Bush Surgeon General Nominee (and Methodist Renewal Leader) Charged with Conflicts of Interest - Talk2Action.org
Frederick Clarkson |
| George Bush's nominee for Surgeon General has drawn a lot of heat for among other things, his crack-pot anti-gay views as a leader in the United Methodist affiliate of the Institute on Religion and Democracy. But a new report may finally sink his already controversial nomination in a sea of conflicts of interest that have marked his career. |
Dr. James Holsinger has also been a longtime leader of the Confessing Movement in the United Methodist Church. The Confessing Movement is a rightwing "renewal group" affiliated with the Washington, DC-based Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD), whose purpose for a generation has been to divide and disrupt the historic churchs of mainline protestantism in the interests of advancing neoconservatism and the religious right.
Holsinger was elected to the highest court in the Methodist Church a time when the IRD-affiliated church "renewal" groups had launched efforts to use church judicial systems to enforce their notions of orthodoxy, particularly on matters related to homosexuality.
Now, an investigation Rev. Andrew J. Weaver, Ph.D. and Lawrence H. McGaughey, Esq., and published at Media Transparency, shows that Holsinger used the sale of a United Methodist Church-owned hospital in Kentucky, as a cash cow for his personal ambitions. It took years of litigation by the church to find out what had happened to its money, only to learn that Holsinger had diverted millions to endow professorships at the Chandler Medical Center at the University of Kentucky where he served as Chancellor and fundraiser-in-chief.
Meanwhile, Weaver and McGaughy report Holsinger did not disclose to his fellow church justices that he he was party to significant litigation against the church in the state courts -- and thereby surface any potential conflicts of interest. The litigation cost the United Methodist Church (UMC) millions of dollars in legal fees to recover its assets. The article also raises questions about how those assets (that were not given away) were managed while under the control of Dr. Holsinger and his associates, some of whom apparently also had conflicts of interest. |
Published: Aug. 31, 2007
Posted: Sep. 02, 2007 |
|
Safety Agency Faces Scrutiny Amid Changes - NY Times
ERIC LIPTON |
| In March 2005, the Consumer Product Safety Commission called together the nation's top safety experts to confront an alarming statistic: 44,000 children riding all terrain vehicles were injured the previous year, nearly 150 of them fatally. |
National associations of pediatricians, consumer advocates and emergency room doctors were urging the commission to ban sales of adult-size A.T.V.'s for use by children under 16 because the machines were too big and fast for young drivers to control. But when it came time to consider such a step, a staff member whose name did not appear on the meeting agenda unexpectedly weighed in.
"My own view is the situation is not necessarily deteriorating," said John Gibson Mullan, the agency's director of compliance and a former lawyer for the A.T.V. industry, according to a recording. The current system of warning labels and other voluntary safety standards was working, he said. "We would need to be very careful about making any changes."
Robin L. Ingle, then the agency's hazard statistician and A.T.V. injury expert, was dumbfounded. Her months of research did not support Mr. Mullan's analysis. Yet she would not get to offer a rebuttal.
"He had hijacked the presentation," Ms. Ingle said in an interview. "He was distorting the numbers in order to benefit industry and defeat the petition. It was almost like he still worked for them, not us."
Under the Bush administration, which promised to ease what it viewed as costly rules that placed unnecessary burdens on businesses, industry-friendly officials have been installed at agencies that oversee the nation's workplaces, food suppliers, environment and consumer goods. |
Published: Sep. 02, 2007
Posted: Sep. 02, 2007 |
|
U.S. Military Censors ThinkProgress - Think Progress
|
| ThinkProgress is now banned from the U.S. military network in Baghdad. |
Recently, an avid ThinkProgress reader — a U.S. soldier serving his second tour in Iraq — wrote to us and said that he can no longer access ThinkProgress.org.
The ban began sometime shortly after Aug. 22, when Ret. Maj. Gen. John Batiste was our guest blogger on ThinkProgress. He posted an op-ed that was strongly critical of the President’s policies and advocated a “responsible and deliberate redeployment from Iraq.” Previously, both the Wall Street Journal and Washington Times had rejected the piece. An excerpt:
It is disappointing that so many elected representatives of my [Republican] party continue to blindly support the administration rather than doing what is in the best interests of our country. Traditionally, my party has maintained a conservative view on questions regarding our Armed Forces. For example, we commit our military only when absolutely necessary. […]
The only way to stabilize Iraq and allow our military to rearm and refit for the long fight ahead is to begin a responsible and deliberate redeployment from Iraq and replace the troops with far less expensive and much more effective resources–those of diplomacy and the critical work of political reconciliation and economic recovery. In other words, when it comes to Iraq, it’s time for conservatives to once again be conservative.
Not surprisingly, both the National Review and Fox News are still accessible. |
Published: Aug. 31, 2007
Posted: Sep. 02, 2007 |
|
Is George Bush Restarting Latin America's 'Dirty Wars'? - AlterNet
Benjamin Dangl |
|
Two soldiers in Paraguay stand in front of a camera. One of them holds an automatic weapon. John Lennon's "Imagine" plays in the background. This Orwellian juxtaposition of war and peace is from a new video posted online by U.S. soldiers stationed in Paraguay. The video footage and other military activity in this heart of the continent represent a new wave of U.S.-backed militarism in Latin America.
It's a reprise of a familiar tune. In the 1970s and 1980s, Paraguay's longtime dictator, Gen. Alfredo Stroessner, collaborated with the region's other dictators through Operation Condor, which used kidnapping, torture and murder to squash dissent and political opponents. Stroessner's human rights record was so bad that even Ronald Reagan distanced himself from the leader. Carrying on this infamous legacy, Paraguay now illustrates four new characteristics of Latin America's right-wing militarism: joint exercises with the U.S. military in counterinsurgency training, monitoring potential dissidents and social organizations, the use of private mercenaries for security and the criminalization of social protest through "anti-terrorism" tactics and legislation.
In May of 2005, the Paraguayan Senate voted to allow U.S. troops to operate in Paraguay with total immunity. Washington had threatened to cut off millions in aid to the country if Paraguay did not grant the U.S. troops entry. In July of 2005 hundreds of U.S. soldiers arrived in the country, and Washington's funding for counterterrorism efforts in Paraguay doubled. The U.S. troops conducted various operations and joint training exercises with Paraguayan forces, including so-called Medical Readiness Training Exercises (MEDRETEs). Orlando Castillo, a military policy expert at the human rights rights organization Servicio, Paz y Justicia in Asunción, Paraguay, says the MEDRETEs were "observation" operations aimed at developing "a type of map that identifies not just the natural resources in the area, but also the social organizations and leaders of different communities." |
Published: Aug. 31, 2007
Posted: Sep. 02, 2007 |
|
More than 1,800 Iraqis killed in August - Yahoo! News
ROBERT H. REID |
| Civilian deaths rose in August to their second-highest monthly level this year, according to figures compiled Saturday by The Associated Press. That raises questions about whether U.S. strategy is working days before Congress receives landmark reports that will decide the course of the war. |
At least 81 American service members also died in Iraq during August — an increase of two over the previous month but well below the year's monthly high of 126 in May. American deaths surpassed the 80 mark during only two months of 2006.
