Eyes for Truth

Dogs Smarter Than Doctors

2007-03-03T15:34:00.000-05:00

Lung Cancer Detector
by gd4u2no

The Cleveland Clinic has found that lung cancer is detected by dogs with a 99% accuracy. However, it is unsettling to realize that the smarter species has not made great strides in becoming as accurate in diagnosing this particular disease. It is an undeniable truth according to the experts in the medical field.

Researchers have developed a new method of detecting lung cancer by utilizing a sensor. It would be similiar to be a breath analyzer. There are organic compounds which lung cancer patients exhale. Experts in the medical profession can use gas chromotograher to similate the organic compounds of cancer. Though, there seems to be an inadequate diagnosis rate which does not allow the use of the gas chromotographer to become an effective method.

Lung cancer causes 160,000 deaths a year in the United States. This cancer is hard to detect in its early stages. In its latter stages, it is hard to be mutually beneficial with the current treatments available. Development of a sensor which would allow faster diagnosis of the most prevalent cancer in the United States would be a great help to the people of America. What is absolutely amazing is denial of the most accurate form of diagnosis currently available. Why not invest the money in training people to work with the dogs? Since this method has a 99% accuracy in diagnosing cancer, why not save the people?

What could possibly be wrong with the current solution which God has already given? Oh!! I think I have an inkling of what makes this an implausible act. There is not enough money to be made off of people in need of life. Does anyone think this may have a bit to do with it?

Iran earns Respect

2007-02-26T16:58:00.000-05:00

Iran is Entitled
by gd4u2no

Is it not amazing the insight that it took Mr. Blix,a former U.N. chief weapons inspector, to present the world with a proper picture of what is happpening? I think he states his point well. Perhaps, I may disagree with his analogy to a child, but the essence of his conclusion is correct.

No one should expect any leader to be omitted from conversation. Yet, that same leader should be given and accept directives from the very person who deems them unworthy of conversation.

Meanwhile, Mr. Bush and his representatives have consistently stated he will not enter any direct discussions with Iran for the past few years. Let us accept that Iran was willing to have discussions with the United States to no avail.

Once a barrier is erected, there is no threshold to stand upon and give orders. Especially, considering North Korea was given much room to advance their nuclear programs. Basically, enough time elapsed with denial of stopping their nuclear campaign and initating tests of their weapons for the world to see.

After North Korea demonstrated what they stated, the international community determines they should be well-compensated to stop. Absolutely amazing is all I can say.

Which picture is more of a threat? I guess, the one which is paid the most. This train of thought gives more incentives for other countries to stand by their convictions. Let us not forget Iran chooses to have electricity for their countrymen.

Who has the right to dictate how you run your own house? Who has a great claim in entering your house and stating what you can and can not do within your own sanctuary? Especially, when you consider your family's quality of life becoming improved.

Energy Savers Use Mercury

2007-02-25T08:51:00.000-05:00

Compact Fluorescent Bulbs Present Dangers
by gd4u2no

The Environmental Protection Agency, along with some retailers, are encouraging consumers to buy compact fluorescent bulbs. The bulbs appear to have swirls on top. These bulbs are useful in conserving energy.

A lesser known fact it is the bulbs contain mercury. Mercury is a toxin which affects the nervous system. Ordinarily, disposal of mercury and environmental releases of mercury are regulated by the EPA.

The compact bulbs do not present a problem with proper disposal. The mercury does not present any concerns unless there are massive amounts of bulbs broken within a limited area, such as a landfill for regular waste. When this happens, the workers and landfill risk unhealthy levels of toxins.

Should the EPA inform the public of proper removal for a better environment? Absolutely. Most people are unaware of the need to keep the bulbs out of the regular garbage containers. These compact bulbs actually need to be taken to a hazardous waste center.

The EPA has been urging Walmart to help with recycling these compact bulbs. GE has been making these bulbs for 20 years. While the EPA has seen sales increase, they are trying to get corporate America to assist with removal of this looming threat.

While the EPA has been somewhat constructive, I believe the American people can find their way to hazardous waste facilities to ensure safe conditions for other Americans who remove their garbage. I believe Americans do not want a ladder for every step they take. We can consider the dangers and evaluate the next step to be taken for the improvement of our neighborhood and cities. No one pays the cost better than us.

2007-02-23T18:05:00.000-05:00

Hole opens in Guatemala neighborhood, 3 missing
Fri Feb 23, 2007 4:56pm ET

GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) - Three people were missing on Friday after a 200-foot-deep hole opened up in the middle of a Guatemalan neighborhood, likely due to a burst sewer pipe.
"It sounded like a bomb was dropping. Boom!" said Carlos Gutierrez, 58, of the crater, which measured 130 feet in diameter.

The crater appeared in the capital's San Antonio neighborhood on Thursday night. Authorities evacuated hundreds of people on Friday fearing more land could collapse into a fast-flowing river of sewage below.

The missing people had lived in a house that fell into the hole. Two bodies showed up about a mile downstream.

Neighbors said the ground had been shaking for weeks after a huge sewer pipe burst, making the ground underneath the houses unstable.

© Reuters 2007. All Rights Reserved

It is unbelievable that any disaster such as this can happen without an earthquake. Possibly, this concern can be addressed to the effect that no occurrence of this type may happen again.

Thankfully, nothing of that nature has happened here in the continental United States. How is it possible to happen within a United States territory is unthinkable? Let us hope that better planning is considered as a result. Let me know what you think

Phoenix Strips Clothing

2007-02-23T15:50:00.000-05:00

Homeland Security Rises
by gd4u2no

Technology has made wonderful advances within the past decade. This year starts with a startling discovery which would eliminate the need for physical contact checks at airports.. There is a new x-ray machine which has the capability of providing an image of anything under clothing.

However, the privacy of passengers have been considered. The security scanner would be used to reinforce the primary scanner presently used. Also, passengers may opt for the traditional pat down. While in the pilot phase, it is certain this technology will only be used on a voluntary basis.

What makes this a remarkable discovery is simple. The techology used is called "backscatter". It allows security to determine whether someone has a weapon by imaging. The image shown would be the person minus the clothing. This, by itself, would allow TSA officers to determine if a weapon or any other danger is associated with the individual scanned. The security officer viewing the image would be 50 feet from where the the images are gained. The Transportation Security Administration would be using this equipment in airports.

Actually, the pilot security scanner debuted in Phoenix at the Sky Harbor International Airport. This pilot program will last for approximately 90 days before any other city is implemented with the security scanner. If this venture proves successful and safe. New York and Los Angeles are projected to be the next recipients of this particular technology.

Are Sanctions Necessary for Iran?

2007-02-22T16:58:00.000-05:00

Iran "Needs" Sanctions
by gd4u2no

Iran is developing nuclear weapons say the powers of the West. This situation was predicted four years ago. How is Iran a country which should be dealt with immediately? They are producing uranium enrichment below 5%. There is a 90% uranium enrichment level necessary in order to become a threat. In other words, Iran has not become a threat by producing levels of uranium below a 20% threshold. Help me to understand the dire need for action and retribution of WHAT.

Now, what makes a third world country? Regardless of what another country should imagine, what country should not be allowed to prosper and grow as a nation?!

How is it possible that one country should make it a mandate that another country should not be allowed to seek electricity in the same manner as the most elite countries of the world? What particular part of the world is given the right to deny another country the right for self-improvement cast with judgement?

'The Nuclear Watchdog agency itself denies that Iran has the ability nor capacity to become a nuclear threat. Why can we not watch and allow the opportunity for Iran to develop itself for the good of its own citizens? How can we state that other countries need us while stating they are not to help themselves? What kind of political power states you are nothing while threatening you for trying to become something? This type of logic escapes my train of thought as being sensible. It kind fits the story of why give you fish when I can teach you how to fish?

In my way of thinking, Iran has every right to pursue a better life for its citizens regardless of any other country. Should we not feel the same about our own country? Who should decide if we improve this great United States but the American people? Sometimes, problems appear and sometimes problems are created with intent.

How would you solve this situation for the improvement of the world? Also, is there anything broken which should be addressed at this time? Let me know what you think.

Poland investigated for torture chambers

2007-02-15T11:22:00.000-05:00

Poland provides U.S. security
by gd4u2no

Most likely, the United States administration currently in office has not found torture a deplorable act. Though, the United States and Poland will not cooperate with the investigative inquiry . This investigation was initiated by the European Union. The purpose of this inquiry regards the torture of detainees, the report has been issued.

The United States has been found guilty of using methods of torture while Romania and Poland host the sites for these illegal activities. Is it possible this is what was meant by collective defense?

The United States commander-in-chief has certainly denied any activity of this sort. We all know Mr. Bush is the most honorable and trustworthy gentleman of our great United States.
In the face of terrorism and other new threats, NATO's traditional commitment to collective defense must also be carried out in new ways. In the face of adversity, it would seem that all things are possible in the face of war. This is not a new concept by any means.

The objections seems to protrude from the fact of denial. It is understandable of what acts war requires. The unthinkable may happen. The challenge of perpetuating the rules of leadership remains somewhat different. No one is above their own strongly advocated laws. This particular brand of leadership is then laced with hypocrisy. What shall become of the people that choose to be represented by such an advocate?

One aspect is not debatable. It is debatable of his conviction nor determination. Should the strength of conviction by any one person manifest itself as an overall admirable quality? I believe in any situation, of good intent, leadership should have a few good qualities for the good of the people to be served. If the people are not served, how can leadership exist? This would seem to be a grand concoction for a dictatorship.

Given that particular recipe, it is not surprising when relations are forged upon the same principle which overwhelms all other qualities. Why would Poland not find a good purpose in providing the United States missile defense a good project? Of course, favorable stipulations exist to make this a smooth transition for the Polish people who find this an uninspiring task.

Maybe, it is a relationship with good promise with collusions for all the negative purposes which may allow a bright shining light to be seen. WE can only hope and pray for this ending.

Jeopardy for Healthcare of Children

2007-02-15T09:33:00.000-05:00

Healthcare of American Children at Risk
by gd4u2no

Children are the most innocent people of this world. Why should children have to suffer by lack of health insurance?

Hopefully, the federal government will not overburden the states with the full cost of their medical bills.

Perhaps, mismanagement is responsible for causing such an excessive amount of healthcare expenses for some states. Though it may irresponsible to have excessive amounts which do not pertain to children under the umbrella of the children's healthcare coverage, accountability would better serve each state goverment in removing this dilemma from recurring. Therefore, the children would still be covered with continuity.

Children should not have to suffer due to mismanagement of funds. Their responsibility does not adequately cover themselves. With that being the case, how they can be punished? Better yet, why should they be punished for the mistakes of adults? Should children become liable for the inaccurate distribution of healthcare for adults? Hmmm.

Perhaps, the federal government may be guided to make state government more acountable in the distribution of healthcare. It seems that it is becoming a predicament anyways. Healthcare overall seems to be moving towards a complete overhaul.

Should we forget or neglect our children in order that the rest of the world may benefit from our wonderful dollar value? How can our children be at risk of becoming uninsured with many other options seem to be funded with American dollars?

Corporations steal from U.S. workers

2007-02-15T09:17:00.000-05:00

Mexico's booming economy
by gd4usno

How is it possible that the American people are unable to maintain border control? Actually, let us hope this event will be reciprocated.

The American people are becoming more desolate regarding factory jobs. Middle class Americans are becoming less of a majority. This gives cause for concern. Many have noticed that while America is still a power, the power has to be continued in order to remain a force in the world. This thought process is slowly eroding in a few ways.

Why should the Mexican border become a problem? Our jobs are moving there at such a fast speed that Americans may soon cross the border to find an income which allows an affordable living wage. We may exchange places with our Mexican neighbors soon. We may start to cross the border to work there and send the money home to our families. Should this become a necessary option, what would it mean for the rest of America? How would it affect the country overall? This is definitely food for thought.

Although, the corporations of America have not conducted themselves as if this is a thought which concerns them. It may affect the quality of life which would then manifest itself throughout our beautiful land of the free.

Maybe government will implement new legislation which would ensure that American lifestyles are not at a decline with such an outlook becoming a possiblity. Hopefully, this plan will be implemented for all of America's sake.

Bush helps Korea

2007-02-13T12:39:00.000-05:00

United States pays North Korea for bribes
by gd4u2no

How is it possible for us to pay a communist country for "promising" to stop producing additional nuclear weapons? Is this bribery being sponsored by the same "United" States which is behaving as if it would start a war with Iran? Iran is the country located near our victorious Iraq, of course.

How is it possible to pay the country which kindly informed us of what would happen 3 years ago? Am I missing something out of this victorious gesture of sponsorship of the great Korean nation?

It is quite a generous offer on the behalf of the great United States. I would like to threaten and throw punches at someone. Then, turn around to throw some more and they buy me a Mercedes. Nothing personal, but it makes just as much sense. Oh, I forgot one part. The little kid across the street would be mauled by my children. Of course, I would have to leave my senses for this to become a practical and conscientous solution to both of these particular dilemmas. Just to add quite a bit flavor, I would brag about the bad guy with lots of money who sought to pay me from beating him. Heck, why not beat him everyday?

Now, in all actuality, would this not endear me to all the other big, bad guys in the neighborhood? Of course, this is truly discounting the small fish who would suddenly find me appealing to prove their bravado.

Being that this is a skit, a skit seen on international television none of this needs to be bragged about at all. It is shown for what it is.

Government Dares "Us" to Care

2007-02-07T12:43:00.000-05:00

The Effects of Global Warming
By Tonya G.

How can the American people hope for help from its own government after Katrina? Is it possible that the actions of the government instilled confidence? With that being said, how can we hope that the government will take better actions? However, I must be fair and state that Mr. George Bush did seem partial to Gov. Bush's constituents.

However, the problem still remains. George Bush refuses to acknowledge America's contributions to global warming. Now, unless I am mistaken, this type of behavior is what allows your electricity to be disconnected. By not addressing the issue is not in nor of itself a resolution to anything. It will mean that you can disconnect yourself from the world in the same way the power company will disconnect your appliances from usage.

The declarations from scientists around the world are steadily stipulating that natural disasters will become even worse. Ok. Lets see. America was not ready for the disaster of Katrina. The tsunami was not something anyone had time to prepare for. This should definitely lead our leaders to say....hmmm. Switzerland has opted for using less petrol and highter taxes to implement their contribution to lessening pollution. The developed nations of the world are the biggest contributors of this upcoming disaster. When will everyone raise their voice in order to provide somewhat of a good life for children and grandchildren, not to mention all other future generations. What shall we leave them?

Universal Healthcare for Americans

2007-02-07T12:11:00.000-05:00

Universal Health Care of Americans
by Tonya G.

There seems to be appropriate consideration of the people of America by corporations. Most of America has been under the illusion that the American government would have consideration of implementing healthcare coverage. Is it surprising that Walmart would be the company to initiate this benefit for the American public?! Actually, what is incredible to believe is the $245 billion which has been delivered overseas while the American people remain uninsured. I guess, this is definitely a way to relieve social security of having many numerous payouts!!

