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They all have had breast cancer — a disease that strikes fewer than 2,000 men in the United States a year, compared with about 200,000 women. Each has had part of his chest removed as part of his treatment, along with chemotherapy, radiation or both.

And they blame their time at Camp Lejeune, where government records show drinking water was contaminated with high levels of toxic chemicals for three decades, for their illnesses.

“We come from all walks of life,” said Mike Partain, the son and grandson of Marines, who was born on the base 40 years ago. “And some of us have college degrees, some of us have blue-collar jobs. We are all over the country. And what is our commonality? Our commonality is that we all at some point in our lives drank the water at Camp Lejeune. Go figure.”

Starting in 1980, tests showed drinking water at Camp Lejeune had been “highly contaminated” with solvents. Several wells that supplied water to the base were found to have been contaminated in 1984 and 1985, and were promptly taken out of service after the pollutants were found, the Marine Corps told CNN.

Among the chemicals later identified in the drinking water were trichloroethylene, a degreaser; benzene; and the dry cleaning solvent perchloroethylene. Two independent studies have found no link between water contamination and later illnesses, according to the Marine Corps. But the men facing a debilitating and possibly lethal disease don’t buy it.

Hosam Maher Husein Smadi was arrested Thursday after he parked a vehicle laden with government-supplied fake explosives in the underground parking garage of Fountain Place, a 60-story tower in the 1400 block of Ross Avenue at North Field Street, authorities said.

The arrest was part of an FBI sting operation that began after an agent monitoring an online extremist Web site discovered Smadi espousing jihad against the U.S. more than six months ago.

As more undercover Arabic-speaking agents engaged him, Smadi, living illegally in the U.S. in the small town of Italy, about 45 miles south of Dallas, pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden and expressed a desire to kill Americans, authorities said.

In conversations with agents posing as members of an al-Qaeda sleeper cell, Smadi said he came to the U.S. to wage jihad, or holy war. He told agents he wanted to target military recruitment centers, but eventually settled on financial institutions.

“I want to destroy … targets … everything that helps America on its war on Arabs will be targeted,” he told undercover agents in May.

The sting culminated in Thursday’s arrest after Smadi parked a 2001 Ford Explorer Sport Trac, supplied by the FBI, in the garage of the emerald-green glass office tower that is home to many businesses, including a Wells Fargo Home Mortgage office.

Inside the SUV was a fake bomb, designed to appear similar to one used by Timothy McVeigh in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. Authorities say Smadi thought he could detonate it with a cellphone. After parking the vehicle, he got into another vehicle with one of the agents, and they drove several blocks away.

“This is some evidence that has been floated. It hasn’t been validated yet, it’s very preliminary,” cautioned Dr. Don Low, microbiologist-in-chief at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto.

“This is obviously important data to help guide policy decisions. How can we best protect people against influenza?”

It’s important to validate the information, which has not been peer reviewed, to make sure it’s not just a fluke, and that the observation is confirmed elsewhere such as in the Southern Hemisphere, which just completed its seasonal flu season, or in the U.S. and UK.

Sure, you could say all of us do this to some extent. We save digital pictures from family events and keep tons of e-mail.

But Bell, who is 75 years old, takes the idea of digital memory to a sci-fi-esque extreme. He carries around video equipment, cameras and audio recorders to capture his conversations, commutes, trips and experiences. Microsoft is working on a SenseCam that would hang around a person’s neck and automatically capture every detail of life in photo form. Bell has given that a whirl. He also saves everything — from restaurant receipts (he take pictures of them) to correspondence, bills and medical records. He makes PDF files out of every Web page he views.

In sum, this mountain of data — more than 350 gigabytes worth, not including the streaming audio and video — is a replica of Bell’s biological memory. It’s actually better, he says, because, if you back up your data in enough places, this digitized “e-memory” never forgets. It’s like having a multimedia transcript of your life.

Sonic weapons or long-range acoustic devices have been used by the US military overseas, notably against Somali pirates and Iraqi insurgents.

But US security forces turned the piercing sound on their own citizens yesterday to widespread outrage. Pittsburgh officials told the New York Times that it was the first time “sound cannon” had been used publicly.

The sonic weapon appear to be more effective than the Metropolitan police’s highly contentious kettling tactics used against G20 protesters in London. But it is equally controversial.

Also, the G-20 heads of state will announce on Friday that the G-20 will become the permanent council for international economic cooperation, eclipsing the Group of Eight, a senior U.S. administration official said.

“It’s a reflection of the world today,” the official said Thursday night. “It’s basically pulling international cooperation into the 21st century.”

The G-8 will continue to meet on matters important to the most-developed economies, such as international security issues. But those meetings will come as world leaders converge for other events, not in major summits.

The initiative was pressed by U.S. President Barack Obama, but it satisfied the demands on Brazil, China, India and other large developing countries, which have bristled at being left out of G-8 conclaves.

Under the G-20’s proposal aimed at improving coordination of global economic policymaking, the world would reduce its reliance on U.S. consumers. The Chinese would boost domestic demand, the U.S. would trim its borrowing from overseas, and the Europeans would encourage investment, said a number of G-20 officials involved in the talks.

The scope and effectiveness of the agreement — which was expected to be signed off on by G-20 leaders on Friday — will depend on whether and how it is enforced. The potential agreement envisions a procedure where G-20 countries assess whether each others’ policies are working, and the International Monetary Fund provides technical help. Not included are any enforcement mechanisms such as sanctions or other penalties.

Now that the authority is law, how has the Department of Justice used the new power? To go after drug dealers.

Only three of the 763 “sneak-and-peek” requests in fiscal year 2008 involved terrorism cases, according to a July 2009 report from the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. Sixty-five percent were drug cases.

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) quizzed Assistant Attorney General David Kris about the discrepancy at a hearing on the PATRIOT Act Wednesday. One might expect Kris to argue that there is a connection between drug trafficking and terrorism or that the administration is otherwise justified to use the authority by virtue of some other connection to terrorism.

“It’s almost Armageddon if the Japanese and Chinese don’t buy our debt,” Robertson said in an interview. “I don’t know where we could get the money. I think we’ve let ourselves get in a terrible situation and I think we ought to try and get out of it.”

Robertson said inflation is a big risk if foreign countries were to stop buying bonds.

“If the Chinese and Japanese stop buying our bonds, we could easily see [inflation] go to 15 to 20 percent,” he said. “It’s not a question of the economy. It’s a question of who will lend us the money if they don’t. Imagine us getting ourselves in a situation where we’re totally dependent on those two countries. It’s crazy.”

Robertson said while he doesn’t think the Chinese will stop buying US bonds, the Japanese may eventually be forced to sell some of their long-term bonds.