U.S. military officials have insisted that the security plan launched early this year have brought a decrease in attacks on civilians and sectarian killings, especially in the Baghdad area, which was the focus of the new strategy.
The top American commander, Gen. David Petraeus, is expected to cite security improvements when he and Ambassador Ryan Crocker submit reports on progress toward stability and national reconciliation to Congress during the week of Sept. 10.
However, figures compiled by the AP from police reports nationwide show that at least 1,809 civilians were killed across the country last month compared with 1,760 in July. That brings to 27,564 the number of Iraqi civilians killed since AP began collecting data on April 28, 2005.
According to the AP count, civilian deaths reached a high point during the wave of sectarian bombings, kidnappings and killings at the end of last year — 2,172 in December and 1,967 in the previous month. |
Published: Sep. 01, 2007
Posted: Sep. 02, 2007 |
|
Wash. Post's Murray wrote that Petraeus will argue against "precipitous U.S. withdrawal" -- but who is arguing for it? - Media Matters
|
|
| Summary: The Washington Post wrote that Gen. David Petraeus "is expected to report to Congress next month that there are some signs of progress in Iraq and that a precipitous U.S. withdrawal could be disastrous." But Murray gave no indication that the term "precipitous withdrawal" is used by Republicans to attack Iraq withdrawal plans, nor did she cite a single lawmaker who has called for a "precipitous U.S. withdrawal" from Iraq. |
Published: Aug. 31, 2007
Posted: Sep. 02, 2007 |
|
TV news outlets focused on Clinton fundraiser Hsu but ignored Romney finance co-chair Fabian's indictment for fraud - Media Mattersm
Seen at: Media Matters |
|
| Summary: In recent days, NBC, CNN, and Fox News have all aired reports or discussed the case of Norman Hsu, who The Wall Street Journal suggested may have funneled illegal campaign contributions to Sen. Hillary Clinton. However, when Mitt Romney's national finance committee co-chairman Alan Fabian was charged with mail fraud, money laundering, bankruptcy fraud, perjury and obstruction of justice, the three networks did not report or discuss it during programs available in the Nexis database. |
Published: Aug. 31, 2007
Posted: Sep. 02, 2007 |
|
Oh, Everyone Knows That (Except You) - NY Times
|
| In this era of blogosphere gossip, viral e-mail and infinite YouTube video archives, the open secret — unacknowledged by its keeper, theoretically hush-hush but widely suspected or known — arguably should be a thing of the past in public life. |
But the case of Larry E. Craig, the Idaho senator arrested when an undercover police officer said he made overtures to him for sex, suggests otherwise. Though rumors had long swirled around the conservative Republican senator, the mainstream news media pointedly overlooked them until last week, when Roll Call broke the news of his arrest in June.
Most notably, The Idaho Statesman investigated reports about Mr. Craig for months after a gay blogger published a claim last fall that the senator had had sex with men, but decided against running uncorroborated accusations that Mr. Craig denied and continues to deny. As much traffic as the speculation generated on blogs before Mr. Craig’s arrest, it gained currency — that is, it became a "story" suitable for national publication and broadcast — only when it was backed by an arrest report.
The same went for former Representative Mark Foley of Florida, who was long rumored to be gay but whose open secret was widely exposed only after his sexually explicit electronic messages to former Congressional pages surfaced last fall and forced his resignation. And for Jim McGreevey, the married New Jersey governor whose homosexuality was suspected for years in local circles, but was left pretty much untouched by the news media. Only after disclosing an affair with a man he had once appointed to a six-figure state job did he resign.
Old-fashioned as it seems, there are still tacit rules about when an open secret can remain in its own netherworld, without consequence to the politician who keeps it. But now that any whisper can become a global shout in an instant, how much longer can those rules apply? And should they, anyway?
"What fascinates me is the question of, if it didn’t get out for all this time, what does it mean?" said Jeff Jarvis, a journalism professor who now blogs on media and politics on buzzmachine.com. "Does it mean journalists are doing a good job, or does it mean they are doing a bad job?" |
Published: Sep. 02, 2007
Posted: Sep. 02, 2007 |
|
Subprime Time - NY Times
ROGER LOWENSTEIN |
| We are no longer shocked when the Dow Jones industrial average plunges 10 percent — as it did this summer — or when a single hedge fund, this one run by Goldman Sachs, drops 30 percent in a week. But real estate, we thought, was different. Hedge funds execute hundreds of trades a day, often according to the whims of a computer; people buy their homes one at a time and usually retain them for years. But last month’s market turmoil revealed a doleful transition for real estate. Formerly the most prosaic and dependable of investments, homes over the last 30 years had been turned into trading chips for Wall Street. And now, even at a time when the economy is still growing apace, two million Americans are suddenly said to be at risk of losing their homes to foreclosure. How did real estate become an industry with the vulnerabilities of esoteric financial instruments? |
In the golden age of American home buying — the years after World War II — savings-and-loan institutions or government agencies supplied returning G.I.’s with fixed 30-year mortgages. Home prices appreciated, steadily but at modest rates, and lending fiascoes were rare. And homeownership rates climbed. The buyers of that era were not necessarily more cautious than today’s; they simply spent what their bankers lent them. The bankers, persnickety folks that they were, required that buyers demonstrate sufficient income to qualify for a mortgage. They did this because a) they would get stuck with the property if the buyer defaulted and b) regulators insisted on prudence.
The world began to change in the late 1970s, when Salomon Brothers, in the person of a banker named Lewis Ranieri, pioneered the mortgage security. This showed a flash of genius. Even though each unit of real estate continued to be a slow-moving, illiquid asset, Ranieri perceived that the underlying mortgages could be traded as rapidly as stocks and bonds. Instead of keeping his mortgages in a drawer, the banker on Main Street could unload his risk by selling them to Salomon. The banker was thus converted from a long-term lender to a mere originator of loans.