Walmart, Intel, AT and T, and Kelly Services all plan a meeting in May. They hope to gain additional support from other corporations along with government agencies. Non-profit agencies are also welcome to gain insight for providing national health insurance coverage. Now, this seems rather overdue and well-appreciated. Let us see where this takes the people of the United States.

Hopefully, some type of agreeement which is favorable for the people of America in gaining medical care and coverage for the millions which are uninsured at this time. I might add it would be nice to know that there will be an attainable price associated with whatever resolution is found at the summit meeting.

All said and done. It is still a wonderful thought for Walmart to even attempt to initiate for us. It is a gesture which will have firm resolutions in the best interests of all. My only objection would be to question how this can be done in an effective manner which had not been done.

Arabic International Communities Next?

2007-02-07T10:20:00.000-05:00

Found in Translation
Meadan is offering Arabic-English machine translation to create a virtual town square during troubled times.

By Shereen El Feki

September 11 affected millions of people in myriad ways. For Ed Bice, an American ex-architect, it sparked a desire to get ordinary Middle Easterners--and Westerners--talking together. Naturally, being based in the Bay Area, he turned to the Web for help.

The result, six years later, is Meadan, which means "town square" in Arabic. The basic idea is simple: it's a website that brings English and Arabic speakers together around daily postings of news articles, broadcasts, and events that are of common interest, and it gives users a platform to communicate through dialogues, blogs, and other exchanges. All the while, it allows users to pinpoint their location so that people can share views across continents.

The hard part is creating a system that allows users to express their ideas in their native tongue. Enter IBM. The company has one of the most advanced systems for Arabic-English machine translation. It's 84 percent accurate and can transmute Arabic to English and back again at a blistering 500 words per second.

This is no easy task, says Salim Roukos, a senior manager for multilingual natural-language processing technologies at IBM's Watson Research Center. Because word order in Arabic sentences differs from word order in English, verbs can get lost--quite literally--in machine translation. Moreover, Arabic words have prefixes, suffixes, and other forms that allow them to agree in gender and number--a rigor that freewheeling English lacks and that makes translation from English to Arabic even trickier.

IBM's statistically based translation system has been trained on a massive amount of material, called a parallel corpus, in both modern standard Arabic and formal English--the language of news reports. But the system struggles with slang and other colloquialisms--all the more difficult in Arabic because street talk varies from country to country.

But this is exactly the sort of language that Meadan's online community will use. So the alpha test, which was launched last month, also calls on the services of human translators to correct IBM's machine translations. There is plenty of work to be done. Even a basic English expression like "That's great!" comes out of the machine as the equivalent of "That's big!" in Arabic. It's up to users to point this out and up to designated translators to fix it. The correct pair of translations then becomes another piece of data from which the machine can learn.

Meadan hopes to roll out a beta version later this year--provided it raises the money it needs to move forward. Bice has high hopes. "A year from now, I hope we are a global social network, talking across languages about events in the world." Insha'allah, as we say in Arabic.

North Korea Paid Off

2007-02-04T07:53:00.000-05:00

N.Korea seeks oil for halting nuclear reactor: media
Sun Feb 4, 2007 6:35am ET

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TOKYO (Reuters) - North Korea's top nuclear envoy has told former U.S. officials that Pyongyang wants more than half a million tonnes of fuel oil a year in return for suspending its atomic reactor, a Japanese daily said on Sunday.

Shutting down North Korea's sole operating reactor is expected to be a key negotiating point when six-country discussions on ending the North's nuclear weapons programme resume in Beijing on Thursday, analysts said.

The Asahi Shimbun said North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye-gwan had set out Pyongyang's position when he met former State Department official Joel Witt and nuclear expert David Albright in the North Korean capital last week.

The demand would exceed the energy assistance received by the impoverished communist state under an 1994 deal with Washington, which collapsed when the current nuclear crisis began in 2002.

Kim and other North Korean officials said the country would halt the operation of its reactor at Yongbyon if it obtained energy assistance equivalent to more than 500,000 tonnes of fuel oil a year, the Asahi said, quoting the two Americans.

North Korean officials also demanded that Washington lift its financial sanctions against the country as well as removing North Korea from the list of "terrorism-sponsoring" nations, it said.
Kim was likely to have made the demands to U.S. counterpart Christopher Hill at unprecedented meetings the two men held in Berlin last month, but might have decided to reiterate them to seek concessions when the six-party talks resume, Asahi said.

OPTIMISM Continued...

From the beginning, the United States has shown a different ideology in dealing with the North Koreans. They were talking nuclear weapons prior to the start of the Iraqi war. Now, it seems the North Koreans have realized their substantial power in dealing with America. It seems kind of preposterous of them suggest they should be paid to stop producing nuclear weapons. After considering why they would have this perspective, it is a totally rational way of thinking.

The North Koreans stated they would use a nuclear reactor without any admonitions. They had three years to put forth any ideas or technology dealing with this area of expertise. Weapons have been tested and re-tested. Now, in regards to North Korea, we seem to want to negotiate with a country who has remained adamant in their position and stance after being forewarned without repercussions.

Now, do you suppose I am bit slow? I suppose I am confused. The best confusion may spawn great ideas, though. Let us suppose we treat Iran as if they have not gained any knowledge in production of nuclear weapons. Let us also suppose they have not gained enough experience to be able to accurately make nuclear weapons. Let us suppose they have just begun the journey which the North Koreans have travelled to the end of the road.

Now, considering all of the prior ramblings, how can we not negotiate with Iran or Syria, but bow down before the great North Koreans? Now, how should this particular stance taken by America be construed as a symbol of strength to the rational people of the international community. Possibly, hoping to accommodate them with their suggestions...hmmm.

Dangers of Girls

2007-02-03T10:43:00.000-05:00

All of the information about the Human Papilloma Virus is interesting. In more than 90 percent of cases, the infections are harmless and go away without treatment.

What is most interesting of all is the fact that Texas ordered it a mandatory vaccination for young girls? It is quite peculiar though that young boys are not mandated to be equal participants in this order. Since boys can get it as well, the disease is devastating considering it is transmitted sexually, should they happen upon the Human Papilloma virus which is a silent disease. How would they know to seek treatment? If they would not seek treatment, would females not be exposed to it? Although sex is the most common mechanism for transmitting the papillomavirus, it is not the only way.Also, the papilloma viruses that infect our hands and feet are transmitted by contact with infected surfaces. There are many issues which have not been addressed.

What I find truly remarkable is the fact that any parents would willingly want to inject their children with a Sexually Transmitted Disease as young as 9 years old. What are the chances of a backlash? What I mean to question is what should happen if it backfires as the flu does? This is still an experimental drug since it has just been released.

No study has had enough time to be assured that it is conclusive in stating that should any child receive this treatment, they will have increased chances of not getting cervical cancer, warts or any other results from HPV later in life. The HPV vaccine is given through a series of three shots over a 6-month period. The second and third doses should be given 2 and 6 months (respectively) after the first dose.

Forgive me for rambling in my state of confusion, but could anyone please help me understand. What I would like to understand is simple? How in the world can a clinical study be completed in one year give substantial information to the effect that a person will have significantly diminished their chances of becoming ill from any HPV? Now, should the medical profession or any studies show that the disease is definitely not in their system. It would be absolutely wonderful. Also, it would be understandable since the girl starts receiving the treatment at the age of 9. I would hope most parents would be able to acknowledge this medical discovery without seeking or incurring any medical expertise or expenses. This particular vaccination supposedly would ensure protection for quite some time. Can anyone tell me why Merck is unaware of any particular time period this protection would last? Now, forgive my confusion again, but I have difficulty believing my child would benefit greatly, leastly, or at all from chemicals and disease given by a major pharmaceutical company which states in their own files that the duration of immunity is unknown. Is there a sensible reason which will help me or any other parent clear their confusion over this particular issue? This truly goes beyond my scope of understanding.
Duration of immunity is unknown
Shots initial adminitstered between the ages of 9-12 years of age
Males do not have any vaccination
Other variations of HPV cause cervical cancer

Ramifications of backlash in such a young girl, as with the flu vaccine, would be devastating. Has anyone considered how devastating that could be to a young girl? Not only a young girl, but a young girl who has not discovered sexual activity. How could I possiby explain the examination process to my child in a way that would allow her to understand? Her understanding would become truly limited after enduring the physical examination process. Grown women do not find the process at all appealing. How could she understand this? Better yet, how could she understand that she was taken to a medical facility which was allowed to administer medication which caused this painful process to become necessary? Why should anyone have to contemplate explaining this? Of course, this is only a possibility.

To me it is necessary to have foresight for all potential complications which may occur with an experimental drug. Another consideration which has been overlooked is HPV can still develop. There are over 100 different types of Human Papilloma viruses. The vaccine administered by Merck was developed to protect against 6 of these. Types 2,4,6,8,11,16, and 18. HPV 2 and 4 cause common warts on the hands. HPV 6 causes genital warts. Some types of HPV have no visible signs and cannot be seen with the naked eye. These are the types that infect the cervix and are identified by the cell changes (dysplasia) sometimes found on the Pap test. Some of these HPV types are HPV 16, and HPV 18.

At this point, it is an experimental drug. Not enough data nor testing has been completed to allow this medication to become mandatory for children so young.

On the other hand, I do realize the severity of cancer nor do I want a loved one to have it. Still, I can not find myself in agreement with ordering children as young as 9 to become injected with an STD to prevent further complications. Since all there are other variations of HPV which cause cancer. This disease will still remain a potential threat. HPV is not a disease which is eliminated or diminished with the usage of condoms.

Vaccination Ordered with Unknown Immunity Duration

2007-02-02T20:48:00.000-05:00

Today, Governor Rick Perry used his position to make girls in the state of Texas submit to the HPV vaccine. The vaccine is three shots administered to diminish the chances of girls developing cervical cancer later. Now, there is a bit of controversy surrounding this particular issue. First of all, Gardasil produced by Merck, is a very new vaccine which does not provide the opportunity of gaining a lot of proven and known facts of what the medication is capable of. No one wants to experiment on their own children, especially not with medication. Maryland has decided not to pass legislation mandating this particular vaccine.

Since children would have to be vaccinated as young as 9 years old, it is understandable that parents would have difficulty allowing this particular inoculation.The controversy is partly due to the subliminal message of acceptable intercourse for children entirely too young to understand the consequences due to their age. Hopefully, the parents do not have any reason for concern in this area. Though, we know the world is full of all kinds of surprises and pressure from various sources. Aside from the children, the parents would like to be the decision-makers of their children. Perhaps, parents should be allowed that courtesy.

Raising children is becoming as regulated as corporations should be. Why should things be this way? I guess, the government has substantial reasons to mandate a new vaccination for young girls. Merck knows for sure that one of the reasons this drug is necessary is definitely not due to the duration of immunity after complete treatment with Gardasil. Now, exactly, why should any legislation mandate this particular vaccine is unknown? How often does this mean girls will be inoculated? How well can a 9 year old girl be shielded from HPV if the duration of immunity is unknown is beyond MERCK and I?!! How about that? It is a blessing to have the love of children and it should be returned equally.

Sony admits CD's damage computers

2007-01-31T18:56:00.000-05:00

Sony CD row compensation agreed

Alicia Keys was one of the artists affected by the CD debacle
Record label Sony BMG is to reimburse consumers up to $150 (£76) for damage to computers caused by CDs with hidden anti-piracy software.

The settlement was announced by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
The US regulator said the anti-piracy software wrongly limited the devices on which music could be played to those made by Sony or Microsoft.

It also monitored listening habits so targeted marketing messages could be sent to consumers.
The FTC said the software "exposed consumers to significant security risks and was unreasonably difficult to uninstall".

Under the settlement, Sony BMG must allow consumers to exchange affected CDs bought before 31 December 2006, and reimburse them up to $150 (£76) to repair damage to their computers.

Consent
Sony BMG, which agreed to the settlement figure, did not admit a law violation and the FTC will decide whether to make the settlement final after a 30-day public consultation.

In 2005, the company shipped more than 12 million CDs, each loaded with one of two anti-piracy programs.

About seven million of the CDs were sold and the Digital Rights Management software installed itself on consumers' computers without their knowledge or consent.

CDs by artists such as The Coral, Alicia Keys, Dido, the Foo Fighters and the Backstreet Boys were among the affected discs.

No-one from New York-based Sony BMG was available for comment.

In December, the company settled similar cases with more than 40 states, agreeing to pay more than $4m (£2.03m) to reimburse customers.

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Bush decapitates the Middle East

2007-01-31T18:36:00.000-05:00

Europeans fear US attack on Iran as nuclear row intensifies·
Transatlantic rift emerges over how to handle crisis · America builds up its naval forces in the Gulf
Ian Traynor in Brussels and Jonathan Steele
Wednesday January 31, 2007
The Guardian

Senior European policy-makers are increasingly worried that the US administration will resort to air strikes against Iran to try to destroy its suspect nuclear programme.

As transatlantic friction over how to deal with the Iranian impasse intensifies, there are fears in European capitals that the nuclear crisis could come to a head this year because of US frustration with Russian stalling tactics at the UN security council. "The clock is ticking," said one European official. "Military action has come back on to the table more seriously than before. The language in the US has changed."

As the Americans continue their biggest naval build-up in the Gulf since the start of the Iraq war four years ago, a transatlantic rift is opening up on several important aspects of the Iran dispute.

The Bush administration will shortly publish a dossier of charges of alleged Iranian subversion in Iraq. "Iran has steadily ramped up its activity in Iraq in the last three to four months. This applies to the scope and pace of their operations. You could call these brazen activities," a senior US official said in London yesterday.

Although the Iranians were primarily in Shia areas, they were not confined to them, the US source said, implying that they had formed links with Sunni insurgents and were helping them with booby-trap bombs aimed at Iraqi and US forces, new versions of the "improvised explosive devices".

Senior members of the US Congress have raised concerns that the US will attack Iran in retaliation for its alleged activities in Iraq. The official said there were no plans for "cross-border operations" from Iraq to Iran. But he said: "We don't want a progressively more confident and bolder Iran ... The perception that Iran is ascendant in the region and that there are no limits to what Iran can do - that's what is destabilising."

The Americans and Europeans have sought to maintain a common front on the nuclear issue for the past 30 months, with the European troika of Britain, France and Germany running failed negotiations with the Iranians and the Americans tacitly supporting them.

But diplomats in Brussels and those dealing with the dispute in Vienna say a fissure has opened up between the US and western Europe on three crucial aspects - the military option; how and how quickly to hit Iran with economic sanctions already decreed by the UN security council; and how to deal with Russian opposition to action against Iran through the security council.

"There's anxiety everywhere you turn," said a diplomat familiar with the work of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. "The Europeans are very concerned the shit could hit the fan."

A US navy battle group of seven vessels was steaming towards the Gulf yesterday from the Red Sea, part of a deployment of 50 US ships, including two aircraft carriers, expected in the area in weeks.

"No path is envisaged by the EU other than the UN path," the EU's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, told the Guardian yesterday. "The priority for all of us is that Iran complies with UN security council resolutions."

