Citizen Cartwright

Former Obama aides 'cash in on experience'

Here's a news story that's a hardy perennial: people coming to Washington to do good and staying to do well.

Or, as a friend who was a former chief of staff for a senior member of Congress put it, outside groups "will pay us a lot of money for what we know."

So President Obama, who promised that his administration would be highly ethical, put in place rules prohibiting his former aides from directly lobbying the government for two years.

But those efforts "have done little to slow a tide of groups hiring former top aides as highly paid consultants, speakers and media advisers in an effort to influence the administration," says The Washington Post.

On the lam: That escaped biotech wheat

The "mysterious appearance" of experimental, unapproved genetically engineered wheat plants on a farm in Oregon is the latest in "a score of episodes in which biotech crops have eluded efforts to segregate them from conventional varieties," Reuters reports.

But it's the first time that a test strain of wheat, which has no genetically modified varieties on the market, has escaped the protocols set up by regulators to control it, says Reuters.

The wheat was developed years ago by Monsanto to tolerate its Roundup herbicide, but the world's biggest seed company abandoned the project and ended all field trials in 2004.

Japan already is canceling a major shipment of wheat because of the Oregon disclosure — a big concern for the $8 billion U.S. wheat export business.

Developers of biotech crops say testing shows they're safe for humans, animals and the environment.

And farmers like Roundup Ready corn, soybeans and other crops; the genetic changes enable the crops to survive the use of Roundup to kill weeds.

But keeping conventional crops from being contaminated by genetically modified ones is an ongoing challenge.

Good press, bad press for James Comey

Comey's expected nomination to head the FBI has generated some headlines that he must find gratifying:

"Widely praised," says The Associated Press.

"Independent, principled," says USA Today.

"Levelheaded," says the Los Angeles Times.

Yet on Thursday the American Civil Liberties Union became the second civil liberties group to raise questions about Comey’s work in the Bush administration on post-9/11 anti-terrorism tactics, such as warantless surveillance and tough interrogations.

Comey “approved some of the worst abuses committed by the Bush administration,’’ the ACLU said in a statement accusing Comey of signing off on “enhanced interrogation techniques that constitute torture, including waterboarding.’’

Concerns about blood pressure, diabetes drugs

Bucking his bosses at the Food and Drug Administration, senior regulator Thomas Marciniak is seeking stronger warnings about blood pressure drugs known as angiotensin receptor blockers, or ARBs, according to internal documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The drugs, taken by millions of people and generating $7.6 billion in U.S. sales in 2012, may be linked to higher cancer rates, Marciniak says.

Meanwhile, Dr. Peter Butler, head of endocrinology at UCLA and a former editor of Diabetes, the American Diabetes Association journal, has raised cancer concerns about diabetes drugs such as Januvia, which have sales of more than $9 billion a year and are used by hundreds of thousands of people with Type 2 diabetes.

Also in the news

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Promising African development fund financed by USAID collapses

Cyberthreats pose 'stealthy, insidious' danger, Hagel says

New rules may rein in prosecutors in leak probes

Americans have rebuilt less than half the wealth lost to the recession, study finds

Federal program for distressed homeowners is being extended

Tea Party groups mobilizing against Common Core education standards

Activist cancels planned July 4 armed march on D.C., targets state capitals instead

Banks improving on fee disclosure, but more rules are needed, Pew says

Immunotherapy isn't just for melanoma anymore

Quit-smoking treatments are safe and effective, review finds

Tax breaks benefit the wealthy most

That's the word from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

The top 10 major tax breaks "are distributed unevenly across the income scale," and the top 1 percent of households — those taking in more than $450,000 annually — are getting more than 17 percent of the savings this year, CBO says.

Lawsuit filed over IRS targeting

The American Center for Law and Justice, a conservative watchdog group, filed a lawsuit Wednesday on behalf of 25 Tea Party groups against the Internal Revenue Service and Obama administration officials.

The complaint alleges that the Obama administration overstepped its authority and violated the First and Fifth amendments to the Constitution.

The suit is the latest legal challenge against the IRS’ admitted practice of targeting groups with “Tea Party” or “patriot” in their names.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed a suit last week in federal district court asking that the IRS clarify its rules on tax-exempt nonprofits.

No link between ADHD meds, drug use

Medications like Adderall and Ritalin have no effect one way or the other on whether children abuse alcohol, marijuana, nicotine or cocaine later in life, according to an analysis published Wednesday by the American Medical Association.

A 2003 study in the journal Pediatrics had concluded that the introduction of stimulant medication to children with ADHD — attention deficit hyperactivity disorder — reduced the risk of such abuse later.

That finding has been repeated by doctors and pharmaceutical companies to ease parents’ concerns about putting their children on the medication.

Asteroid miners' creative ideas

So a privately owned company backed in part by Google's founders plans to build telescopes to hunt for asteroids orbiting near the Earth and robotic spacecraft to mine them for precious metals, water and other materials.

And the company, called Planetary Resources, is raising money on Kickstarter — a website used to raise funds for creative projects — to "make space exploration accessible to everyone."

If you pledge $25, you can send a picture to be displayed like a billboard on the side of a telescope, with the Earth showing in the background. A picture of your picture on the satellite will then be sent back to you.

If you find this as confusing as I did, you may want to take a look at this sample picture.

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U.S. drone kills Pakistan Taliban number two leader, security officials say

Smithfield Foods purchase is China’s most significant takeover of a U.S. consumer brand

Ex-Bush official James Comey expected to be Obama’s nominee to head FBI

Nasdaq fined $10 million over mishandled Facebook public offering

R.I. Gov. Lincoln Chafee, a Republican-turned-independent, is becoming a Democrat

Letters threatening New York Mayor Bloomberg test positive for ricin

10 state universities to affiliate with online education provider Coursera

New packages lower cost of overseas travel with a cellphone

Study: Immigrants paying more in Medicare taxes than they're getting back in services

Decontaminating every patient in intensive care cuts hospital infections, study finds

High doses of common painkillers up heart attack risks, researchers say