Salomon and other institutions would take the mortgages sold by banks and stitch together bonds backed by the payments of many mortgagees, which they sold to investors. Voilà! Ranieri had knitted a group of inert mortgages into a tradable security. The mortgage market thus obtained liquidity, which, according to Wall Street, made mortgages cheaper and benefited us all. Once the mortgage originator became, in effect, a supplier to Wall Street, new, often unregulated nonbanking companies jumped into the game of brokering and also issuing mortgages. Over time, this weakened lending standards.
As Robert Rodriguez, a mutual fund manager for First Pacific Advisors (where I own shares), declared in a speech in June, “The distancing of the borrower from the lender has contributed to the development of lax underwriting standards.” Rodriguez’s point was that investors in the securities, being remote from the actual real estate, could hardly be expected to scrutinize the underlying mortgages loan by loan. Most delegated the task to ratings agencies, and in time the agencies, intoxicated by the booming market, also grew lax. Meanwhile, Wall Street, sensing the appetite of investors, devised exotic ways of repackaging mortgages. Investors bought these securities in bulk, just as Goldman bought stocks.
The absence of scrutiny on Wall Street had a profound effect on mortgage origination. As mortgage bankers discovered that investors would buy virtually any loan whatsoever, they naturally lowered their standards. What difference whether a loan was sound if you could flip it in 48 hours? The market thus corrupted, it only wanted for the right circumstances to implode. And over the last few years, as Robert Barbera, the chief economist at the investment advisory firm ITG, observed, the Federal Reserve took short-term interest rates from 1 percent to 5 1/4 percent. This raised mortgage rates and put home buyers at risk of being priced out of the market. But bankers lent to them anyway, offering, in effect, “junk mortgages” — risky loans with low teaser rates (and much higher rates later), as well as other deviations from sound finance. Lenders and borrowers alike knew that such loans were dicey; they were counting on the borrowers to refinance — which, as long as home prices kept rising, was a cinch. Naturally, when prices stopped rising, the music stopped. |
Published: Sep. 02, 2007
Posted: Sep. 02, 2007 |
|
The Mess He Left Behind - US News
Emma Schwartz |
| The resignation of embattled U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was never a question of if but of when. So when Gonzales finally announced last week that he will leave the Justice Department, his departure offered a glimmer of hope that the beleaguered agency would at last have a chance to remake an image sullied by months of scandals. |
Gonzales's inability to explain - or even, he said, remember - whether politics played an undue role in the department's hiring, firing, and prosecution decisions turned the former Texas Supreme Court judge and presidential confidant into a symbol of all that was wrong inside the 110,000-person bureaucracy.
But with little more than a year remaining in the Bush administration, the next attorney general will face daunting challenges in trying to rebuild the department. Election-year politics, congressional probes, an unpopular president—these and other barriers mean that even the strongest candidate may have to settle for piecemeal reform.
The initial hurdle for the White House is finding someone with the bipartisan credibility necessary to winning Senate confirmation - and to regaining the confidence of both department staffers and the American public. As when President Gerald Ford named the respected Edward Levi to the attorney general's post after the Watergate scandal, the White House this time will need to appoint someone whose independence and judgment are unquestioned.
"More than any individual policy, the Senate will be looking for a guarantee that the attorney general will serve justice rather than the president," says Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor. |
Published: Sep. 02, 2007
Posted: Sep. 02, 2007 |
|
U.S. and Iraqi authorities disband police station in tense west Baghdad neighborhood - Turkish Press
|
| Iraqi and U.S. authorities have disbanded an Iraqi police station in a tense west Baghdad neighborhood after it failed to prevent "insurgent and criminal activity" in the area, the U.S. military announced Saturday, according to AP. |
The military said the disbanding of the Khadra police station occurred on Wednesday when officers were given their last pay check and told to report to the central police station for reassignment.
The announcement comes after a string of independent assessments in the United States that point to severe problems with elements of the Iraqi police.
"Improvised explosive devices were often found no more than 100 meters (yards) from Khadra IP checkpoints on main roads throughout the neighborhood," the statement said. "The IP station's inability to decrease crime, led National Police authorities and coalition forces to conclude that the policemen there were complacent with local insurgency efforts."
Khadra is a tense area in western Baghdad where al-Qaida in Iraq is known to be active.
Iraq and U.S. authorities transformed the disbanded station into a National Police outpost, the statement said adding that a joint security station already exists in Khadra where Iraqi police officers and U.S. troops work together. |
Published: Sep. 01, 2007
Posted: Sep. 02, 2007 |
|
Iraq Far From U.S. Goals for Energy - Washington Post
Dana Hedgpeth |
| Iraq's crucial oil and electricity sectors still need roughly $50 billion to meet demand, analysts and officials say, even after the United States has poured more than $6 billion into them over more than four years. |
Since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Bush administration has focused much of its $44.5 billion reconstruction plan on oil and electricity. Now, with the U.S.-led reconstruction phase nearing its close, Iraq will need to spend $27 billion more for its electrical system and $20 billion to $30 billion for oil infrastructure, according to estimates the Government Accountability Office collected from Iraqi and U.S. officials.
Even with the funding, the GAO notes that it could take until 2015 for Iraq to produce 6 million barrels of oil a day and have enough electricity to meet demand. A commanding general of the Army Corps of Engineers says it could have enough electricity sooner -- 2010 to 2013.
"The U.S. money was intended to get those industries started on recovery," said Stuart W. Bowen Jr., the U.S. special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, who is charged with finding waste, fraud and abuse in the multibillion-dollar effort. "We were working with a dilapidated, run-down system. It still has a long, long way to go."
A former top-level Pentagon official who was involved in rebuilding the oil and electricity sectors put it more bluntly. "People said the money was to rebuild the country, but it was just a down payment," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he still works for the government. "The money was never enough to handle all that was there. It was merely a Band-Aid." |
Published: Sep. 02, 2007
Posted: Sep. 02, 2007 |
|
Panel Named to Investigate Mine Agency - NY Times
SARAH ABRUZZESE |
| The Labor Department has announced the creation of an independent commission to investigate the Mine Safety and Health Administration's handling of the disaster at the Crandall Canyon Mine in Utah. |
Two former inspectors from the mine agency have been appointed to lead the review, which was announced Thursday and will examine the agency's oversight of the mine before the cave-in there on Aug. 6 and its actions during the ensuing rescue operation.
Even as the Labor Department was announcing that inquiry, the mine agency itself said Richard A. Gates, who led its investigation into the Sago Mine disaster in West Virginia last year, would undertake a separate investigation into the Crandall Canyon episode. This will be a broader inquiry, going beyond a look at the agency's performance.
The collapse at Crandall Canyon trapped six miners, who are presumed dead. Three rescuers were killed in another collapse 10 days later.