The IAEA chief, Mohamed ElBaradei, called at the weekend for a "timeout" in the worsening confrontation in an attempt to enable both sides to save face and climb down. But the Americans rejected the proposal and European officials involved in the dispute also believe the Iranians cannot be trusted to stick to a deal.

Despite recurring tensions on the Middle East between the US and France, the French are the most hawkish of the Europeans on Iran and are said to back a US drive to tighten the noose on Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The populist and recalcitrant leader is perceived to have been weakened recently, in part because of a mishandling of the nuclear row. "One group of western countries thinks it's a good time to step up the pressure on Ahmadinejad. All options are on the table. Others are worried we might be stumbling into a war," said another diplomat familiar with the dispute.

Is this article not truly informative of European opinion? Or shall we say the international community has the same concerns of the impact it will have upon us all? Bush seems geared towards another war before finishing the first war. What victories he must covet?!! In order to continue to act against the wishes of the American people as well as the international community means that Bush is definitely not afraid of being alone. Of course, my perspective could be a bit off, since he had quite a bit of approval for invading a country which had nothing to do with WMD nor bin Laden. Well, what do I know? I am not qualified to lead this country. I am not a person of honor who shall lead this country in the proper direction with various wars which my country is not equipped to fight by equipment nor personnel against the interests of my country, the international community nor maintaining various purposes of each action. It takes a really charismatic person to lead the global community in such a way that a wonderful purpose is truly hidden from all observers. This is what makes a true leader of the people. Boy, I sure missed a lot growing up.

CIA Global Prisons

2007-01-31T18:23:00.000-05:00

Germany issues arrest warrants for suspected CIA agents
Associated PressWednesday January 31, 2007
Guardian Unlimited

Khaled al-Masri, who says he was abducted in Macedonia and flown to a secret prison in Afghanistan, where he was abused.

German prosecutors have issued arrest warrants for 13 suspected CIA agents over their alleged kidnapping three years ago of a German citizen, authorities said today.

The unidentified agents are being sought on suspicion of the wrongful imprisonment of Khaled al-Masri and of causing him serious bodily harm, said Munich prosecutor Christian Schmidt-Sommerfeld. He said the warrants were issued in the last few days.

Mr al-Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent, says he was abducted in December 2003 at the Serbian-Macedonian border and flown by the CIA to a detention centre in Kabul, Afghanistan, where he was abused.

He says he was released in Albania in May 2004 after the CIA discovered they had the wrong person.

Human rights campaigners have used Mr al-Masri's story to press the US to stop flying terrorism suspects to countries other than the US where they could face abuse - a practice known as "extraordinary rendition". Italy has issued arrest warrants for alleged CIA agents in a separate case.

The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, and other US officials have not yet commented on the case. However, the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, has said the US has acknowledged making a mistake with Mr al-Masri.

The German government refused to comment on the arrest warrants, citing the ongoing judicial proceedings.

The CIA also declined to comment.

Germany's NDR television released a list of the names of the suspected agents - 11 men and two women - it said its reporters had obtained. It said three had been contacted by its reporters and had refused to comment.

Though the prosecutors' office refused to confirm the names, Mr Schmidt-Sommerfeld said, "the personal details contained in the arrest warrants are, according to our current knowledge, aliases of CIA agents".

"Further investigation will, among other things, concentrate on trying to determine the clear identities of the suspects," he said in a statement. Mr al-Masri's attorney, Manfred Gnjidic, said the issuance of the arrest warrants were "a very important step in the rehabilitation of al-Masri". "It shows us that we were right in putting our trust in the German authorities and the German prosecutors," he said at a news conference.

Prosecutors were led to the suspects after receiving a list in December 2005 of possible people involved in the kidnapping. The list was compiled by a Spanish journalist from sources within Spain's civil guard, a paramilitary police unit that answers to the interior ministry, Mr Schmidt-Sommerfeld said.

With help from Spanish authorities, they were then able to pursue an investigation against "concrete persons," Mr Schmidt-Sommerfeld said. Tips were also received from others, including the Milan prosecutor's office and Dick Marty, a Swiss senator who led an inquiry into CIA renditions on behalf of the Council of Europe. Mr Schmidt-Sommerfeld did not elaborate on what the tips were.

The CIA agents are suspected to have flown in January 2004 aboard a Boeing 737 from the Spanish island of Palma de Mallorca to pick up Mr al-Masri after he had been detained by Macedonian authorities, Munich prosecutor August Stern said. ARD public television has reported that investigators worked from passport photocopies made by a hotel where the suspects stayed, but Mr Stern said he could not confirm that or other details. The report last year gave what it said were the cover names of three men who were pilots and lived in the US state of North Carolina.

In October, Munich prosecutors said that, based on the list, they were seeking to ban several CIA agents suspected of kidnapping Mr al-Masri from entering German territory. They did not give any further details.

In a separate case, Italian authorities are seeking the arrest of 26 Americans, all but one believed to be CIA agents, in connection with the 2003 kidnapping in Milan of Egyptian cleric and terror suspect Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr.

The al-Masri case has been a sore point in otherwise good German-US relations.
The US justice department has declined to provide Munich prosecutors assistance, citing ongoing legal proceedings in the US.

Mr al-Masri has asked a federal appeals court in Richmond, Virginia, to reinstate a lawsuit he filed against the CIA. A judge dismissed the lawsuit in May, ruling that a trial could harm national security by revealing details about CIA activities.

Article continues

This seems a bit like the confirmation which Bush denied for United States detention centers. If I recall correctly, Bush denied there were other facilities where prisoners of detention were being held prior, during and after the Abu incident. He was accused of doing this very thing which he adamantly denied. Now, what happened to that particular line? Well, time will decide what truth comes forth this time around.

Private Consultant Nominated for Spying

2007-01-31T16:47:00.000-05:00

Top spy-chief nominee faces hurdles
By Ted Bridis - The Associated PressPosted : Wednesday Jan 31, 2007 14:35:46 EST

President Bush’s choice to be the nation’s new spy chief works as a $2 million-a-year private consultant with some of the same senior military and intelligence officials he would supervise as director of national intelligence.

Retired Vice Adm. Mike McConnell could face an unusually daunting challenge avoiding ethical entanglements after a decade working with Booz Allen Hamilton Inc., a large defense and intelligence consulting company with sales of $3.7 billion worldwide, according to an extensive Associated Press review of McConnell’s finances and business deals.

McConnell’s Senate confirmation hearing is to begin Thursday.

A Senate Intelligence Committee member, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said he already has urged McConnell to be prepared to discuss his work as a consultant and its implications on the job of chief over all U.S. intelligence agencies. Those agencies rely heavily on work by outside consultants, who often are hired under contracts kept secret for national security reasons.
“I’m going to bring it up,” Wyden said. “I made it clear that I was going to be asking questions about issues relating to his work with contractors.”

In May, for example, McConnell and other company executives met privately in San Antonio with Maj. Gen. Craig Koziol, a top Air Force intelligence officer in charge of cyberwarfare, according to records obtained by the AP under the Freedom of Information Act. The company bid months later on a related contract from the Air Intelligence Agency, part of the U.S. intelligence community that McConnell would oversee as the national director.

More than half of Booz Allen Hamilton’s sales come from such government contracts. McConnell’s closest colleagues at the company anticipate intense scrutiny over its future relationship with him as the overseer of the nation’s 16 spy agencies.

“I will never be able to go in and see him in his office,” said Richard Wilhelm, a Booz Allen Hamilton senior vice president who has worked with McConnell for more than 30 years. “He’s said, ‘Unfortunately, I’ll not be able to talk to you guys anymore.’ We’ll have to be very careful.”
Efforts to reach McConnell through the White House and through Booz Allen Hamilton were unsuccessful. Presidential nominees routinely do not speak publicly or with reporters before Senate confirmation hearings.

The White House promised that McConnell would divest any financial holdings in Booz Allen Hamilton if he is confirmed as intelligence chief. In addition to his $1,999,840 salary, McConnell owns $1 million to $5 million in company stock, plus up to $1.15 million more in other investment funds owned through the company, according to financial reports he submitted to the White House.

McConnell would earn $186,600 annually as director of national intelligence.

“There has to be the highest level of oversight within the agency and Congress to make sure any appearance of impropriety is totally investigated and erased,” said Scott Amey, general counsel for the Project on Government Oversight, a Washington-based whistleblowers group. Amey said public scrutiny of classified intelligence contracts is limited because of secrecy.

Booz Allen Hamilton and the intelligence director’s office separately said each will vigorously enforce ethics rules related to McConnell and the company.

In a statement, the agency pledged to refer potential business conflicts to ethics officers inside federal agencies.

A Booz Allen Hamilton spokesman, George Farrar, said the company will establish contracting firewalls to avoid conflicts with McConnell. “That has to be the case,” Farrar said. “You have to maintain absolutely by-the-rules contracting.”

McConnell’s nomination comes in the midst of a broad, government-wide review by the intelligence director’s own office about the role of private contractors in U.S. spy agencies. That report, which will examine whether the government hires too many such contractors, is nearly finished but has not yet been sent to Congress.

McConnell, a former director of the National Security Agency until 1996, is described by those who have worked with him as an affable and well-respected intelligence expert. He is credited with recognizing more than a decade ago the risks from electronic attacks by foreigners against important U.S. computer networks — years ahead of many other government officials.
McConnell is still expecting an unspecified lump-sum retirement payment, an unspecified bonus and an unspecified payment to his retirement account from Booz Allen Hamilton, according to his financial records. The company also will continue to pay for his medical and dental insurance.
Separately, McConnell draws $90,944 annually from his Navy retirement and owns smaller amounts of stock in other companies that also work extensively with the U.S. government, including Halliburton Co., Boeing Co., L-3 Communications Holdings Inc., Cisco Systems Inc., Oracle Corp., Microsoft Corp. and others. He also earns $16,000 as a board member for CompuDyne Corp., which sells security systems to the federal government, and $30,000 as chairman of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance, a trade group that lobbies the government on intelligence matters.

It was unclear how much McConnell’s finances have changed since he left U.S. government work in 1996. The National Security Agency, which he led, told the AP it could not locate McConnell’s financial records from that period in its files. It suggested the records might have been destroyed because so much time had passed since he worked there.

Associated Press Writer Sharon Theimer contributed to this report.

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This is an interesting article since it describes the traits which seem to inspire faith within this particular administration. McConnell definitely has all of the contacts necessary to further his career in the projected field should his nomination be successful. What is a strong question in my mind is this. Why would someone who has a salary of approx. 2 million dollars, a pension from the military of approx 91k, board memberships which amount to approx. 32k plus various other investments resign for approx. 190k? Is that a legitimate bargin? Or is there something missing which makes this potential position seem much more lucrative than the other monetary gains? How about it people? Let me know what you think of this article.

Iran and US conflict

2007-01-27T23:13:00.000-05:00

They're broken men, so don't let them take us to a new war

Presidents Bush and Ahmadinejad have lost face at home; now others must forge peaceful settlements in the Middle East

Henry PorterSunday
January 28, 2007The Observer

There is a striking likeness in the expressions of George W Bush and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran as they confront each other over the issues of uranium enrichment and dominance in the Middle East. It falls somewhere between the chastened and defiant playground bully.

This is unsurprising: though not political equivalents, the two are really quite similar. Both had little experience of government or international affairs before being carried to power on a tide of populist, religious conservatism. Neither travelled abroad much, but they both had certain views about the world and the destiny of their nations. They had all the answers, yet there was also a dangerous lack of seriousness in them which has now earned them both the scorn of their people and rebuffs from their elders.

We think of Bush as being the more unpopular of the two. His approval ratings are at the level of Nixon's just before he left the White House. After an unconvincing performance in the State of the Union Address, his plans for the troop surge in Iraq were rejected by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and may now be voted down by the entire Senate. Senior Republican senators such as Chuck Hagel and John Warner are furious that sensible suggestions contained in the Iraq Study Group Report have been ignored. Although the President looked receptive when the report was delivered to him by James Baker, there has been no progress in policy, no evidence of any kind of deeper thinking in the White House. Nothing except that familiar foggy, narrow-eyed truculence of Bush Junior in a tight spot.

This would be a depressing but for similar difficulties experienced by Ahmadinejad over the last few weeks. Just as the senior Republican elders have turned on Bush, so Iran's religious leaders are moving to restrain their President. They criticise his bellicose foreign policy and the exceptionally poor record on promised reforms at home. There is a sense of embarrassment among sophisticated Iranians about their President's pronouncements, which surely rings a bell with Americans.

The most important sign-off disenchantment came in Jomhouri Islami, the newspaper owned by Iran's supreme religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, which said in an editorial: 'Turning the nuclear issue into a propaganda issue gives the impression that to cover up the flaws in government you are exaggerating its importance.'

The paper also suggested that the President should speak about the nuclear issue less, stop provoking aggressive powers like the United States and concentrate on the daily needs of the people - 'those who voted for you on your promises'. Two weeks ago, 150 legislators sent a letter to Ahmadinejad openly attacking him for missing his budget deadline and blaming him for inflation and rising unemployment.

A loss of confidence in both men at home is important because it offers us a brief opportunity to assert diplomacy over the habits of rhetoric and escalation. Although UN nuclear experts suggest the Iranians are at least five years from developing a bomb and delivery system, the Iranians are due to open a large uranium enrichment plant within a matter of weeks. If this goes ahead, a peaceful solution will be much harder to find; to decommission this new facility will require a loss of face for Ahmadinejad.

So the hawks in the West will begin the slow drumbeat for a first strike. Indeed, it has already started. For some weeks, the Daily Telegraph has been running a series of what, in my opinion, are extremely dubious stories all attributed to mysterious 'European defence officials' and 'senior Western military sources'. A front-page story last week suggested that North Korea has offered to help Iran with a nuclear test within the year. Apart from these shadowy spokesmen, it could offer no evidence, which is why the story was only seriously picked up in Israel.

In Israel, it is believed that the Iranians may be able to launch a nuclear warhead into its territory within three, not five, years. Former Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has asked who will defend the Jews from a genocidal government in Iran if they do not themselves. Israeli historian Benny Morris contributed this chilling thought to the Jerusalem Post. 'One bright morning in five to 10 years, perhaps a regional crisis, a day or a year or five years after Iran's acquisition of the bomb, the mullahs in Qom will convene in secret session... and give President Ahmadinejad the go-ahead.'

In Iran, 38 nuclear inspectors have been barred from entering the country in retaliation for the UN resolution introducing mild sanctions, and now the Iranians have installed a missile defence system (supplied by the Russians) to defend their nuclear facilities from air attacks. The Americans have responded by moving another aircraft carrier into the region and by offering Patriot missile systems to Iran's uneasy Arab neighbours.

Make no mistake: this a much more dangerous situation than Iraq and it is unfolding on the watch of a couple of second-raters.

It is true that few nations that have been more estranged over the last quarter of a century, but with the stakes so high, it seems extraordinary that America has no representation in Tehran and almost no contact except through the Swiss embassy. As Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times reminded us last week, in 2003, America rebuffed an advance made by the Iranians through the Swiss, which, in exchange for the lifting of sanctions, suggested the two countries work together on the capture of terrorists in Iraq, stabilising the country after invasion and coming to an agreement on uranium enrichment as well as the financing of Hizbollah and Hamas.
The offer, made almost two years before Ahmadinejad was elected, was layered with insincerity and bluff, but professional diplomats are used to this. At least the two sides would have been talking and Tehran could have been held to account for some of the things that have been going on in Iraq.

