Jim Brinling's List: Headlines February 17 to the 20th

• $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009
• • It is good to see a bill finally passed. This may not have been the best model to begin bipartisanship.
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• The bill got 60 votes -- the minimum it needed to pass. Three Republicans --  Sens. Susan Collins, R-Me., Arlen Specter, R-Pa., and Olympia Snowe, R-Me. --  voted for it.
• transformational for the nation," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif
• "the largest change in domestic policy since the 1930s."
• Republican critics believe there are more targeted and effective ways to create  jobs than the measures in the bill, including more spending on infrastructure  and more tax relief.
• Democrats have also countered the Republicans' debt argument by noting that  record deficit levels were achieved as a result of borrowing to pay for the cost  of the Iraq war and to finance a series of tax cuts -- both decisions made  during a Republican administration.
• 39% -- to appropriations spending
• 34% -- on direct spending
• 27% -- for tax breaks for individuals and businesses

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• Two big communications satellites collided in the first  crash of two intact spacecraft in orbit, shooting out a pair of massive debris  clouds and posing a slight risk to the international space station.
  
• NASA believes any risk to the space station and its three  astronauts is low. It orbits about 270 miles below the collision course. There  also should be no danger to the space shuttle set to launch with seven  astronauts on Feb. 22, officials said
• The collision involved an Iridium commercial satellite,  which was launched in 1997, and a Russian satellite launched in 1993 and  believed to be nonfunctioning.
  
  The Iridium  craft weighed 1,235 pounds, and the Russian craft nearly 2,000  pounds.
  

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• The global economic situation is so serious that the head of U.S. intelligence  agencies now says it has surpassed terrorism as the top threat to national  security.
• National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair's dramatic  report last week — that the economic crisis is now the United States' top  "near-term security concern" — caught some members of Congress by surprise.

• The global economic downturn could easily change the world. Previously stable  countries could become unstable.  The geopolitical lineup could shift sharply, some countries becoming more  powerful while others get weaker. Allies could turn into adversaries.
• One possibility is that unemployment could get so bad in some countries that  there will be civil unrest.

• The key factor there is the duration. Gordon agrees that a long recession  would be hard for countries to manage.

• Throughout history, wars have often been preceded by serious economic crises.  World War II followed the Great Depression, for instance.
• The steps that most need to be taken, the panel agreed, are the ones that are  probably most difficult politically: Troubled U.S. banks, they all said, need to  be nationalized
• The United States should lead the way in resisting protectionist pressures
• And governments around the world need to work together (the opposite has  happened).

  • This is why the "buy american" clause in the stimulus law, might benefit NUCOR steel but hurt the overall economy.
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• Some analysts even say the world is going through a period of deglobalization  after years of increasing economic integration. That's a trend that could  aggravate international tensions.

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• Kanzius seemed an unlikely person to invent a possible cure for  cancer.
  
• He worked for many years as a radio engineer, first for RCA,  then for WJET-TV. But it was his background designing and fixing radio  transmitters that led to his invention.
  
• Doctors had diagnosed him in 2002 with chronic lymphocytic  leukemia, a rare cancer. He was undergoing chemotherapy when he began thinking  about using radio waves to burn cancer cells.
  
• "I remembered how I could stand next to a 50,000-watt  transmitter and not feel a thing," Kanzius said in 2004. "But if I held a penny  or something metal in my hand, I would instantly get burned."
  
• It took a couple of years, but he convinced Curley and other  researchers at M.D. Anderson and UPMC that perhaps they could target cancer  cells with tiny pieces of metal, then heat them with radio waves emitted from  outside the body.
  
  
  The cancer cells would be  destroyed, but no healthy tissue would get burned.
  
• Kanzius often said that he wanted to keep as much of his  invention's business in Erie as he could.
  
  
  He  told Jim Dible, president of the Erie Regional Chamber and Growth Partnership,  that it was his wish that Erie play a major role in both the human trials and  the development and manufacture of the devices.
  

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• Orchard Park police are investigating a particularly gruesome killing, the  beheading of a woman, after her husband — an influential member of the local  Muslim community
• Muzzammil Hassan told police that his wife was at his business, Bridges TV, on  Thorn Avenue in the village. Officers went to that location and discovered her  body.

• Thousands of miles south of here, on the island nation of  the Dominican Republic, a newborn boy's blood contains the critical piece of  evidence in a rape investigation that originated on Erie's east side.
  
• The results of the DNA testing will dictate the course of  the case. A test that shows DiNicola is the father would debilitate the defense  and almost certainly lead to a conviction.
  

• Influenza cases rose sharply in Erie County for the second  straight week.
• Eighty-three of Erie County's 104 flu cases so far this  season have been reported in the last two weeks.