While Secretary of Labor Elaine L. Chao underscored that the review announced by her department would be independent, the United Mine Workers of America disputed that characterization.
"We've said all along that it's a problem for MSHA to investigate MSHA," Cecil Roberts, the union's president, said in a statement. "It's not clear to me how much difference it will be for former MSHA employees to be investigating MSHA."
Ernest C. Teaster Jr., appointed along with Joseph W. Pavlovich to lead the investigation, said it would take about six months. The Labor Department said the inquiry would include a review of mine records and interviews with employees of the mine agency, known by its acronym, pronounced EM-shah. |
Published: Sep. 01, 2007
Posted: Sep. 02, 2007 |
|
Chief Says Fed Is Ready to Act on Credit Pinch - NY Times
EDMUND L. ANDREWS & JEREMY W. PETERS |
| Ben S. Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, declared on Friday that the central bank "stands ready to take additional actions as needed" to prevent the chaos in mortgage markets from derailing the broader economy. |
Mr. Bernanke avoided any specific promise to lower the central bank's benchmark federal funds rate at its next policy meeting on Sept. 18. But he acknowledged the dangers posed by the twin storms in housing and mortgage lending, adding that conditions are changing quickly enough that the Fed might act even before then if the next batch of economic data looks unfavorable.
Investors have been counting on the Fed to push short-term borrowing costs lower since it took a partial step on Aug. 17 by reducing its discount rate, which applies to emergency short-term loans to banks.
Shortly after Mr. Bernanke spoke here, President Bush announced a series of moves in Washington aimed at helping a number of Americans with credit problems avoid losing their homes because of the sharply rising cost of their adjustable-rate mortgages.
Mr. Bush, stepping into the troubled mortgage arena for the first time, did not go as far as Democratic proposals to help struggling homeowners. He warned that any overly ambitious effort could end up doing more harm than good.
"It's not the government's job to bail out speculators," Mr. Bush said, "or those who made the decision to buy a home they knew they could never afford." |
Published: Sep. 01, 2007
Posted: Sep. 02, 2007 |
|
TWA 800 FOIA Suit Yields Smoking Gun - Cashill.com
Jack Cashill |
| More than six years after retired United Airline captain Ray Lahr launched his Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) petition into the fate of TWA Flight 800, the FBI has shown him—likely by accident—one seriously smoking gun. |
The Boeing 747 blew up off the coast of Long Island on July 17, 1996. One of the FBI documents received recently by Lahr and his attorney, John Clarke of Washington DC, details a communication that took place six days after the crash:
"On Tuesday, July 23, 1996, a representative from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) advised [the FBI] that after a visual analysis of both the videotape as well as a number of still photographs taken from various portions of the tape, the phenomenon captured by [name redacted] appeared to be consistent with the exhaust plume from a MANPAD [Man-portable air-defense] missile."
'The FBI guy who looked at this must not have read it, or not have realized what it would reveal,' says Lahr. 'Otherwise he would have redacted most of it as before.'
Adding a new level of intrigue to the investigation is the fact that the video in question appears to have been shot on July 12, 1996, five days before the crash.
The earlier, unedited FBI document reports that a fellow and his friend on Long Island were attempting to videotape the sunrise when they saw and recorded 'a grey trail of smoke ascending from the horizon at an angle of approximately 75 [degrees].'
So compelling was the visual that the fellow made a comment to his friend, heard on the tape, 'They must be testing a rocket.' The fellow calculated that object was heading towards the Atlantic Ocean.
On the document Lahr first received, the story of the video ends right there. The next two paragraphs had been fully redacted.
This current unedited version shows that the FBI took the video seriously enough to bring in the DIA for further analysis. As mentioned above, the DIA found the video image to be 'consistent with the exhaust plume from a MANPAD.'
What is shocking is that the authorities not only removed all reference to this video from the official record, but they also removed just about all reference to the DIA. |
Published: Aug. 30, 2007
Posted: Sep. 01, 2007 |
|
HHS Toned Down Breast-Feeding Ads - Washington Post
Marc Kaufman & Christopher Lee |
| Formula Industry Urged Softer Campaign |
In an attempt to raise the nation's historically low rate of breast-feeding, federal health officials commissioned an attention-grabbing advertising campaign a few years ago to convince mothers that their babies faced real health risks if they did not breast-feed. It featured striking photos of insulin syringes and asthma inhalers topped with rubber nipples.
Plans to run these blunt ads infuriated the politically powerful infant formula industry, which hired a former chairman of the Republican National Committee and a former top regulatory official to lobby the Health and Human Services Department. Not long afterward, department political appointees toned down the campaign.
The federal Office on Women's Health developed an ad campaign several years ago that included insulin syringes and asthma puffers that looked like bottles of formula to make women aware of the risks of passing up breast-feeding.The formula industry objected to the campaign and brought in powerful lobbyists, including Clayton Yeutter, who was agriculture secretary during the administration of George H.W. Bush.In the end, the agency dropped many of the hard-hitting ads and kept the more soft-focus ones, including images of dandelions puffs and ice cream scoops that looked like breasts. In the 2004 letter at right, Yeutter thanks the secretary of health and human services for modifying the ad campaign
The ads ran instead with more friendly images of dandelions and cherry-topped ice cream scoops, to dramatize how breast-feeding could help avert respiratory problems and obesity. In a February 2004 letter (pdf), the lobbyists told then-HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson they were "grateful" for his staff's intervention to stop health officials from "scaring expectant mothers into breast-feeding," and asked for help in scaling back more of the ads.
The formula industry's intervention -- which did not block the ads but helped change their content -- is being scrutinized by Congress in the wake of last month's testimony by former surgeon general Richard H. Carmona that the Bush administration repeatedly allowed political considerations to interfere with his efforts to promote public health.
Rep. Henry A. Waxman's Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is investigating allegations from former officials that Carmona was blocked from participating in the breast-feeding advocacy effort and that those designing the ad campaign were overruled by superiors at the formula industry's insistence.
"This is a credible allegation of political interference that might have had serious public health consequences," said Waxman, a California Democrat. |
Published: Aug. 31, 2007
Posted: Sep. 01, 2007 |
|
Bernanke Says Fed Won't Let Markets Disrupt U.S. Economy - Washington Post
Neil Irwin |
| Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke Friday said that the central bank will take action to prevent problems in the financial markets from disrupting the U.S. economy, if necessary. |
In the speech here, Bernanke laid out his thinking on the troubled credit markets publicly for the first time. He addressed a group of economists and other close students of the Fed at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City's annual symposium here.