But the situation is not beyond hope. The West must realise that if a first strike takes place we have lost. Whatever is destroyed in Iran, the Iranians will come back and produce a bomb that they may feel more entitled to use. The clash of civilisations predicted by neocon academics for years will have moved a step closer to dominating the 21st century at the very moment when all civilisation needs to concentrate on the multiple threats presented by climate change.

What we must hope for is a collective act of will in Europe, and among wiser heads in Washington DC, which says it doesn't have to be this way. This is not impossible. Only last week, representatives from 30 countries led by America and Saudi Arabia met in Paris to contribute to a £5bn fund to prop up Prime Minister Fouad Siniora's government in Lebanon. This was a diplomatic action taken by both Middle Eastern and Western powers to defend Lebanon against Iran's proxies in the Hizbollah terrorist organisation, and it is exactly the right way to deal with Iran.

What can the British government do about Ahmadinejad? The first thing to is to recognise his failing support at home is an advantage that will be lost if the drumbeat to war is allowed to continue. There is no reason why Tony Blair should not add to the call from the head of UN inspectors, Mohamed ElBaradei, for a time out in which sanctions would be suspended. Blair still has a voice that is heard in the US. He should consider making a speech which insists that Bush initiates direct diplomatic relations with Tehran as well as a renewed effort to create the two-state solution for Israel and Palestine. He owes something to the cause of peaceful resolution and, besides, these are hardly controversial views: both have already been expressed by James Baker's Iraq Study Group

2007-01-27T20:03:00.000-05:00

US army describes Iraq abductions
by Mike Wooldridge BBC News, Baghdad

The militants got by an Iraqi police checkpoint before the attackThe US military in Iraq has given new details of an attack last week in which five US soldiers were killed.

Four of them were abducted by militants posing as an American security team.

They travelled in the kind of vehicles often used for US government convoys, Wore US-style uniforms and carried US-style weapons.

Initially the military said all five soldiers were killed repelling an attack on an Iraqi government compound in the Shia holy city of Karbala.

According to the new account, US military officers were attending a meeting in the compound when the convoy of at least five sport utility vehicles impersonating Americans entered and killed one US soldier.

There was a series of explosions and in the melee, the attackers then set off again with four captured US soldiers.

'Brazen attack'
They drove into a neighbouring province and then abandoned the SUVs.

The attack on the US troops is believed to be unprecedentedIraqi police, by now in pursuit, found the vehicles.

Two US soldiers were found handcuffed together in one of the SUVs, shot dead.
A third American soldier lay dead on the ground.

The fourth was still alive despite a gunshot wound to the head but died shortly afterwards.
Such a brazen attack is believed to be unprecedented, and the US military say the militants bypassed Iraqi police to reach their goal.

The Americans say they are not only trying to determine who carried out the attack but also the reason for the breakdown in security at the government compound.

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This is an awfully interesting tactic. Instead of asking us to leave, they decide to help us draw our own rational conclusions. Those troops did not deserve to die such a death.

The Iraqi people have made themselves crystal clear. A genie is not necessary to understand the depth of emotion used in wanting the removal of Americans from their land.

We, the people of America, have also clarified our thoughts on this particular war.

Our trusted leader has made his position of the Iraqi war translucent to the nth degree, though he seems to be costing the American people more than he is serving them.

What can possibly be done to heal both countries intact without losing any political standing?

Nothing can be done to repair the lives of the troops involved nor their families.

It is a shame that guidance is given freely by Congress, the American people and the Iraqi people, the international community who was against from the start.

After 3 years, Mr. Bush still has not gained any additional insight other than what he had upon the initial theft of the presidency.

International Taxation

2007-01-27T17:03:00.000-05:00

Sneaky Tax Invasion
by T. Grinston

Normally, I have thought that my computer was a private entity. Since, I have no need of any overt actions which may bring attention to myself until this blog. Even then I imagined that unless I publicly declared thoughts and actions, they would remain private.

There is a new program on the market called Xenon. This program allows all personal information to be uncovered and taken. The Xenon program is currently being used by five nations. It actually serves the international governments using it the ability to monitor businesses which may not report all transactions for taxation.

Sweden will implement this particular program for their usage later this year. Sweden is taking its time since it has already implemented a program of its own which serves a similar purpose. While the United States neither denies nor claims to utilize this program.

No longer will anyone's actions remain private if they choose to shop online, visit porn or poker websites. Also, anyone who purchases from an auction may reveal their purchases without being aware of it. This program comes at a particularly inconvenient time.

Considering all of the identity hackers, reissuance of credit cards, cancellations of credit cards, aside from the fact that someone whom you did not give your personal information will gain it anyways, without regard for your privacy. Public outcry may be the reason the United States is not declaring usage of it. What do you think of the all this?

2007-01-27T15:23:00.000-05:00

Iran installing 3,000 nuclear centrifuges, MP says
Sat Jan 27, 2007 12:41pm ET

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TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran is installing 3,000 nuclear centrifuges, a senior Iranian member of parliament was quoted as saying on Saturday, defying U.N. calls for Tehran to suspend uranium enrichment.

"We are now installing 3,000 centrifuges," Alaeddin Boroujerdi, the head of parliament's foreign affairs and national security committee, was quoted as saying by the official IRNA news agency.

The centrifuges would allow Iran to begin industrial scale of nuclear fuel, which the West fears could lead to atom bombs.

Boroujerdi's remarks followed reports earlier this month from diplomats, who said inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency had concluded that Iran was ready to start installing the centrifuges.

America is the greatest superpower in the world. Why should we take advantage of the disadvantaged for trying to improve their own country and themselves? At the same time, we are occupying Iraq which had become so pathetic with need of help. Now, we are "helping" Iraq.

During the same occupation, we dare Iran, another country in need of electricity to remain at that level. While we deny Iran the financial resources which had been promised by the United States.

Should third world countries be offered technology to help themselves and stopped from maximizing the ability to use their own knowledge to make their country comfortable? Who gives us the right to become so superior that we shall order them to remain in the dark?

Maybe I am misguided, war seems to strongly exude itself from our wonderful leadership at any cost, regardless of the quality of anyone else's life.

Russia defends Iran

2007-01-27T15:05:00.000-05:00

Russia queries US presence in Mideast: agencies
Sat Jan 27, 2007 2:03pm ET

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By Tom Miles

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia expects the United States to explain its growing military presence in the Middle East when the countries next meet to discuss the region, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told Russian news agencies on Saturday.

"I have seen no change in Washington's fairly aggressive rhetoric," Lavrov said.

"It continues, just like its actions to increase the military presence in the region. It will be one of the questions which we want to clarify in Washington. What's it all about?"

Lavrov is expected to attend a meeting of the so-called Quartet of international mediators in Washington on February 2 to try to revive Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking. Russia, the United States, EU and United Nations make up the Quartet.

The United States is in the process of sending an additional 21,500 troops to Iraq, which it invaded in 2003, in an effort to quell an insurgency. It already has 134,000 troops in Iraq.

Washington has said it is deploying a second aircraft carrier group in the Gulf as well as Patriot missile defense systems -- steps widely seen as a warning to Iran and Syria.

The United States, which has accused Iran and Syria of being destabilizing influences in the region, maintains a significant military presence in Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain, base for the U.S. Navy's Fifth fleet.

Continued...

© Reuters 2007. All Rights Reserved.

Is this not an odd predicament for the United States? What became of the bargaining chips we had from conducting ourselves in an admirable political stance? Have we used them all defending Israel? Or does the goodwill in Iraq speak for itself? This shall be an interesting development considering the controversy surrounding the country and the "real" issues which shall hopefully be displayed to the international community during this meeting. What do you think about it? Let me know.

2007-01-26T22:37:00.000-05:00

Pelosi urges political reconciliation in suprise Iraq visit
Jan 26 10:06 PM US/Eastern

The new Democrat speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, made a surprise visit to Baghdad where she urged Iraqi leaders to pursue political solutions to end spiraling sectarian violence.

But US and Iraqi officials announced tough new tactics to starve sectarian violence of outside support with US forces now targeting Iranian agents in Iraq for capture or killing.

Despite US and Iraqi efforts to increase security in the capital, bombers on Friday killed 15 people in Baghdad's famous pet market.

Pelosi, 66, the first female Speaker of the House who is known for her strong anti-war stance, arrived in Baghdad along with several other senior Democratic lawmakers.

Pelosi is the spearhead of Democratic opposition to US President George W. Bush, who asked critics of his new Iraqi strategy Tuesday to "give it a chance."

But in meetings with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and US officials she advocated the Iraqis reaching political solutions rather than relying on a surge in US troops to end sectarian violence.

"The sooner Iraqi leaders make necessary political accommodations, including amending their constitution to resolve outstanding differences among all Iraqi communities, the better the chances for ending the sectarian violence," the lawmakers said in a statement released by Pelosi's office after the meetings.

They said that in their meetings they stressed their belief that Iraqis must take "primary responsibility" for the country's security.

"The delegation's view is that American forces should quickly begin to transition from a combat role to one focused on training, counter-terrorism, force protection, and controlling Iraq's borders."

Maliki assured Pelosi the that Baghdad was determined "to assume security missions currently handled by US-led forces in Iraq," but asked that the training and equipping of Iraqi forces with modern weapons be speeded up, a statement from his office said.

The California Democrat is second in line to assume the US presidency, behind Vice President Dick Cheney.

The US Senate, meanwhile, confirmed Friday Lieutenant General David Petraeus as the new commander of US forces in Iraq, replacing General George Casey.

Bush said on Friday he had issued orders to confront those who target Iraqis or US forces in Iraq, as US and Iraqi officials confirmed tough new tactics against Iranian agents there.

"If somebody's trying to harm our troops, or stop us from achieving our goal, or killing innocent citizens in Iraq, we will stop them," Bush said.

At the same time, Bush said as he met with Petraeus that it would be wrong to think that such efforts mean a coming war with Iran.

Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said Washington had made clear it fears that Iran was supplying Shiite Iraqi insurgents with technology to make sophisticated improvised explosive devices (IEDs) to attack US forces.

"We have every right to go after those Iranian paramilitary intelligence agents engaged in this activity inside Iraq," Burns told reporters.

In Baghdad, Maliki outlined to Pelosi his plan to quell violence in Baghdad, a necessity underscored by the bombing earlier Friday of the Al-Ghazil market that killed 15 people, the latest in a bombing spree targeting shopping areas that has killed more than 150 people this week.

The bombing was another gruesome example of the current trend followed by insurgents to attack markets to inflict as many civilian casualties as possible.

Elsewhere on Friday, five more Iraqis were killed in violence, while police in Baghdad discovered 27 bodies bearing bullet wounds.

"The prime minister underscored his government's determination to deal with terrorist groups. This confrontation will not be based solely on military force however, but also on political means," Maliki's office said.

US and Iraqi authorities stress their new security plan will target militiamen involved in sectarian killing, and its focus was expected to be the Mahdi Army, the armed unit headed by anti-US Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

All of this reminds me of grade school where the teacher quizzed all of the students on our addition tables. Should you decide to add all of the articles pertaining to Iran in any particular order the common denominator from the United States would be violence, as far as our wonderful leader is concerned. Violence begets violence. It gives new meaning to the persona of our illustrious leader of the "United" States. When is enough of bullying enough. There is not going to be any redemption for America in the eyes of the international community should the plotted path be allowed to make any more gains. However, our republican leader is nothing if not headstrong and "intelligent". How many times must the same mistake be made in order to regain equilibrium? Balance is a delicate action which is essential to any meaningful dialogue with anyone even family members. Although, it is dependent upon the role models on which you choose to uphold. Well, I guess the Katrina comment by the maternal role model displayed a great deal of the delicacy of manners our "chosen" leader was exposed to during childhood. Why should anyone expect him to outshine his own guidance? Pelosi is trying to ensure that the divided factions realize that working together would allow Iraq to become self-sufficient and head towards greater strides as a whole nation. If I can remember correctly, this was one of the main issues regarding the aftermath of the brief war. Now, civil war reigns supreme. Partly due to conditions being worse than when Saddam was reigning. There is so much division and chaos, it shall be interesting to see if the Iraqi people can learn to trust again.

Iran's International Dilemma

2007-01-26T22:20:00.000-05:00

UN nuclear chief calls for 'timeout' over Iran
Jan 26 9:19 PM US/Eastern

The United Nations nuclear chief has called for a "timeout" in the showdown over Iran's nuclear ambitions, with the UN suspending sanctions and Tehran halting uranium enrichment at the same time.

"Iran should stop enriching uranium and the international community should take a timeout from implementing sanctions," Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said in Switzerland.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, ElBaradei proposed a face-saving solution in which the two steps take place simultaneously instead of in sequence.

He added that an escalation of the crisis, and possible war, must be avoided, in comments reported to AFP at IAEA headquarters in Vienna.

"We need to reverse course because we are heading into a crash course," ElBaradei told reporters. "The idea that there's a military solution is absolutely bonkers."

The UN Security Council has imposed sanctions to get Iran to stop uranium enrichment, which makes fuel for civilian nuclear reactors but also the explosive core of atom bombs.
Iran says its nuclear program is a peaceful effort to generate electricity but the United States claims Tehran is hiding work on developing atomic weapons.

The Security Council has said that if Iran freezes enrichment, then sanctions could be lifted.
But Iran is planning to increase its enrichment capacity by installing 3,000 centrifuges, the machines which enrich uranium, at an underground facility in Natanz, where it is already running two pilot cascades of 164-centrifuges each at a pilot site above-ground.

ElBaradei is to report to the Security Council by February 21 on whether Iran has suspended enrichment.

If it has not, sanctions could be tightened and there is increased speculation that either the United States or Israel could eventually decide to bomb Iran in order to stop it from making nuclear weapons.

The United States kept up the pressure on Tehran on Friday, warning of "universal" opposition and more international pressure if it proceeds with plans to installing 3,000 centrifuges.

"This would be a major miscalculation and mistake by the Iranian government," US Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said Washington. "If Iran takes this step, it is going to confront universal international opposition.

"And if they think that they can get away with 3,000 centrifuges without another Security Council resolution and additional international pressure then they're very badly mistaken," Burns said.

ElBaradei has repeatedly said the crisis must be resolved through negotiation, with Iran guaranteeing that it is not an atom bomb threat and the West taking into consideration Tehran's legitimate security concerns.

ElBaradei said Friday: "There is no reason for Iran to feed nuclear material into enrichment cascades. They can take time out to build confidence.

"We have three to eight years (before Iran can build an atom bomb), which gives us a lot of time to reflect."

Iran's face-off with the IAEA went up a notch this week when the agency sharply answered Iran, asking it in a letter to reverse its ban on 38 IAEA inspectors from working in the country, a spokeswoman told AFP.

A diplomat said the IAEA was "pushing back" as "no country has ever de-designated so many inspectors in one go."

