’s Third Reich and blames Washington for the global financial crisis that has pounded the Russian economy.

So what is a “rump state” anyway? The guy, in the article, says he bases this on newspapers and magazines he has been reading. Interesting messages from our media, no?

Found by GP1477 on Twitter.

The Church of Reality just received a scheduling order from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals challenging the final decision of the DEA denying the Church of Reality, a religion based on believing in everything that is real, its application to get a religious exemption for use of Marijuana by church members.

Jacksonville police say Reginald Peterson needs to learn that 911 is not the appropriate place to complain that Subway left the sauce off a spicy Italian sandwich.

Police said the 42-year-old man dialed 911 twice last week so he could have his sub made correctly. The second call was to complain that officers weren’t arriving fast enough.

Found by Jeffrey Fluckiger.