On Monday, Oct. 24, 2005, President Bush nominated Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, to succeed Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan when he retires in January. Learn more about Bernanke's background and nomination.
"Developments in financial markets can have broad economic effects felt by many outside the markets, and the Federal Reserve must take those effects into account when determining policy," said Bernanke. Moreover, he said, the Fed's policymaking committee, he said, "continues to monitor the situation and will act as needed to limit the adverse effects on the broader economy that may arise from the disruptions in financial markets." |
Published: Aug. 31, 2007
Posted: Sep. 01, 2007 |
|
Army chief attacks US over Iraq - Telegraph
Con Coughlin & Neil Tweedie |
| General Sir Mike Jackson, the head of the British Army during the invasion of Iraq, has launched a scathing attack on the United States for the way it handled the post-war administration of the country.
|
The former chief of the general staff said the approach taken by Donald Rumsfeld, the then US defence secretary, was "intellectually bankrupt", describing his claim that US forces "don't do nation-building" as "nonsensical".
Sir Mike's comments - made in his forthcoming autobiography Soldier, serialised exclusively in The Daily Telegraph - represent the most outspoken criticism of American military policy in Iraq to come from a senior British officer.
His attack - the first time he has revealed the depth of his anger towards the US administration - highlights the deep-seated tension between the British command and the Pentagon during the build-up to and the aftermath of the Iraq campaign in 2003.
Sir Mike, who took command of the British Army one month before US-led forces invaded Iraq, said Mr Rumsfeld was "one of those most responsible for the current situation in Iraq".
Crucially, the general writes, he refused to deploy enough troops to maintain law and order after the collapse of Saddam's regime, and discarded detailed plans for the post-conflict administration of Iraq that had been drawn up by the US State Department.
In the book, Sir Mike says he believes the entire US approach to tackling global terrorism is "inadequate" because it relies too heavily on military power at the expense of nation-building and diplomacy. |
Published: Sep. 01, 2007
Posted: Sep. 01, 2007 |
|
Defending claim that Clinton said surge was "working," Union-Leader editorial page editor provided evidence to the contrary - Media Matters
|
|
| Summary: Responding to Media Matters' criticism, Manchester Union Leader editorial page editor Drew Cline defended the newspaper's statement that Sen. "Hillary Clinton said Gen. David Petraeus' troop surge is working." Cline wrote: "Media Muddles preposterously asserts that when Clinton said 'change tactics in Iraq' she was not talking about the surge. ... Oh, OK. The changed tactics refer to what, then? THE SURGE!" But the articles that Cline cited for support show that she attributed the progress in Iraq's Al Anbar province to U.S. agreements with local tribal leaders that began in September 2006. |
Published: Aug. 31, 2007
Posted: Sep. 01, 2007 |
|
Panel Will Urge Broad Overhaul of Iraqi Police - NY Times
DAVID S. CLOUD |
| An independent commission established by Congress to assess Iraq's security forces will recommend remaking the 26,000-member national police force to purge it of corrupt officers and Shiite militants suspected of complicity in sectarian killings, administration and military officials said Thursday. |
The commission, headed by Gen. James L. Jones, the former top United States commander in Europe, concludes that the rampant sectarianism that has existed since the formation of the police force requires that its current units "be scrapped" and reshaped into a smaller, more elite organization, according to one senior official familiar with the findings. The recommendation is that "we should start over," the official said.
The report, which will be presented to Congress next week, is among a number of new Iraq assessments 'including a national intelligence estimate and a Government Accountability Office report' that await lawmakers when they return from summer recess. But the Jones commission's assessment is likely to receive particular attention as the work of a highly regarded team that was alone in focusing directly on the worthiness of Iraq's army and police force.
Its harsh indictment of a key institution in Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki's government is likely to be seized on by Democrats in Congress and other critics of the Bush administration's Iraq strategy as further evidence that a fundamental shift in American policy is required.
However, a new attempt to disband an Iraqi force would also be risky, given the armed backlash that followed the American decision to dissolve the Iraqi Army soon after the invasion of 2003. |
Published: Aug. 31, 2007
Posted: Sep. 01, 2007 |
|
UK general criticises US policy - BBC
|
| The head of the British army during the Iraq invasion has said US post-war policy was "intellectually bankrupt". |
Former chief of the general staff, General Sir Mike Jackson, told the Daily Telegraph he felt a key policy was "short-sighted".
He criticised Donald Rumsfeld, saying the former US defence secretary was "one of the most responsible for the current situation in Iraq".
Sir Mike's autobiography, Soldier, is being serialised in the paper.
In an interview he described a claim by Mr Rumsfeld that US forces "don't do nation-building" as "nonsensical".
He criticised the decision to hand control of planning the administration of Iraq after the war to the Pentagon. |
Published: Sep. 01, 2007
Posted: Sep. 01, 2007 |
|
Interstate toll roads eyed - My San Antonio
Polly Ross Hughes |
| Along with that, it calls for altering the tax code to exempt toll road owners from paying income taxes. |
The Texas Department of Transportation is pushing Congress to pass a federal law allowing the state to "buy back" parts of existing interstate highways and turn them into toll roads.
The 24-page plan, outlined in a "Forward Momentum" report that escaped widespread attention when published in February, drew prompt objections Thursday from state lawmakers and activists fighting the spread of privately run toll roads.
"I think it's a dreadful recommendation on the part of the transportation commissioners here in Texas," said Senate Transportation and Homeland Security Committee Chairman John Carona, R-Dallas.
"I feel confident that legislators in Austin would overwhelmingly be opposed to such an idea," he said. "The simple fact is that taxpayers have already paid for those roadways. To ask taxpayers to pay for them twice is untenable."
The report not only advocates turning stretches of interstate highways into toll roads, but it also suggests tax breaks for private company "investment" in such enterprises.
Talk Back
• Do you think Texas should toll existing lanes? |
Published: Aug. 31, 2007
Posted: Sep. 01, 2007 |
|
US court allows navy to use sonar - BBC
|
| The US navy has won the latest round in a court battle over whether it can use sonar equipment which environmentalists say can kill whales and other mammals. |
An appeals court overturned a decision banning the use of sonar equipment in tests to be held off California.
National security needs must be weighed against protecting the safety of marine mammals, the judges ruled.
Wildlife experts say noise pollution from sonar disorients whales, causing them to become stranded on beaches.
The navy argued that it had monitored waters off southern California for 40 years and had not seen any whale injuries from the use of sonar equipment.