The strong IAEA response came even as Iran sent a letter of its own to the agency asking for the removal of the official overseeing the IAEA's inspection of the Iranian nuclear program, diplomats told AFP.

Iran had banned Christian Charlier, who is Belgian, last April from entering the country in retaliation for alleged leaks to the press.

Iran now wants Charlier no longer even to see reports on Iran at the agency's safeguards division, a diplomat said.

But IAEA officials told Iran that while it "has the right not to give visas, the IAEA decides what it does in Vienna," the diplomat said.

The United States on Friday called Tehran's attempt to get Charlier removed "outrageous."
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack called Iran's action "inspector shopping" and "indicative of their continued defiance."

"And this is not what the international system is looking for or, frankly, what it was hoping for in terms of Iranian behavior," he said.

This is actually some long awaited news. There are some who have ascertained that our great leader has been contemplating numerous maneuvers to incur this particular stance for Iran within the international community. There is not any instrument which can accurately measure the elation this situation must give the great leaders of our nation who have been steadily heading towards this path.
Now, that the batter is up, what shall happen to Iran in particular? Also, how will our great leader incur international wrath during this point of our extended military? Do you believe this particular endeavor will become the victory that Iraq is not? Let me know what you think of this.

Mississippi Katrina Victims

2007-01-26T22:04:00.000-05:00

Judge Balks at State Farm Katrina Deal
Jan 26 9:13 PM US/Eastern

By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN Associated Press Writer

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- A federal judge in Mississippi on Friday refused to endorse part of a proposed settlement that calls for insurance payments to thousands of Mississippi policyholders whose homes were destroyed or damaged by Hurricane Katrina.

U.S. District Judge L.T. Senter Jr. would not sign off on a deal between State Farm Fire & Casualty Co. and Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood for at least $50 million in payments to policyholders whose claims were denied but didn't sue the company.

The Bloomington, Ill.-based insurer also had agreed to pay about $80 million to more than 600 policyholders who sued the company for refusing to cover damage from the Aug. 29, 2005, storm. Senter hasn't been asked to sign off on that part of the deal.

Senter said he doesn't have enough information to determine how many policyholders would benefit from the deal or how much each can be paid.

"In the absence of substantially more information than I now have before me, I am unable to say, even preliminarily, that the proposed settlement establishes a procedure that is fair, just, balanced or reasonable," he wrote.

Senter rejected the settlement "without prejudice," allowing lawyers to present a new agreement that satisfies his concerns.

State Farm spokesman Phil Supple said the company looks forward to "addressing Judge Senter's concerns," adding, "We believe, given the opportunity, he will come to view the proposed settlement as fair, just, balanced and reasonable."

Hood, in a written statement, said State Farm and plaintiffs' lawyers were responsible for negotiating the terms of the "class action" portion of the settlement. Hood added that he had "reservations" about that part of the deal.

"Nevertheless, I knew that Judge Senter would make sure that the class was a fair procedure for all," he added. "I am confident that Judge Senter will make the plaintiffs and State Farm fix the problems he has raised in his order."

Richard "Dickie" Scruggs, a lawyer for the 639 policyholders who have settled their lawsuits with State Farm, said Senter's ruling shouldn't have any affect on the company's settlements with his clients. Scruggs said he expects to begin making payments to his clients next week.
"Case by case, litigation over many years is in nobody's best interest," Scruggs said. "It's our hope that we can quickly address the judge's concerns."

In his eight-page ruling Friday, Senter said that although State Farm has agreed to pay $50 million to policyholders who qualify for the class action portion of the settlement, he can't determine "how thinly this large sum may be spread among the class members."

Senter also expressed concern about a lack of any "guaranteed" payments to policyholders whose homes weren't completely destroyed and said he is "uncomfortable" with allowing many cases to be settled by binding arbitration "when none of these individuals has ever agreed to participate in that procedure."

Mississippi's mass settlement agreement didn't involve any claims in other states.
Lawyers involved in the agreement presented the "class action" portion of the deal to Senter on Tuesday afternoon.

That part of the agreement would require State Farm to reopen and review claims filed by roughly 35,000 policyholders who live in Mississippi's three coastal counties but didn't file lawsuits against State Farm.

After reviewing those claims, the company would be required to make new offers. Any disputes would be heard by an arbitrator whose decision would be binding.

The accord came less than two weeks after a federal jury in Gulfport awarded $2.5 million in punitive damages to a couple who sued State Farm for denying their claim after Katrina. Senter took part of that case out of jurors' hands, ruling that State Farm is liable for $223,292 in storm damage to the Biloxi home of Norman and Genevieve Broussard.

Senter is the only federal judge in Mississippi who has been presiding over the hundreds of lawsuits that policyholders filed against State Farm and other insurers.

In the first trial for a Katrina insurance case, Senter ruled in August that Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co.'s homeowner policies cover damage from wind but not storm surge. He also has ordered dozens of policyholders who sued their insurers to participate in an experimental mediation program.

Now, this seems to be an interesting perspective taken by Judge Senter. What possible reasons could exist for his denial of a proposed settlement? Is the logic behind the settlement or the insurance companies? It may be possible that parts equate to the whole solution which he concluded. Hopefully, I can be forgiven my presumption of questioning the dozens of policyholders which the judge sought to have mandatory mediaton. Is this not somewhat in the area of arbitration which he stated he is "uncomfortable" ordering arbitration for people who did not voluntarily choose to participate. Now, clarification of these two particular words may be a technical discrepancy, but they seem to be in the same ballfield. How is the situation true in one case and unnecessary in another. All of this within a two week time span. I am absolutely sure that I am missing something. Why do the Katrina victims seem to have such difficulty?

Careers of America's Future Generation

2007-01-20T08:38:00.000-05:00

Keeping Research and Leadership at Home
Nine leaders offer their opinions on what the U.S. should do to hold onto its braintrust and stay on the cutting edge of innovation

Can the U.S. maintain its edge? If so, how? Nine leaders offer their answers.
by Vivek Wadhwa
Small Biz

Globalization is reality. U.S. businesses see tremendous opportunities abroad and will increasingly locate their operations closer to growth markets. They will also outsource engineering jobs to reduce costs and move their research functions closer to their offshore development sites. It is not clear what the long-term impact of this trend will be, but what is clear is that at stake is the U.S. standard of living and world economic leadership.

In a previous column, I wrote about globalization research that my students and I had completed at Duke University (see BusinessWeek.com, 11/7/06, "The Real Problem with Outsourcing").

Our research showed corporations saw great advantages in offshoring. They saved money on salaries and overhead, were able to create 24/7 development cycles, and gained access to new markets and customers. They weren't going abroad because of a shortage of engineers in the U.S. or deficiencies in the U.S. workforce, they were simply doing what gave them an economic and competitive advantage.

Postcards for the Edge
The risk with this is that the next jobs likely to be outsourced are in research and design, and the U.S. will lose its ability to "invent" the next big technologies. We may already have lost our edge in telecom—University of Texas professor Ted Rappaport's research shows that all but five of the 57 major telecom research initiatives over the past few years were located outside the U.S. He believes that as a result, U.S. students have lost interest in entering graduate school to pursue research in the telecom field.

Cisco's (CSCO) recent announcement that it would move 20% of its senior managers from Silicon Valley to Bangalore by 2010 shows the trend is accelerating. So, what can the U.S. do to keep its edge? We asked nine business experts what they believe the U.S. should do to keep research at home so that the next technology discovery is made here, rather than in the countries that are building a core competence because of our outsourcing.

Intel (INTC) Chairman Craig Barrett believes we have already lost the race in primary and secondary education. We are losing our position as a top educator of science, technology, engineering, and math students. We are losing our lead in university research, and we have "our head in the sand on government policy."

Education for All
Barrett, Sun (SUNW) Chairman and Co-founder Scott McNealy, IBM (IBM) Executive Vice-President of Innovation and Technology Nick Donofrio, Microsoft (MSFT), Senior Vice-President of Research Rick Rashid, and former MIT President and President-elect of the National Academy of Engineering Charles Vest stress the need to improve K-12 education, encourage students to study more math and engineering, bring in the best and brightest talent from around the world, and up the ante in basic research. Each person has a unique perspective, but all agree on what must be done.

McNealy also says we should "open-source education"—let everyone, everywhere, learn as much as they want, as fast as they want, about any subject they'd like.

Yet CNN anchor Lou Dobbs predicts utter disaster for our middle class and says that Corporate America has chosen to put our middle-class workers into direct competition with the cheapest labor in the world. He says CEOs have to be talking about how to drive innovation in the U.S. and find a conscience, or Washington will have to adjust public policy.

Motivated Workforce
Ralph Wyndrum, president of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE-USA), looks at the problem from the perspective of U.S. engineers and worries about the manufacturing sector being outsourced and taking engineering design and R&D with it. He says engineers must hone their competitive edge through continuing education to keep pace with changing technology by focusing on productivity, innovation, and entrepreneurship.

Rockefeller Foundation President Judith Rodin believes a highly motivated, productive workforce confident in, and committed to, employer success is crucial to U.S. competitiveness.

She believes that the solution starts with the workers who make the U.S. what it is. She prescribes a comprehensive look at Social Security, private retirement savings, and health care.

Sycamore Networks (SCMR) Co-Founder and Chairman Gururaj "Desh" Deshpande believes that the $200 billion the U.S. spends yearly in research isn't spent effectively. He says innovations happen in a vacuum, so he donated $20 million to MIT to change the way research is commercialized by bringing academics and entrepreneurs together.

Can the U.S. maintain its edge? If so, how? Edited excerpts of each of the nine leaders' answers follow.

Scott McNealy, Sun Chairman and Co-founder
Here's a good first step: Lift the cap on H1B visas. The current policy in the U.S. is flatline thinking. Talk about a barrier to entry—literally. The 60,000 visas the government offers each year is an arbitrary number and is long-depleted before the government's fiscal year even begins. Imagine if Vinod Khosla and Sergei Brin had not been able to stay in this country. No Sun, no Google. Fewer jobs in Silicon Valley, and a heck of a lot less taxpayer dollars for Uncle Sam.

Here's another idea: Open-source education. People always ask me how we can get our kids interested in math and science; how we're going to develop the engineers of tomorrow. There's a surprisingly simple answer: share. Why not open-source education and let anyone, anywhere learn as much as they want, as fast as they want, about any subject they'd like.

They'd find out what they're good at (maybe it's math, maybe it's science, maybe it's economics), and we could get them into the workforce sooner. They could work at solving some of the biggest problems, like finding the cure for bird flu. This is beyond No Child Left Behind: It's no child, parent or teacher held back.

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This is a truly profound article which stipulates what future generations shall have to overcome. It will be necessary to provide our children and grandchildren with the options necessary to have a high quality of education. This is quite attainable for some of us. My concern is what shall happen to the majority of Americans who may be able to obtain a great career which will allow them to have dignity and options which increase the quality of the life which they acquired up to the point of providing for themselves. Hopefully, many people are preparing for this particular possibility. Awareness is the first key of what needs to be maintained in order to maximize the lifestyle of future generations. Especially, considering there are many in public schools without the resources to attain the most significant education given in the United States. If the majority of those students have not been given a suitable option, there will be many consequences given the fact that the economy will definitely suffer. Let me know what you think?

What shall become of Cuba's finances?

2007-01-20T08:17:00.000-05:00

How Cubans heal their economic ills
By Robert Plummer Business reporter, BBC News

Elderly Cubans re-sell newspapers to supplement their incomes
My defining experience of Cuban economics came during a visit to the island in 1999.
I was following the Havana tourist trail by visiting the Floridita bar on the Avenida Belgica, where American author Ernest Hemingway used to go for his regular double frozen daiquiri with no sugar.

Suddenly an old man came into the bar carrying a stack of copies of the official newspaper, Granma.

I offered him the cover price, a mere 20 Cuban centavos, but he angrily demanded more.
I assumed he was charging over the odds because I was clearly not a local, and went away thinking that if a Cuban was trying to cheat a tourist over the price of the Communist Party newspaper, revolutionary idealism was definitely dead.

I later discovered that I could not have been more wrong - about the cheating, at any rate.
It is established practice in Cuba for elderly people on low state pensions to buy copies of the newspapers and re-sell them to the public for one peso each.

It helps them to make ends meet and allows their fellow Cubans to assist them without compromising their dignity.

Chicken tonight
A visitor to Cuba can easily find more such examples of how ordinary people have found ways to raise their low standard of living by operating below the radar of an inflexible, centralised state planning system.

Many of these dodges do centre on tourism. For instance, you may wonder why the Saturday breakfast buffet at your hotel in the holiday resort of Varadero often includes mountains of fried chicken - not normally something you would eat first thing in the morning.

Fried chicken for breakfast? Only in Cuba
The likely explanation is that the staff are not expecting you to eat it.

Anything that is left over, they are allowed to take home - and with the weekend about to get under way, they are preparing to go back to their families with enough food to satisfy a houseful of relatives.

Likewise, if you talk to the young woman who plays the piano in the hotel bar, you will probably find that she is a conservatory-trained musician who realised she could make more money playing for tourist tips than she could in concert halls.

Still, at least she has a legitimate skill to sell, unlike many of her contemporaries who have resorted to prostitution in an effort to obtain money from tourists.

'Special Period'
Conditions in Fidel Castro's Cuba were not always as bad as this, although people have been subject to food rationing ever since the US economic embargo was imposed in 1962.
What really caused Cubans' living standards to plummet was the collapse in 1991 of the Soviet Union, which had bankrolled the country's inefficient economy as a means of irritating Washington.

Cuba's distinctive humped buses were created in the 1990s
The end of the Cold War brought a halt to plentiful supplies of cheap crude oil in exchange for Cuban sugar, as Russian President Boris Yeltsin served notice that he was pulling the plug on Soviet subsidies.

The rest of the 1990s were known as the "Special Period" - a time marked by widespread food and fuel shortages.

The country was forced to come up with some creative solutions to its problems, including the creation of the two-humped "camel" buses - immense tractor-trailers that can carry a couple of hundred people.

Under pressure, President Castro authorised a few tentative steps towards a more market-oriented system. In 1993, the US dollar was allowed to circulate, while opportunities sprang up for the small-scale entrepreneur as tourism became the country's biggest industry.

Turn and turn again
But this modest liberalisation was never intended to be permanent - and as soon as Mr Castro felt more confident, he went into reverse gear.

Since 2000, subsidised Soviet oil has been replaced by subsidised Venezuelan oil, as Havana looks to Hugo Chavez to prop up its tottering economy.

Cuba is now relying on Venezuelan largesse
China, too, has been providing support in the form of trade credits, technology and investment capital.

This change in Cuba's fortunes soon led the regime to reassert its economic supremacy. In 2004, US dollar transactions were banned and a 10% tax imposed on dollar-peso conversions.

As for the self-employed Cubans who run restaurants in their homes ("paladares") or rent out rooms to tourists, their numbers have fallen dramatically.

In 1995, more than 200,000 of them were officially licensed, but a decade later, fewer than 100,000 remained.

