Over a decade ago, George W. Bush’s presidency attracted plenty of attention for charges that it had all-too-often mistreated scientific information. By the middle Bush years, reports were rampant that the administration had presented inaccurate or incomplete information on issues such as climate change and stem cell research, edited scientific reports to skew their contents, or had prevented scientists on the government payroll from speaking with the media about their findings and knowledge.

These problems didn’t appear immediately — they snowballed over the course of the Bush administration. By contrast, in the Trump administration, concerns about the treatment of science have emerged in just days, especially at the Environmental Protection Agency.

Trump administration officials are exerting more control over the agency’s outward communications, according to multiple reports, including those by the Washington Post. Scientists have been alarmed by these moves, as well as the overall tenor of the administration on scientific issues like climate change (Trump has not yet appointed a White House science adviser) and some are even now planning a march on Washington, D.C.

Yet we shouldn’t get too far ahead of ourselves here. There has been no specific claim of an Environmental Protection Agency scientist being prevented from communicating or accurately conveying information to the public (yet). There is also reason to think that what’s happening now may only be temporary, and attributable to the transition that’s currently happening, rather than representing a permanent new setting for the science-politics relationship in government.
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Tehran, 4 Dec. (AKI) - Iran's top female race car driver, Laleh Seddigh, has been banned from competing in Iran for one year by the Iranian racing federation.

Seddigh, who is known as the "Schumacher of the East" after the German Formula One champion, was accused of having tampered with her car's engine during her last race in Iran.

"It's a conspiracy," said Seddigh in an interview with Adnkronos International (AKI). "I did not commit any irregularities. They simply want to exclude me from racing because I'm a woman," she said.

"I changed the car before the start of the race because it was faulty and gave the federation lots of notice," Seddigh told AKI.
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The Kremlin may have covered up the murder of a former KGB chief accused of helping ex-MI6 spy Christopher Steele to pull together the notorious dossier on Donald Trump.



Oleg Erovinkin served as a general in the KGB and was found dead on Boxing Day in the back of his car in Moscow.

It has been claimed he died of a heart attack, but an expert on Russian security threats believes he was murdered for his role in the explosive dossier.

The suspected murder victim was close to former deputy prime minister Igor Sechin, who is named throughout the leaked memo, according to the Telegraph.
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