It says the device is necessary to track submarines. |
Published: Sep. 01, 2007
Posted: Sep. 01, 2007 |
|
|
Lawmakers Describe 'Being Slimed in the Green Zone' - Washington Post
|
| The sheets of paper seemed to be everywhere the lawmakers went in the Green Zone, distributed to Iraqi officials, U.S. officials and uniformed military of no particular rank. So when Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.) asked a soldier last weekend just what he was holding, the congressman was taken aback to find out. |
In the soldier's hand was a thumbnail biography, distributed before each of the congressmen's meetings in Baghdad, which let meeting participants such as that soldier know where each of the lawmakers stands on the war. "Moran on Iraq policy," read one section, going on to cite some the congressman's most incendiary statements, such as, "This has been the worst foreign policy fiasco in American history."
The bio of Rep. Ellen O. Tauscher (D-Calif.) -- "TAU (rhymes with 'now')-sher," the bio helpfully relates -- was no less pointed, even if she once supported the war and has taken heat from liberal Bay Area constituents who remain wary of her position. "Our forces are caught in the middle of an escalating sectarian conflict in Iraq, with no end in sight," the bio quotes.
"This is beyond parsing. This is being slimed in the Green Zone," Tauscher said of her bio.
More than two dozen House members and senators have used the August recess to travel to Iraq in the hope of getting a firsthand view of the war ahead of commanding Gen. David H. Petraeus's progress report in two weeks on Capitol Hill. But it appears that the trips have been as much about Iraqi and U.S. officials sizing up Congress as the members of Congress sizing up the war. |
Published: Aug. 31, 2007
Posted: Aug. 31, 2007 |
|
Mystery DR Congo fever kills 100 - BBC
|
| More than 100 people have died because of a fever epidemic in the centre of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, health officials say. |
Many of the victims are people who have been in contact with the deceased, including medical staff, and who lack equipment to deal with the illness.
The latest victim was a nurse at a local hospital. She died on Thursday after taking care of infected patients.
Health officials say the medical staff had no masks and this put them at risk.
Speaking from Kananga, the capital of West Kasai region, Dr Jean-Constantin Kanow said the illness had first started three months ago, when chickens and pigs started dying - but now people were also affected.
The epidemic was affecting four villages: Kampungu, Makonono, Kaluamba and Mombo. |
Published: Aug. 31, 2007
Posted: Aug. 31, 2007 |
|
G Bissau 'to shoot drug planes' - BBC
|
| Suspected drug planes that enter Guinea-Bissau's airspace will be shot down in a bid to reduce rampant cocaine trafficking, the government says. |
Prime Minister Martinho N'Dafa Cabi said he had personally issued the uncompromising order.
This follows the army's seizure of a truckload of jet fuel in a forest outside the city of Buba on Thursday.
International drugs experts fear the poor, unstable country with numerous islands could become a "narco-state". |
Published: Sep. 01, 2007
Posted: Aug. 31, 2007 |
|
World facing 'arsenic timebomb' - BBC
|
| About 140 million people, mainly in developing countries, are being poisoned by arsenic in their drinking water, researchers believe. |
Speaking at the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) annual meeting in London, scientists said this will lead to higher rates of cancer in the future.
South and East Asia account for more than half of the known cases globally.
Eating large amounts of rice grown in affected areas could also be a health risk, scientists said.
"It's a global problem, present in 70 countries, probably more," said Peter Ravenscroft, a research associate in geography with Cambridge University.
"If you work on drinking water standards used in Europe and North America, then you see that about 140 million people around the world are above those levels and at risk." |
Published: Aug. 30, 2007
Posted: Aug. 30, 2007 |
|
Deadly cholera outbreak in Iraq - BBC
|
| An outbreak of cholera in two northern Iraqi provinces has killed eight people and infected 80 others, the Kurdistan Regional Government has said. |
Kurdish Health Minister Zeryan Othman said local health authorities were also treating 4,250 suspected cases of the disease in Sulaimaniya and Tamim.
Specialist teams and emergency aid have been sent to the affected regions.
Serious problems with water quality and sewage treatment, worsened by crumbling local infrastructure, are being blamed.
A report by the UK-based charity, Oxfam, and the NGO Co-ordination Committee in Iraq (NCCI) last month warned that 70% of Iraq's population did not have adequate water supplies and that only 20% had access to effective sanitation. |
Published: Aug. 30, 2007
Posted: Aug. 30, 2007 |
|
Typhoid making a comeback in UK - BBC
|
| People holidaying in exotic places without being vaccinated is causing a rise in dangerous diseases like typhoid, warn doctors. |
And low air fares could be fuelling the problem, they claim.
Figures from the Health Protection Agency show there has been a 69% increase in typhoid cases in recent years, with most acquired abroad.
Health experts are launching a campaign Valuing Vaccines to spread the message about the importance of immunisation.
Dr Jane Zuckerman, director of the Centre for Travel Medicine at the Royal Free Hospital in north London, who is backing the campaign, said: "The level of public ignorance exposed by these results is extremely worrying.
"We have seen vaccine-preventable diseases like typhoid on the increase because people travel abroad to endemic areas without being vaccinated and return sick to the UK."
Typhoid kills 600,000 people worldwide each year.
In 2002, 147 typhoid cases were reported in England and Wales, with 101 of those acquired abroad.
In 2006, this had leapt to 248 cases, of which 122 were acquired abroad.
A milder strain of the disease, called paratyphoid and which cannot be vaccinated against, increased by 78% over the last five years.
A survey of more than 1,000 reveals more than 1 in 3 people in the UK are not aware of the diseases which can be prevented by vaccination.
Nearly two-thirds did not know that typhoid could be prevented by vaccination, while two out of five incorrectly believed there was a vaccine for malaria. |
Published: Aug. 30, 2007
Posted: Aug. 30, 2007 |
|
Texas to execute getaway driver - BBC
|
| Human rights groups are urging clemency for a Texas death row inmate due to be executed on Thursday for a 1996 murder although he was not the gunman.
|
Kenneth Foster, now 30, was convicted under a Texas law that allows accomplices to a crime that results in murder to face capital punishment.
He was driving the getaway car in a botched robbery that led to a shooting.
Prosecutors successfully argued during his trial that Foster displayed "reckless disregard for human life".
The Texas "law of parties" abolishes the distinction between the main perpetrator of a crime and an accomplice, allowing both to be held equally culpable. |
Published: Aug. 30, 2007
Posted: Aug. 30, 2007 |
|
Turk With Islamic Ties Is Elected President - NY Times
SABRINA TAVERNISE & SEBNEM ARSU |
| An observant Muslim with a background in Islamic politics was voted in on Tuesday as president, breaking an 84-year grip on power by the secular establishment and ushering a new religious middle class from Turkey’s heartland into the center of the staunchly secular state. |
Lawmakers approved Abdullah Gul, a 56-year-old economist, with 339 votes, far above the simple majority required in the 550-member Parliament. Two candidates shared another 83 votes. The main party of the secular establishment boycotted the balloting.