Cuban officials have stressed that Fidel Castro's death - which the US has said may come within months - will not bring any changes to this rigid system.

Mr Castro's brother Raul, his designated successor, is just as fiercely opposed to the free market, and any easing of policy will not come without a fight.

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Now, this bit of news allows for understanding of quite a few differences in Cuba which are not done in the United States. Perhaps, the changes will be made in Cuba which will provide an opportunity for the people of this country to retain their dignity plus a bit more financial stability. There are many people of the world who did not satisfy the people of their own country. In my world, I do not believe any one person may have more of an advantage than other in stating that their country has been neglected due to leadership. Even America is guilty of this which is what Katrina and New Orleans demonstrated with clear clarity. Understand this was done while financing another country. If home does not come first, what good you do outside the home is tainted. Especially if you have the resources to allow an improved quality of life to be maintained and deliberately choose to ignore the situation with indifference of your own.

Cuba's Leader

2007-01-20T07:55:00.000-05:00

Chavez admits Castro gravely ill

Mr Castro handed over his executive powers in July 2006Cuban leader Fidel Castro is battling to save his life, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has said.

Mr Chavez, a close friend of Cuba's left-wing leader, said he hoped Mr Castro would recover but admitted he faced a hard struggle.

Mr Castro, 80, has not been seen in public since undergoing surgery in July and handing over political power.

Mr Chavez spoke at the Latin American summit in Brazil in a rare admission of the state of Mr Castro's health.

Chavez hopeful
Venezuela's president said he spoke to the Cuban leader by telephone for half an hour several days ago.

I hope he lives 80 more years, I hope he lives 100 more years
Hugo ChavezVenezuelan president"He is going through a difficult situation but just like he says, the machine that they have to fix is 80 years old," Mr Chavez told the Mercosaur trade summit.
"I cannot give details [of his health] because I am not his doctor, and even if I was I would not give them to you.

"He's back in the Sierra Maestra and locked in a battle for his life," Mr Chavez said.
The Sierra Maestra is a rugged mountain range in south-east Cuba with a long history of guerrilla warfare.

After Fidel Castro returned to Cuba from exile in Mexico, he and his fellow rebels hid out in the Sierra Maestra from where they were able to expand their 26 July Movement, building up their guerrilla forces and starting the revolution which in 1959 overthrew the regime led by Fulgencio Batista.

"There are those who want Fidel to die... [but] we have confidence he will recover completely.
"I don't know when Fidel will die, I hope he lives 80 more years, I hope he lives 100 more years."

'Slow recovery'
There have been steady reports suggesting that Mr Castro's condition is extremely serious.
In an interview with the Reuters news agency, Dr Jose Luis Garcia Sabrido, head of surgery at Madrid's Gregorio Maranon public hospital, described Mr Castro's recovery as "slow but progressive".

Dr Garcia Sabrido examined the Cuban leader late last year.

Earlier this week a Spanish newspaper quoted medical sources as saying Mr Castro opted for a risky medical procedure that led to grave complications.

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Hopefully, the health of Fidel Castro will improve. If not for his health, perhaps his health will improve by the people of Cuba combining all of their faith and prayers together for the sake of their leader. He is the most controversial leader in the world. Probably, more so to the United States than Saddam, though he has protected himself along with his country as well as could be done. The issue which is probably most interesting at this point would be who will be the person chosen to continue to lead the country of Cuba should his health not improve. I guess, this is something which will be shown at some point in the future.

Adoption is an Option

2007-01-19T19:14:00.000-05:00

Transplants come under scrutiny
By Emma Wilkinson BBC News, health reporter

Surgeons are starting to carry out womb, face and hand transplantsTraditionally organ transplants have been carried out to save a person's life, be it with a new heart, kidney, or set of lungs.

But surgeons are increasingly looking at transplants as a way of improving a patient's quality of life.

Womb, face and hand transplants have all hit the headlines in recent months and these elective procedures raise difficult ethical questions.

For example, what happens if the donor organ is rejected.
The criteria for selection is crucial. We have to get the right person.

Neil Hubard
Neil Hubard, a spokesperson for the Face Trust, said in the case of womb and face transplants, donor selection was much more stringent than with life-saving transplants such as heart or kidneys.

"The criteria for selection is crucial. We have to get the right person. Then we look at very very fine tissue matching."

Patients must also be assessed for their psychological suitability.

"The people who want this kind of transplant are in a hell of a psychological state," he said.

"And one of the reasons selection is absolutely crucial is we have to advise people that taking immunosuppressants over long periods of time can be life-threatening and life-shortening."

Rejection
In the case of womb transplants, surgeons are only planning to keep the donor organ in place for one or two pregnancies before removing it again.

People who are willing to undertake something like a face transplant are probably not of an open mind,

Dr Richard NicholsonBulletin of Medical Ethics
Doctors are also looking into new ways of avoiding rejection in face transplants, for example with the use of creams.

He said that painstaking research on face transplants had been going on for the past 14 years and there had been eight to nine years of womb transplant research in the UK.

"The key thing is that we and other teams believe in taking a very long and cautious route and we're not going to rush it."

Dr Richard Nicholson, editor of the Bulletin of Medical Ethics pointed out that non-vital transplants were not necessarily a new phenomenon as the first even transplants to be done were of the cornea.

However, he expressed serious concern about the new forms of transplant that science was beginning to make available.

Dr Nicholson warned that patients may not fully appreciate the implications of agreeing to a transplant - and have unrealistic expectations.

"People could have grave psychological problems," he said.

"They can be informed about the risks, but people who are willing to undertake something like a face transplant are probably not of an open mind.

"We know that people have unrealistic expectations of medical research and believe they are bound to do better than if they didn't have the procedure."

He also warned that the possibility of rejection was not only potentially damaging psychologically - it could make a bad situation worse physically too.

"When something is rejected it becomes a great deal more difficult to replace it with another organ.

Inevitable
Mr Robert Johnson, past president of the British Transplantation Society said it was inevitable that surgeons would try to find new applications for procedures such as transplantation once they had been shown to work.

"The thing to bear in mind is that transplantation is a very dangerous exercise because you break down the body's defence mechanisms and that is absolutely justifiable when you are doing something life-saving.

"I can understand that people are prepared to take the risk with face transplants as they are almost prepared to do anything and there is justification for hand transplants providing it is right down at the wrist.

"But with wombs I think you're very close to the dividing line."

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What marvels of childbirth?!!

2007-01-19T18:08:00.000-05:00

US doctors plan womb transplant
By Jeremy Cooke BBC News, New York

Women may be given new hope of having a babyA team of doctors in New York say they are planning to perform the first womb transplant in the US.

The procedure would potentially allow women who have had their wombs damaged or removed to develop a pregnancy and give birth.

The plan is use a womb from a woman who has died.

A womb transplant has been tried once before, in Saudi Arabia in 2000, but then the womb came from a live donor, and was rejected after three months.

If a pregnant uterus rejects you have got a serious medical problem
Dr Sherman SilberInfertility expert
Ethics of non-vital transplants
If the New York team are successful, it could bring new hope of becoming a mother to millions of women worldwide, many of whom have had their wombs removed due to illnesses such as cancer.

The New York surgeons have been running trials over the last six months which they say have confirmed that it is possible to remove the wombs of deceased donors in the same way as hearts, kidneys and livers are taken for transplant.

The next step would be to place a donated uterus into a recipient through an incision below the navel.

Caesarean section
The recipient's own embryo - which would have been harvested and frozen prior to the treatment - would be transferred into the transplanted womb allowing the pregnancy to develop.

After birth by Caesarean section the uterus would be removed to minimise the risk of tissue rejection.

Dr Giuseppe Del Priore, who is leading the transplant project, said: "Transplant medicine has improved sufficiently to allow us to consider non-vital transplants.

"That is why we are talking about face, hands, and other things as well."

Some in the medical community here are warning that the procedure would be extremely dangerous.

Dr Sherman Silber, an infertility expert from St Louis, said: "At any time during the nine months of pregnancy it could very easily reject, and if a pregnant uterus rejects you have got a serious medical problem."

But the surgeons directly involved believe the risks can be minimised and that many infertile women will enthusiastically pursue the opportunity to give birth to their own child.

Hundreds of women have inquired about the procedure at the Downtown Hospital, and 40 to 50 are currently being screened.

However, a transplant is not expected "any time in the near future".

There have been many women, couples and other people who have wanted children to no avail. My empathy is truly with them. Though, people need hearts, kidneys, pancreas, liver and other types of transplants for the enjoyment of denying death at that particular moment and years to come. This particular transplant is quite a bit different. In the sense that no one will die without this type of surgery. It is not a life threatening illness. It is not a life saved by this particular procedure being conducted. It allows the possiblity of a new life to enter this world. Also, it allows the possiblity of an existing life to become more complicated due to a surgery. A surgery performed when there is no life threatening illness occurring. Now, while it is a noble cause, it makes me wonder about the preservation of the life which can find other methods to have joy and happiness. Now, I am not judging anyone by any means, but it is food for thought. What do you think?

Guarantees for the First Election post-Bush

2007-01-19T17:41:00.000-05:00

First fruits of new e-voting certification process: two companies get thumbs-up from federal testers
1/19/2007 1:12:52 PM, by Nate Anderson

How do Americans know that electronic voting machines are reliable? They have to trust the word of the private testing laboratories that examine the machines. But how do people know that the testing laboratories themselves are reliable? That's where the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) comes in. As part of the 2002 Help America Vote Act, the NIST is charged with providing technical guidance to the Election Assistance Commission as the EAC certifies testing laboratories. Yesterday, the NIST recommended that SysTest Labs and iBeta Quality Assurance receive the first full accreditations from the EAC.

Six labs have currently applied for accreditation: SysTest, iBeta, InfoGuard, BKP Security, Wyle, and Ciber. Last summer, the EAC granted interim accreditation to Wyle and SysTest, though it found some documentation problems at Ciber and refused to give the company the green light. Now that the NIST process is firmly in place, interim accreditation will be replaced by a full accreditation process that takes 9 to 18 months to complete.

NIST bases its program on ISO/IEC 17025, a set of "General requirements for the competence of testing and calibration laboratories." Because there are currently no standard tests for evaluating voting machines, each laboratory has created its own testing suite. NIST accreditation is designed to ensure that the testing process at each lab can produce precise data with repeatable results, not that the tests themselves are well-designed.

Recognizing that this is a weakness, NIST will start development work this year on a standard series of tasks that all laboratories will eventually be encouraged to adopt. There is no word on when the new tests will be ready.

The government does require seven basic areas to be tested. Voting machines first need to be evaluated to make sure they conform to federal design standards, and then they are run through a physical configuration audit in which the lab makes sure that the machine actually matches the documentation. The third part of the test is a source code review, followed by a functional configuration audit that tries to determine if every function mentioned in the manual actually exists and works. A system integration test, reliability and accuracy tests, and security testing round out the requirements.

Now that the EAC has received the first two NIST recommendations, it still needs to act on them for the accreditation to become official.

The EAC also issued a letter last week asking both voting machine manufacturers and testing labs to refrain from political activity. Saying that the companies involved had a "significant responsibility as the public places its trust in these organizations," the EAC asked labs and manufacturers to "adopt policies that prohibit the organization and its employees from engaging in act of these that may create the appearance of a conflict of interest or partisan bias."

Big Brother is Definitely in Sight

2007-01-19T16:49:00.000-05:00

New York to use cell phone photographers to help fight crime
Mayor says city will equip 911 call centers to accept photos and video sent from cell phones to help nab criminals.

By Marguerite Reardon Staff Writer, CNET News.com -->
Published: January 18, 2007, 3:51 PM PST
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New York City plans on recruiting average citizens armed with cell phone cameras to help fight crime.

On Wednesday, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in his State of the City Address that the city plans to install new technology so that 911 call centers can receive digital images and videos sent from cell phones and computers.

"If you see a crime in progress or a dangerous building condition you'll be able to transmit images to 911 or online to NYC.gov," he said.

The technology will also eventually be extended to 311, a hotline established during the mayor's first term in office to deal with nonemergency, quality-of-life concerns. Bloomberg said the new video and picture capability would hold "city agencies accountable for correcting (issues) quickly and efficiently."

A representative from the mayor's office said Thursday that the program is in the initial stages of planning. No budget has been established for the project, and no vendor has been selected to provide the technology that would be used.

Bloomberg said during his speech that no other city was doing something similar. In truth, several 911 call centers around the country are adopting technology that allows them to accept digital pictures and video.

A Connecticut-based company called PowerPhone announced in August new software that allows cell phone photos and video from callers to be delivered to 911 call centers. The company's product is being used in at least half a dozen deployments including call centers in Douglas County, Colo.; Seward, Alaska; Tolland County, Conn. and Dade County, Miss.

PowerPhone calls its technology Incident Linked Multimedia (ILM). It is sold as part of a larger piece of software known as PowerPhone's Total Response Computer Aided Call Handling software, a collection of software that provides 911 operators with specific instructions for handling different emergencies.

The way the photo-sharing software works is that when a caller is on the phone with a 911 operator, he tells the operator he can send a picture. The caller then hangs up the phone, and the operator sends a text message to the caller asking for the photo. The caller replies with an attached photo or video clip. Currently, cellular phone technology does not allow callers to send photos to 911 operators while maintaining the original voice connection.

Cingular Wireless, soon to be called AT&T Wireless, plans to offer a service that allows video to be shared while talking on a phone, but subscribers on either end of the call will need new 3G-enabled phones to allow the function.

While some public safety agencies have started accepting cell phone photos to a generic e-mail address, PowerPhone's software allows the photos or video to be incorporated directly into the 911 call record. The image can also be forwarded to responders who are on their way to the scene.

"The key to our technology is linking the photos and video to the incident," said Chris Salafia, CEO of PowerPhone. "This allows pictures to be forwarded to first responders, and images can be easily found after the fact during an investigation."

With over half the world's 741 million cell phones equipped with some kind of digital imaging, a service that allows people to use cell phones to capture important information about suspicious activities or crimes can be very helpful to authorities, Salafia said.

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There have been numerous reports of cell phone images being used to help solve crimes. In July 2005, police in London used cell phone images to identify attackers in the London bombings.

The Associated Press reported in March 2006 that a 15-year-old girl in New York City used her cell phone camera to snap a picture of a man who was exposing himself to her on the subway. In June 2006, CBS2chicago.com reported that a man who tried to lure four teenage girls into his car was arrested after the same girls spotted him a month later and took a camera phone shot of his license plate.

But while this technology may sound great, it doesn't come cheap. Salafia said its full computer-aided call handling suite with the Incident Linked Multimedia module could cost around $10,000 per license. In a small call center with four operator terminals, the entire system would cost roughly $40,000. At a time when many call centers are struggling to find enough money to upgrade their systems to handle enhanced 911 calls from cell phone callers, accepting video and photos may be low on their list of priorities.

"Getting the money to fund these projects is one of the big challenges," he said. "We're working within the industry and with government agencies to make grants available."

