Climate Change

Earth Day is the one day where you have a chance to help the environment, right? Actually, you can help the environment any day of the year, by recycling paper, glass, metal and plastic bottles, by planting new trees and shrubs and by conserving your electricity and water. Planting trees helps prevent global climate change, but it also conserves energy by providing a windbreak in the winter and shade in the summer. The Arbor Day Foundation Web site (www.arborday.org) is a good source of information on the benefits of planting trees.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A U.S. congressional advisory panel said Thursday that Chinese spies are aggressively stealing American secrets to use in building Beijing's military and economic strength. The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission also said in its annual report to lawmakers that Beijing is building a navy that could block the U.S. military from getting to the region if fighting should break out between China and Taiwan, the self-governing island off China's southeastern coast that China claims as its own. The report follows President Barack Obama's visit this week to China, where he had extensive talks with President Hu Jintao.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Robert Byrd, the longest serving senator in history, returned to the chamber Tuesday after being absent for more than two months due to illness. The 91-year-old West Virginia Democrat, in a now-familiar wheelchair, cast his first vote since May on an amendment to a key defense policy bill. Byrd was first elected to the Senate in 1958, and in 2006 was re-elected for a record ninth six-year term. Last November he stepped down as chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, but he remains the Senate's president pro tempore, a largely symbolic post reserved for the longest-serving member of the Senate's majority party.

"Texting while driving has risen to new heights. Yesterday I passed a young man on a moped, driving on the shoulder where there were still patches of snow and ice. Nothing wrong with this — except he didn't have any hands on the bike. Instead, he was using both hands to text. This is not the first time I've seen someone texting while driving. I don't care what they are driving; car, moped, or bike — people should be smart enough to know that their attention needs to be on the road and their surroundings.

HAGERSTOWN -- Holding signs such as "STOP spending," "No government health care" and "I want my country back," a group of about 50 protesters from throughout the Tri-State area gathered Saturday afternoon in Hagerstown's Public Square, despite cold and rainy weather, to protest what they see as excessive government spending, taxation and control over people's lives. The demonstration was one of about 100 such events organized in cities throughout the country Saturday as part of Operation: Can You Hear Us Now?

HAGERSTOWN - For one St. Maria Goretti graduate, lobbying and taxes are close to a certainty. Anna Binau, a 21-year-old Hagerstown native, is plotting a future in fields that combine her passions - accounting and politics. As an intern at the American Iron and Steel Institute, the St. Mary's College junior said she is observing government from the perspective of a lobbyist group. "They help to actually push along a cause. They expose a congressman to a cause and provide (him)

In an America notable for its faith, there is still plenty of disbelief to go around. The novelist Michael Crichton, who died recently, went to his grave disbelieving in global warming. In one of his last books Crichton argued that the science supporting climate change was shaky and that we would only be saddling future generations with huge debts to solve an environmental problem that might not exist. The president of Iran famously disbelieves in the Holocaust, a skepticism that is prompted by his antagonism toward Israel.

What will Hagerstown be like in 30 years? Will you still live here? What about the climate? How warm will it be? Some like it hot. Do you? More and more scientists and political leaders around the world agree that global warming is a growing concern. The Pew Center on Global Climate Change, at www.pewclimate.org, reports a rise in Earth's overall surface temperature of 1.4 degrees. The warmest year on record is 2005, and the warmest decade since the Civil War was the 1990s.

Plant for the future To the editor: What a wonderful idea to put trees in the Waynesboro (Pa.) Rotary parking lot. Don't we humans breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide? Then, as I understand it, trees and plants in the presence of chlorophyll and sunlight change the carbon dioxide back into oxygen and water. Now, with our ever- increasing population and the pollution from cars and factories, we have global climate change. In this area we have not had a bad summer, but all over the world there seem to have been disasters.

MARTINSBURG, W.VA. The meeting started with a discussion about the Children's Health Insurance Program, but it turned into a debate about everything that is wrong with health care. And the country. U.S. Sen. Jay Rockefeller visited the Shenandoah Community Health Center on Tavern Road Thursday afternoon to talk about the reauthorization of the Children's Health Insurance Program, which the Democratic congressman helped put together in 1997 to give health care to low-income children.