The selection of Mr. Gul ended four months of political standoff that began when Turkey’s secular establishment and military, vehemently opposed to his candidacy, blocked it in May, forcing a national election last month.
But Mr. Gul’s party, Justice and Development, refused to back down, and his success was a rare occasion in Turkish history in which a party prevailed against the military.
There was no immediate statement from the military, which has ousted four elected governments since 1960. But its unspoken reaction was frosty: No military commander attended Mr. Gul’s inaugural ceremony, a highly unusual departure from protocol, considering that he is now the commander in chief. |
Published: Aug. 29, 2007
Posted: Aug. 30, 2007 |
|
A Sobering Census Report: Americans’ Meager Income Gains - NY Times
|
| The economic party is winding down and most working Americans never even got near the punch bowl. |
The Census Bureau reported yesterday that median household income rose 0.7 percent last year — its second annual increase in a row — to $48,201. The share of households living in poverty fell to 12.3 percent from 12.6 percent in 2005. This seems like welcome news, but a deeper look at the belated improvement in these numbers — more than five years after the end of the last recession — underscores how the gains from economic growth have failed to benefit most of the population.
The median household income last year was still about $1,000 less than in 2000, before the onset of the last recession. In 2006, 36.5 million Americans were living in poverty — 5 million more than six years before, when the poverty rate fell to 11.3 percent.
And what is perhaps most disturbing is that it appears this is as good as it’s going to get. |
Published: Aug. 29, 2007
Posted: Aug. 30, 2007 |
|
Wyoming GOP moves vote to Jan. 5 - Yahoo! News
MEAD GRUVER |
| Wyoming Republicans have jumped to the head of the pack in the nominating process, moving their delegate-selection conventions to Jan. 5 before even Iowa or New Hampshire vote. |
While the move puts Wyoming first in the accelerated primary process, it is not expected to stay there as states continue to jockey for position. At stake for Wyoming Republicans on Jan. 5 will be 12 delegates to the national convention.
"We're first in the nation," said Tom Sansonetti, the state party's 2008 county convention coordinator. "At least for the next couple, three weeks until New Hampshire and Iowa move, which I expect they will."
Wyoming Republicans made the decision Saturday and announced it late Tuesday.
The ever-changing contest schedule — and the earlier start to the balloting — has created an enormous level of discomfort for national parties trying to impose discipline on the states as well as presidential campaigns trying to figure out strategies when voting could begin in just four months.
As a deterrence, the Republican National Committee insists they will penalize states that schedule nominating contests before Feb. 5 by withholding delegates to the conventions next summer.
"The rules are very clear. Any state that holds its primary outside the window will be penalized delegates," said Republican National Committee spokesman Paul Lindsay, adding delegates would be allocated to states at the end of the year.
Sansonetti said Wyoming stood to lose half its delegates. |
Published: Aug. 30, 2007
Posted: Aug. 30, 2007 |
|
Call to regulate the net rejected - BBC
|
| The internet should not be used as a scapegoat for society's ills, said Vint Cerf, Google's net evangelist and a founding father of the network. |
Speaking on the BBC Radio 4's Today programme he rejected calls for strict control of what is put online.
He said the net was just a reflection of the society in which we live.
Anyone regulating beyond what was clearly illegal put themselves on a "slippery slope" that could limit freedom of expression, he said.
"If it's not illegal, it raises a rather interesting question about where you do draw the line," he said. |
Published: Aug. 29, 2007
Posted: Aug. 30, 2007 |
|
China finance minister steps down - BBC
|
| The Chinese Finance Minister, Jin Renqing, has resigned for personal reasons, the government has announced. |
Mr Jin will be transferred to a Communist Party think-tank where he will be deputy chief, a government statement said.
The 63-year-old has been in the post since 2003. There has been no formal announcement yet as to his successor.
The move comes amid rising concerns over accelerating inflation in China and a surging stock market.
"Due to personal reasons, comrade Jin Renqing has tendered his resignation and the central government has accepted his request," a State Council official said. |
Published: Aug. 30, 2007
Posted: Aug. 30, 2007 |
|
UN warns of 'armed' Darfur camps - BBC
|
| The UN's emergency relief co-ordinator, John Holmes, has described the refugee camps in Darfur as militarised. |
Mr Holmes told the BBC that some of the 1.2 million refugees are impatient, politicised, and armed.
He said having thousands of disaffected men cooped up in camps in which weapons were available, was dangerous.
He believes the situation in the camps is bound to lead to clashes, and reflects the fact that there is no peace settlement in place for Darfur.
With Sudanese forces circling the camps the situation is potentially explosive. |
Published: Aug. 29, 2007
Posted: Aug. 30, 2007 |
|
ICRC highlights world's 'missing' - BBC
|
| There are at least 375,000 missing people in Iraq, officials say.
The international community has been criticised for not doing enough to locate those missing worldwide as a result of conflicts and other violence. |
The report by the International Committee of the Red Cross highlighted what it called a hidden tragedy.
It called on those responsible for detaining civilians to allow families to obtain information about their loved ones' condition and whereabouts.
The ICRC report coincides with the International Day of the Disappeared.
There is no exact figure for the number of missing worldwide. In Iraq, official estimates put the number of missing in conflicts since 1980 at between 375,000 and one million.
There are still more than 17,000 people missing from the wars that tore apart the former Yugoslavia more than 10 years ago, the ICRC said in a statement.
Tens of thousands of people are also unaccounted for across Africa. The ICRC said about 22,000 people have been declared missing in Angola alone. |
Published: Aug. 30, 2007
Posted: Aug. 30, 2007 |
|
Bo Diddley suffers heart attack - BBC
|
| Diddley (sic) was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987
Musician Bo Diddley is in a stable condition in a US hospital after suffering a heart attack. |
The 78-year-old singer-guitarist complained of dizziness and nausea during a routine medical check-up on Friday, his publicist Susan Clary said.
He was taken to hospital where he had a stent implanted to improve the blood flow to his heart. Ms Clary said his situation was "very serious". |
Published: Aug. 29, 2007
Posted: Aug. 30, 2007 |
|
How Did News Outlets Miss Senator's Arrest for Nearly Three Months? - Editor and Publisher
Joe Strupp |
| The revelation late Monday that Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) was arrested nearly three months ago for allegedly making sexual advances in a men's room raises the issue of how such an action could occur without the press reporting it. |
Even Roll Call reporter John McArdle, who broke the story late Monday, admits he only received word of the arrest and subsequent guilty plea via a tip last week.