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It is truly a daunting thought to know that you can have a camera shoved in your face without stardom accompanying your life. What if you innocently are mistaken for the criminal in the video shot? Though, you have to admit it is very progressive in recording crimes. Hopefully, that will be the primary use of this particular avenue used to identify criminals. Though, it would seem there is quite a bit of leniency in identifying someone without establishing what crime was committed or if a crime has been committed by the particular person identified via camera. Well, Bloomberg is still in the early stages of planning regarding this particular venture. Let us see what happens. Maybe, all issues will be addressed prior to implementation. If successfully implemented, the rest of the country will soon follow his example. Let me know what you think.

2007-01-19T10:11:00.000-05:00

AP News Alert
Jan 19 10:02 AM US/Eastern

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Former Ohio Rep. Bob Ney has been sentenced to 30 months in federal prison for his role in a congressional bribery scandal

Wow!! Who has ever heard of such a brief article regarding the news? Definitely not me, especially considering a crime worthy of an "actual represetantive" receiving such a lengthy sentence. Plus, it is the crime of a politician convicted of bribery for goodness' sake. What do you make of this? Is this ordinary news or what?!!

Agreement clears U.S. for Iranian resolutions

2007-01-19T10:06:00.000-05:00

N. Korea: 'Agreement' Reached With U.S.
Jan 19 9:36 AM US/Eastern
By BURT HERMANAssociated Press Writer

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- North Korea said it reached an agreement with the U.S. during talks this week on its nuclear program, and the top U.S. nuclear envoy expressed optimism Friday that progress could be made when wider arms negotiations reconvene.

North Korea's Foreign Ministry said three days of talks in Berlin between U.S. envoy Christopher Hill and North Korea's main nuclear negotiator Kim Kye Gwan had been held "in a positive and sincere atmosphere and a certain agreement was reached there." No further details were given.

Hill said the talks laid the foundation for progress when six-nation nuclear negotiations resume and that he had agreed with his North Korean counterpart "on a number of issues." He also declined to elaborate.

"I am pretty convinced that we have the basis for a good session of the six-party talks," Hill told reporters in Seoul after meeting South Korean Foreign Minister Song Min-soon and nuclear envoy Chun Yung-woo.

"I feel we do have a chance of making some progress at the next round, absolutely," he said.
The last round of six-nation talks in Beijing in December _ two months after the North conducted its first-ever nuclear test in October _ ended without any breakthroughs.

The negotiating countries, which include South Korea, the U.S., Japan, China and Russia, had been seeking to outline how to implement a September 2005 agreement in which the North pledged to disarm in exchange for aid and security guarantees.

But North Korea refused to discuss its arms program and again demanded the U.S. lift its blacklisting of a Macau bank. The U.S. had accused the bank of being complicit in the communist country's alleged counterfeiting and money laundering, leading the bank to freeze North Korean assets worth about $24 million.

The North did not directly mention the financial dispute in its statement Friday, but said progress was made in overcoming obstacles to the six-nation talks.

"We paid attention to the direct dialogue held by the (North) and the U.S. in a bid to settle knotty problems in resolving the nuclear issue," the North's ministry said in the statement, released by the country's official Korean Central News Agency.

On arriving in Seoul earlier Friday, Hill said he hoped six-nation talks would be held again before the Lunar New Year holiday celebrated across Asia that falls this year on Feb. 18.

"It's up to the Chinese (hosts) but I would think we'll have a six- party meeting pretty soon," he said.

The U.S. is holding separate negotiations with North Korea on the financial dispute, but the last session that was held alongside the nuclear talks in December made no progress.

Hill said the next financial talks could take place as early as next week, but added a location had not yet been decided. The U.S. had proposed the two sides meet in New York, while the North wants to hold the talks in Beijing.
___
Associated Press reporters Kwang-tae Kim and Bo-mi Lim contributed to this report.

Global Warming Changes the World

2007-01-19T09:56:00.000-05:00

Storms in Europe Kill 46, Disrupt Travel
Jan 19 9:39 AM US/Eastern
By DAVID RISINGAssociated Press Writer

BERLIN (AP) -- Europeans labored Friday to restore services across the continent after hurricane-force winds toppled trees, brought down power lines and damaged buildings, killing at least 46 people and disrupting travel for tens of thousands.

Berlin's new main train station was shut down after a two-ton girder fell from the side of the glass facade onto an outdoor staircase. The station was evacuated after the beam plummeted 130 feet Thursday night, but there were no injuries.

"I can see maybe the glass falling, but not the steel," said Thomas Mueller, an electrician who had stopped by the downtown station to survey the damage. "They just built this thing eight months ago."

Virtually the entire German national railway system shut down during the storm, with trees over many tracks and overhead power lines down, and services were being restored gradually Friday.

"We've never had such a situation in Germany," Deutsche Bahn CEO Hartmut Mehdorn said.

Off the coast of France, a coast guard tug was called upon to tow a damaged British container ship containing explosives to safety, a day after its crew of 26 was rescued from the stormy seas.
More than 1 million homes had no electricity in the Czech Republic, which was hit by winds of up to 112 mph, another 1 million households in Germany suffered power losses, while tens of thousands in Poland and Austria also were hit with outages.
The flow of Russian oil through a Ukrainian pipeline to other parts of Europe was restored Friday after a temporary shutdown caused when the storm knocked out power to a pumping station. The interruption occurred Thursday night on a section of the Druzhba, or Friendship, pipeline from the city of Brody in western Ukraine to Slovakia and Hungary, but Oleksandr Dikusarov, a spokesman for the Ukrtransnafta pipeline company, said the flow of oil was fully restored Friday afternoon.

The storm led to the deaths of at least three people in the Czech Republic, 12 in Germany, 14 in Britain, six in the Netherlands, three in France, two in Belgium and six in Poland.

It was the highest death toll from a storm in Europe since 1999, when gales downed trees and driving snow brought on avalanches, killing more than 120 in three days.

Climate researchers had been predicting stormy weather this year for parts of Europe, saying that unusually high temperatures in the North Atlantic, around 1 to 2 degrees above normal _ would allow winds to accumulate more moisture and surge in energy.

"In times of rapid climactic change, extreme events arise more frequently," said Peter Werner of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Research.

Europe has been experiencing an extremely warm winter and has already been hit by several wind storms.

Most of the people killed in the storm were motorists, but in Germany they also included two firefighters _ one hit by a falling tree and the other dying of a heart attack _ and an 18-month old infant in Munich hit by a terrace door that was ripped from its hinges.

In London, a toddler was killed when a brick wall was knocked over by the wind and collapsed on him.

Frankfurt Airport reported that flights were again leaving regularly Friday after some morning delays and 200 cancellations Thursday.

National carrier Lufthansa canceled 331 flights across Germany on Thursday, affecting nearly 19,000 passengers, but intercontinental flights were largely on time again Friday, spokesman Thomas Jachnow said.

British Airways canceled 34 incoming flights to London's Heathrow and Gatwick airports and the two main London-to-Scotland rail routes ran reduced services.

Eurostar was running full service again, after one early Paris-to- London train was canceled.

Meanwhile, London Bridge station was reopened after being closed after part of a roof collapsed.
British train companies warned of delays through the day as repairs were carried out.

Thousands of Dutch commuters were stranded overnight when the service was halted on all trains because of obstructions to the tracks and downed power cables.

By early Friday, most Dutch trains were running again after engineers worked through the night to clear debris and repair power lines, the railway said.

German subways, trams and buses were largely back in service, but only a few long-distance trains were running.

"Bringing the service back is like a puzzle _ it goes bit by bit and we're now at the first pieces," railway spokesman Martin Walden said.

The German Weather Service said the storm was the strongest to hit the country since 1999.
The highest winds were felt in the southern state of Bavaria, where gusts of up to 126 mph were recorded.
___
Associated Press writers around Europe contributed to this report.

2007-01-19T09:46:00.000-05:00

Storm Worm hits computers around the world
Fri Jan 19, 2007 8:52am ET

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HELSINKI (Reuters) - Computer virus writers attacked thousands of computers on Friday using an unusually topical email citing raging European storms, a security company said.

The virus, which the company named "Storm Worm," was emailed to hundreds of thousands of addresses globally with the subject line "230 dead as storm batters Europe."

An attached file contained so-called malware that can infiltrate computer systems.

"What makes this exceptional is the timely nature of the attack," Mikko Hypponen, head of research at Finnish data security firm F-Secure, told Reuters. . Hypponen said thousands of computers, most in private use, had been affected.

He said most users would not notice the malware, or trojan, which creates a back door to the computer that can be exploited later to steal data or to use the computer to post spam.

© Reuters 2007. All Rights Reserved.

Alternative Energy Becomes Pressing

2007-01-19T09:42:00.000-05:00

Companies press Bush, Congress on climate: reports
Fri Jan 19, 2007 2:11am ET

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - Major corporations are joining environmental groups to press President Bush and Congress to address climate change more rapidly, news reports said on Friday.

The coalition, including Alcoa Inc., General Electric Co., DuPont Co., and Duke Energy Corp. plans to publicize its recommendations on Monday, a day ahead of the president's annual State of the Union address, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The group also includes Caterpillar, PG&E, the FPL Group, PNM Resources, BP and Lehman Brothers, The New York Times reported.

The group, known as the United States Climate Action Partnership, will call for a firm nationwide limit on carbon dioxide emissions that would lead to reductions of 10 to 30 percent over the next 15 years, the NYT reported.

The Journal said the coalition will discourage the construction of conventional coal-burning power plants and a cap on greenhouse-gas emissions.

The coalition's diversity could send a signal that businesses want to get ahead of the increasing political momentum for federal emissions controls, in part to protect their long-term interests, the Times said.

Officials from the companies were not immediately available for comment.

Bush in his speech next week is likely to support a massive increase in U.S. ethanol usage and tweak climate change policy, sources familiar with the White House plans said on Tuesday. Continued...

© Reuters 2007. All Rights Reserved.

Riddance of Satellites

2007-01-19T09:36:00.000-05:00

U.S. tells China concerned by satellite-killer test
Thu Jan 18, 2007 10:57pm ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States, Australia and Canada have voiced concerns to China over the first known satellite-killing test in space in more than 20 years, the White House said on Thursday.

"The U.S. believes China's development and testing of such weapons is inconsistent with the spirit of cooperation that both countries aspire to in the civil space area," National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said. "We and other countries have expressed our concern regarding this action to the Chinese."

Using a ground-based medium-range ballistic missile, the test knocked out an aging Chinese weather satellite about 537 miles above the Earth on January 11 through "kinetic impact," or by slamming into it, Johndroe said.

Canada and Australia had joined in voicing concern, he said. Britain, South Korea and Japan were expected to follow suit, an administration official added.

On a visit to New York, Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said Australia raised concerns with the Chinese some days ago.

"So far, the answer from the foreign affairs people in China, including the ambassador in Canberra, is that they are not aware of the incident and they are getting back to us," Downer told reporters.

"What we don't want to see is some sort of spread, if you like, of an arms race into outer space. The danger there is that you get into a situation where other countries, including the U.S. I suppose, would have to start to look for ways to protect satellites in space," he said. Continued...

© Reuters 2007. All Rights Reserved.

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Meltdown of the Mehdi Army

2007-01-19T09:27:00.000-05:00

U.S. seizes Sadr aide as Gates visits Iraq
Fri Jan 19, 2007 9:15am ET

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. and Iraqi troops seized a prominent spokesman for Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr on Friday, confronting a movement that has a key role in the ruling coalition but is accused by Washington of running death squads.

The midnight raid near Baghdad's Sadr City district, which Sadr's aides angrily called an "American provocation", came as Defense Secretary Robert Gates flew in to the southern city of Basra to meet the commander in Iraq, General George Casey.

Dealing with Sadr and his Mehdi Army militia is a burning issue for U.S. forces and Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki as they prepare what many see as a last-ditch effort to rein in sectarian violence that is pushing Iraq into civil war.

Gates said Iraq was at a "pivotal moment" and failure would be a "calamity" for U.S. interests.

Sadr, a young populist cleric with a mass following and some backing from Shi'ite Iran, is an ally of Maliki, who has been criticised by Washington and leaders of the once dominant Sunni Arab minority for failing so far to disarm the Mehdi Army.

Maliki, however, has said this month he will crack down on Shi'ite militias and said 400 Mehdi Army members had been arrested in mainly Shi'ite southern Iraq over recent days.

Friday's move appeared to be part of a campaign of targeted operations which senior Shi'ite politicians have told Reuters are being mounted against key figures in the Mehdi Army. It was not clear which was the main suspect among at least three people arrested, including Abdul-Hadi al-Darraji, a spokesman for Sadr. Continued...

© Reuters 2007. All Rights Reserved.

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Israelis finally explore peaceful options

2007-01-19T04:25:00.000-05:00

Israel transfers promised tax revenues to Palestinian leader Abbas
Jan 19 4:09 AM US/Eastern

JERUSALEM (AP) - Israel has freed a promised US$100 million in frozen tax funds and transferred the money to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, an official in Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office said Friday.

The transfer, made Thursday night, gives the moderate leader a boost ahead of crucial weekend talks in Damascus with the top Hamas leader and is the first such Israeli payment since the militant Islamic Hamas won control of the Palestinian government last March.

The funds are part of the customs duty and value added tax Israel collects for the Palestinian Authority under partial peace accords. Israel halted transfer of the revenues when Hamas won parliamentary elections and set up its Cabinet.

Israel, the United States and the European Union define Hamas as a terror group because of its history of suicide bombings against Israelis over the past decade, which have killed hundreds and its continued refusal to recognize Israel and renounce violence. The international community has frozen foreign aid that has kept the Palestinian Authority afloat since it was created in 1994.

The Israeli official said the money would be transferred directly to Abbas for use in humanitarian efforts and to boost his security force. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the decision had not yet been formally announced, said Israel was satisfied by assurances that the money would not go to the Palestinian Finance Ministry, which is controlled by Hamas.

Long Awaited Reprieve from the cost of Oil

2007-01-19T04:12:00.000-05:00

Oil Prices Fall to $50.40 a Barrel
Jan 19 3:31 AM US/Eastern
By DERRICK HOAssociated Press Writer

SINGAPORE (AP) -- Oil prices fell in Asian trading Friday after the U.S. Energy Department said U.S. crude inventories rose by the most in more than four years.

Light, sweet crude for February delivery dropped 8 cents to $50.40 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange mid- afternoon in Singapore. Overnight in New York, the contract briefly fell below $50 a barrel for the first time since May 2005 before settling at $50.48.

Crude futures have slipped for eight of the first 12 trading sessions of 2007, partly on mild winter temperatures in the U.S. Northeast, a key consumer of heating fuels, and growing energy stockpiles.

Skepticism about the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries' commitment to delivering 1.2 million barrels of production cuts that were supposed to have started in November also weighed on oil prices.

Victor Shum, an analyst with Purvin & Gertz in Singapore, said the dramatic increase in U.S. crude inventories "is a result of imports going up and indicates that OPEC production cuts have not really come through."

"In the short term, market sentiment is overwhelmingly bearish and it's possible for (the) price to go lower than $50. A lot is based on OPEC's plans to cut production," Shum said. "If OPEC maintains supply discipline and sticks to production cuts, the oil market will gain."