"You would think in the 24-hour news cycle, something like this would slip through," said McArdle, a four-year veteran of the Capitol Hill daily. "He wanted to keep it quiet, and he almost got away with it." |
Published: Aug. 28, 2007
Posted: Aug. 30, 2007 |
|
GMA casts Gonzales scandals as partisan: "For Democrats, it's another scalp to hang on the wall" - Media Matters
|
|
| Summary: On Good Morning America, correspondent David Wright asserted that "[w]ere it not for the scandals, [President] Bush had hoped to make" outgoing Attorney General Alberto Gonzales "the first Hispanic justice on the U.S. Supreme Court." Wright also reported that Gonzales' resignation "is being welcomed on both sides of the aisle" because "[f]or Democrats, it's another scalp to hang on the wall; and for Republicans, it's a huge distraction that now goes away." In fact, several Republicans have joined Democrats in calling for Gonzales to resign. |
Published: Aug. 28, 2007
Posted: Aug. 30, 2007 |
|
NY Times' Stolberg, MNSBC's Matthews cited Tony Perkins, GOP conservatives as espousing "ethics" and "values" - Media Matters
|
|
| Summary: New York Times reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg repeated a common media practice of suggesting that the GOP's "social conservative wing" cares more about "ethics and family values" than others, and quoted Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council, in support. Similarly, MSNBC's Chris Matthews asked Perkins about "conservative people like yourself, who are not politicians, but are men of the church, who believe in values, rather than election results." Neither noted Perkins' reported ties to both the white-supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC) and former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke. |
Published: Aug. 30, 2007
Posted: Aug. 30, 2007 |
|
History Will Not Absolve Us - Village Voice
Nat Hentoff |
| If and when there's the equivalent of an international Nuremberg trial for the American perpetrators of crimes against humanity in Guantánamo, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the CIA's secret prisons, there will be mounds of evidence available from documented international reports by human-rights organizations, including an arm of the European parliament—as well as such deeply footnoted books as Stephen Grey's Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program (St. Martin's Press) and Charlie Savage's just-published Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy (Little, Brown). |
While the Democratic Congress has yet to begin a serious investigation into what many European legislators already know about American war crimes, a particularly telling report by the International Committee of the Red Cross has been leaked that would surely figure prominently in such a potential Nuremberg trial. The Red Cross itself is bound to public silence concerning the results of its human-rights probes of prisons around the world—or else governments wouldn't let them in.
But The New Yorker's Jane Mayer has sources who have seen accounts of the Red Cross interviews with inmates formerly held in CIA secret prisons. In "The Black Sites" (August 13, The New Yorker), Mayer also reveals the effect on our torturers of what they do—on the orders of the president—to "protect American values."
She quotes a former CIA officer: "When you cross over that line of darkness, it's hard to come back. You lose your soul. You can do your best to justify it, but . . . you can't go back to that dark a place without it changing you."
Few average Americans have been changed, however, by what the CIA does in our name. Blame that on the tight official secrecy that continues over how the CIA extracts information. On July 20, the Bush administration issued a new executive order authorizing the CIA to continue using these techniques—without disclosing anything about them.
If we, the people, are ultimately condemned by a world court for our complicity and silence in these war crimes, we can always try to echo those Germans who claimed not to know what Hitler and his enforcers were doing. But in Nazi Germany, people had no way of insisting on finding out what happened to their disappeared neighbors.
We, however, have the right and the power to insist that Congress discover and reveal the details of the torture and other brutalities that the CIA has been inflicting in our name on terrorism suspects. |
Published: Aug. 28, 2007
Posted: Aug. 30, 2007 |
|
Post-quake Peru runs out of tents - BBC
|
| Peruvian officials say they have run out of tents and urgently need at least 40,000 more to house victims of the devastating earthquake two weeks ago. |
Aid agencies said many survivors in the Ica region were living on the streets in unhygienic conditions, and were desperately in need of basic supplies.
French agency Medecins San Frontieres said it was as if the earthquake had struck just a day before.
More than 500 people were killed and 1,300 injured in the earthquake.
The worst damage was in the coastal cities of Ica and Pisco, south of Lima. |
Published: Aug. 30, 2007
Posted: Aug. 30, 2007 |
|
Nigeria scraps state oil company - BBC
|
| Nigerian President Umaru Yar'Adua is to scrap the state-owned oil corporation and restructure the industry. |
A national energy council will instead be established to oversee the notoriously corrupt oil sector.
The council, headed by the president, has six months to create five new organisations out of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).
Nigeria is the world's eighth-largest exporter of crude oil but relies on imports for its fuel needs.
There are often fuel scarcities and the subsidised price of fuel is regularly flouted.
The country loses millions of dollars of oil through illegal sell-offs, and reform of the oil sector is one of the newly-elected government's key aims. |
Published: Aug. 30, 2007
Posted: Aug. 30, 2007 |
|
Sarkozy 'loosening' 35-hour week - BBC
|
| France's President Nicolas Sarkozy says he wants to go "much further in loosening up the 35-hour" working week. |
Mr Sarkozy also said he wanted to tighten up competition between firms to make consumer prices fall.
In a speech to the employers' organisation Medaf, he said he was not planning to sit around waiting for international growth to improve.
Mr Sarkozy said a global economic slowdown would only encourage him to do more to make the economy competitive. |
Published: Aug. 30, 2007
Posted: Aug. 30, 2007 |
|
UN issues Pakistan refugee appeal - BBC
|
| The UN refugee agency has appealed to the government of Pakistan to postpone Friday's planned closure of one of the country's largest Afghan refugee camps. |
It says that it is "deeply concerned" over the closure of Jalozai camp in North West Frontier Province (NWFP).
The UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) has warned that "tens of thousands" of Afghans are being pressured into leaving by Friday.
It says their exodus could lead to a humanitarian crisis this winter. |
Published: Aug. 30, 2007
Posted: Aug. 30, 2007 |
|
Bloggers battered by viral storm - BBC
|
| Google's Blogger site is being used by malicious hackers who are posting fake entries to some blogs.
|
The fake entries contain weblinks that lead to booby-trapped downloads that could infect a Windows PC.
Infected computers are being hijacked by the gang behind the attacks and either mined for saleable data or used for other attacks.
The Blogger attack is the latest in a series by a gang that has managed to hijack hundreds of thousands of PCs. |
Published: Aug. 30, 2007
Posted: Aug. 30, 2007 |
|
|