Crude stockpiles rose by 6.8 million barrels to 321.5 million barrels in the week ended Jan. 12, the Energy Information Administration said in its weekly report. It was the biggest barrel-by-barrel gain since October 2002. Analysts had been expecting an increase of just 325,000 barrels, according to a Dow Jones Newswires survey.

Gasoline stockpiles rose by 3.5 million barrels and distillates, which include heating oil and diesel, rose by 900,000 barrels. Both were at or above the upper end of the average range for this time of year, the EIA said.

February Brent crude on London's ICE Futures exchange added just 2 cents to trade at $51.77 a barrel.

Heating oil futures lost 0.14 cents to $1.4693 a gallon while natural gas prices rose 5.1 cents to $6.375 per 1,000 cubic feet.

Safety of Fish Farms

2007-01-19T04:01:00.000-05:00

Escapes from Norway's fish farms threaten wild salmon
Jan 19 2:49 AM US/Eastern

Hundreds of thousands of salmon escape from Norwegian fish farms each year carrying parasites that pose a serious threat to wild salmon, a growing phenomenon that has fish farmers, environmentalists and authorities worried.

Some 790,000 salmon and trout slipped through the nets last year, compared to 722,000 the previous year.

This despite the fact that the salmon are continuously monitored. Underwater cameras and divers are constantly on the lookout for small holes in the nets of the aluminium cages that lie 35 meters (115 feet) under the surface.
The escapes are "a crime against the environment", Peter Gullestad, the head of the Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries, told AFP, adding: "Norway is facing its biggest ecological challenge."
The fish that escape from Norway's 1,000 fish farms, located in fjords and rivers along the 21,347 kilometers (13,264 miles) of coastline, threaten the maritime ecosystem.

"Salmon lice is the biggest threat" to stocks of wild salmon in the long term, explained Espen Farstad, a spokesman for the Norwegian hunting and fishing association NJFF.

The lice, which live in salt water and are known by the Latin name Lepeophtheirus salmonis, bite the salmon until they bleed, feeding off of the fish's mucus and causing the least resistant fish to die.

Most susceptible are young wild salmon swimming in the fjords and rivers before they head off to the open sea, as their immune systems are not yet fully developed.

The lice is a problem at all salmon farms around the world. In Norway, it poses a particular problem since fish is the country's second-largest natural resource export after oil and gas.
Also, as farmed salmon increasingly mix with wild salmon, the genetic composition of the latter changes.

"In the future, the entire genetic system of the wild fauna could be modified," Farstad warned.
"We are doing everything we can to prevent salmon from escaping from their cages and infecting the nearby rivers," insisted Bernt Wictor Haugen, a fish farmer in the Finnmark region in Norway's far north.

The industry is using frogmen, anti-lice baths, antibiotics, vaccines, and any other methods available to help fish farms and commercial fishing co-exist in harmony.

But for environmental organisations, not enough is being done.

"The fish farmers are not taking the problem seriously enough. The farms at fault should be punished," said Maren Esmark of the Norwegian branch of WWF.

She wants authorities to introduce severe sanctions on the fish farms. The complaints filed to the police are seldom followed up, according to Gullestad.

The fisheries ministry meanwhile says that the fish farm escapes are a top priority, as Norway has a reputation as a world leader to defend.

In 2006, fish farm exports totalled 18.7 billion kroner (2.2 billion euros, 2.9 billion dollars), up 24 percent from a year earlier, according to the Norwegian fisheries export committee EFF.

The increase is due primarily to rising demand for salmon and the arrival of cod and halibut farms.

Norway is Europe main's supplier of fish, both farmed and wild, with a market share of 62 percent in 2006.

And last year, fish farm exports for the first time exceeded exports from the traditional fishing sector, reaching 17 billion kronor.

In July, a special committee was set up by the fisheries ministry to improve security at the fish farms.

"Now all fish farm equipment has to be certified by the committee. A very strict inspection takes place once a year," said Rune Bildeng, an advisor to the fisheries ministry.

In order to meet the new demands, Norway's fish farms are slowly being turned into ultra-modern fortresses, resembling less and less the traditional fish farms.

"But a well-monitored salmon will always be better on the plate," insisted fish farmer Bernt Wictor Haugen.

Recently, a friend of mine commented on the health conscious safety of farm-raised fish. He expounded that fish in the wild were not as healthy nor as tasteful as farm_raised fish. This particular information lends food for thought to my thoughts on the subject of wild versus farm-raised fish or herbs. Maybe, it simply validates my opinion when my thoughts were unacceptable for the persuasiveness necessary to change his thoughts regarding the idea of farm-raised fish.

2007-01-19T03:58:00.000-05:00

Measles Deaths Drop by 60 Percent
Jan 18 10:11 PM US/Eastern
By MARIA CHENGAP Medical Writer

LONDON (AP) -- Global measles deaths have dropped by 60 percent, health authorities announced in a report Friday, and one senior official called it a "historic victory" for public health.

Nearly 7.5 million children were saved from dying of measles between 1999 and 2005, thanks to increased immunization campaigns, the World Health Organization said. More than 360 million children aged 9 months to 15 years were vaccinated against measles during that period.

Measles is one of the most infectious diseases that exists. Though it is no longer a major problem in the West, in poor countries, the disease can kill as many as 30 percent of the children it infects, particularly in those with weakened immune systems.

"This is a historic victory for global public health," said Dr. Margaret Chan, WHO's director-general. Health authorities had hoped to cut measles mortality rates in half by 2005, but found that they had exceeded that goal by 10 percent. In Africa, the results were even more striking: measles deaths fell by 75 percent on the continent.

"It's not very often that global health initiatives not only achieve their goals, but actually exceed their goals faster than expected," said Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The measles success achieved to date, Gerberding said, has encouraged the global community to aim even higher, as they set a new goal of reducing measles deaths by 90 percent by 2010.

According to Geneva-based WHO, the next phase of this initiative is projected to cost about $500 million, of which $150 million has already been committed.

In a study published Friday in the British medical journal The Lancet, WHO scientists estimated that the number of measles deaths fell from 873,000 in 1999 to 345,000 in 2005.

Because surveillance figures from countries are not available, WHO based its figures on a modeling system that estimates the number of measles cases based on coverage rates achieved during vaccination campaigns. Experts said the numbers should be reasonably accurate.

If the 2010 goal is met, health officials may then start considering whether it might be feasible to eradicate measles. Like smallpox and polio, an effective vaccine exists, making it a potential candidate for eradication.

Still, the problems plaguing polio, which was originally supposed to be eradicated by 2000, may undermine any proposed measles campaign.

"The continuing failure to meet the polio eradication goals will cast much skepticism and pessimism on any similar global venture for measles," said Dr. Samuel Katz, co-inventor of the measles vaccine. Katz is also an infectious diseases specialist at Duke University.
"Donor and participant fatigue take their toll," he said.

To date, the effort to eradicate polio has cost $4 billion. And while health officials are tantalizingly close to the finish line _ polio incidence has been cut by 99 percent _ it remains stubbornly endemic in Afghanistan, India, Nigeria and Pakistan.

Whether or not measles eradication will be attempted will depend largely on if the 2010 goal can be met.

"That will be another milestone to measure if elimination is possible," said Dr. Vance Dietz, chief of the global measles department at the CDC.

"It may be that by then, we are so far ahead that regardless of what's happened with polio, people will want to move ahead," he said.

The Measles Initiative was launched in 2001 to reduce measles deaths worldwide. Its major partners are the American Red Cross, the CDC, the U.N. Foundation, UNICEF and WHO.

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Mortality of Male Drivers

2007-01-19T03:52:00.000-05:00

Risk of Death Higher for Male Drivers
Jan 18 6:28 PM US/Eastern
By SETH BORENSTEINAP Science Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) -- That age-old stereotype about dangerous women drivers is shattered in a big new traffic analysis: Male drivers have a 77 percent higher risk of dying in a car accident than women, based on miles driven.

And the author of the research says he takes it to heart when he travels _ his wife takes the wheel.

"I put a mitt in my mouth and ride shotgun," said David Gerard, a Carnegie Mellon University researcher who co-authored a major new U.S. road risk analysis.
The study holds plenty of surprises.

_The highway death rate is higher for cautious 82-year-old women than for risk-taking 16-year-old boys.
_New England is the safest region for drivers _ despite all those stories about crazy Boston drivers.
_The safest passenger is a youngster strapped in a car seat and being driven during morning rush hour.

The findings are from Traffic STATS, a detailed and searchable new risk analysis of road fatality statistics by Carnegie Mellon for the American Automobile Association. Plans are to make the report public next week, but The Associated Press got an early look.

The analysis calculates that overall, about one death occurs for every 100 million passenger miles traveled. And it shows that some long-held assumptions about safety on U.S. highways don't jibe with hard numbers. It lists the risk of road death by age, gender, type of vehicle, time of day and geographic region.

"We are finding comparisons that are surprising all the time," said study co-author Paul Fischbeck, a Carnegie Mellon professor of social and decision sciences. "What is necessary now is to go through and do that second level of analysis to figure out why some of these things are true."

For example, those dangerous 82-year-old women are 60 percent more likely to die on the road than a 16-year-old boy because they are so frail, said Anne McCartt, a research official at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, who was not part of the study.

"It's an issue not of risk-taking behavior, but of fragility," McCartt said. The elderly are more likely to die when they are injured in an accident, she said, an explanation that Gerard and Fischbeck validate.

These elderly women have the nation's highest road death risks even when they're not driving _ five times higher than the national average.

Right behind octogenarians in high risk are young male drivers, ages 16-23 with fatality rates four times higher than average.

That can be attributed to "inexperience and immaturity," McCartt said.

Drivers aged 40 and 50 tie for the lowest risk of dying in an accident. But if you're a male out at 2 a.m. Saturday on a motorcycle in the South, you may want to take out some more insurance.

By combining a batch of data of all types, you can construct the safest possible scenario on the road: That would involve a 4-year-old girl in a van or school bus, stuck in a Wednesday morning rush hour in New England in February.

Of all the ages to be in a car, 4-year-olds have the lowest death risks _ probably because they are in child car seats and their parents drive more carefully, Fischbeck said.

"They are really protected, they're being driven around in times of day when it's very safe (and often in minivans)," Fischbeck said. "It's a win-win-win-win situation."

As for men being more likely to die than women? McCartt and Fischbeck said men take more risks, speed more, drink and drive more.

"They do stupider things," said Fischbeck, a former military pilot who has twin toddlers and a "totally unsafe" 1974 Volkswagen Thing.

Fischbeck's study didn't get into specific car makes, but found larger vans to be the safest with a death rate less than half the national average for cars, and the drivers themselves played a role.

"It's a combination of they're safe and the people who drive them are dull," Fischbeck said.

School buses, massive vehicles driven during normally safe hours, have a death rate that is one-50th that of average passenger vehicles.

But the death rate on motorcycles was nearly 32 times higher than for cars. One of the riskiest combinations in the database are men between ages 21 and 24 who drive motorcycles between midnight and 4 a.m. Their road fatality risk is 45,000 times higher than normal.

The most deadly hour is at 2 a.m., which is often when bars close and many deaths are alcohol-related, Fischbeck said.

The fewest deaths per mile driven are at 8 a.m., mostly because the roads are so clogged with traffic _ and teenage drivers are in school, McCartt said.

That explains New England's No. 1 ranking for lowest death risk on the road, she said.

Heavy traffic "makes it much more difficult for people to speed," McCartt said.
___

Cingular's Service with AT*T

2007-01-19T03:24:00.000-05:00

AT and T offers unlimited mobile-to-home calling plan
Fri Jan 19, 2007 1:01am ET

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By Sinead Carew
NEW YORK (Reuters) - AT and T Inc. said on Friday it will let subscribers who pay at least $110 a month make unlimited calls between their mobile and home phones, as it moves to stop customers from defecting to cable rivals.

The service, dubbed AT and T Unity, is offered as a perk to subscribers who pay for both the $50 a month unlimited local and long-distance calling plan for their home or business and the $59.99 a month unlimited wireless plan.

AT and T, which brought Cingular Wireless under one roof through its purchase of BellSouth Corp., plans to bundle wireless and fixed-line services to compete against cable TV providers, which now also offer telephone and Internet services.

Ralph de la Vega, president of AT and T's regional wireline business, which operates 68 million telephone lines in 22 states, expects the offer to reduce customer cancellations, known as churn, and help attract new customers.

"You can take it to the bank that churn is lower, that customers are happier," de la Vega said in a phone interview.

AT and T said roughly half of Cingular's 58.7 million wireless customers already use AT and T's land-line services. The company plans to market the new option in Cingular stores throughout the wireline operating region.

But Forrester Research analyst Charles Golvin said the offer may have just a limited appeal, say to subscribers of wireless family plans, who tend to use up a lot of minutes calling home from multiple phones. Continued...

© Reuters 2007. All Rights Reserved.

Is it not interesting that people whom happen to spend over $100 per month for wireless service plus landline service should be entitled to receive extra benefits of their cellular service? It makes one wonder what took AT and T's management quite a while to give an incentive to their cellular market...hmm. Maybe, whatever plan comes next will answer this thought.

2007-01-19T02:42:00.000-05:00

US boy, 9, faces federal charges after flight of fancy
Jan 19 1:46 AM US/Eastern

A nine-year-old US boy could face federal charges, officials said, after a cross-country odyssey that saw him board two planes without a ticket before touching down in Texas.

Samaj Booker is being held at a juvenile center in San Antonio after a bizarre journey that has exposed airport security standards and left red-faced US airlines scratching their heads.

The drama began on Sunday when police in Lakewood, just outside Seattle, gave chase to a stolen vehicle, reaching speeds of up to 90-miles per hour before the car finally came to a stop with engine problems.

But officers were astonished to discover that the driver was nine-year-old Booker. "He didn't drive badly at all and was even able to avoid stop-sticks at one point," designed to deflate tires when thrown in front of a vehicle, Lieutenant David Guttu of Lakewood police told AFP.

Booker was returned to his mother but she reported him missing as a runaway early the following morning.

Booker made his way to Seattle Tacoma Airport where the 4ft 9in, 80lb youngster then persuaded agents with Southwest Airlines to allow him to board a flight to Phoenix.

According to a statement released from Southwest Airlines, Booker presented himself as a 12-year-old at the ticket counter, requested a boarding pass saying his mother was already in the boarding area.

His information matched a paid, ticket-less reservation for the flight and the boy was issued a boarding pass.

The flight originating in Seattle landed in Phoenix where Booker was allowed to change planes and land in San Antonio.

When he attempted to board another plane to get to Dallas it was determined his information didn't match a reservation and police were called.

Guttu says the nine-year-old was "pretty dedicated, highly motivated and focused" to get out of Washington state and back to Dallas where family members including his maternal grandfather live.

His mother told police he wasn't happy in Washington and "only considered Dallas his home" and he wanted to go home. He had lived in Lakewood for a couple of months.

Family from Dallas are scheduled to pick up the boy from the San Antonio juvenile center where he is being held.

Meanwhile prosecutors in Washington state are gathering information to determine how they will proceed.

Booker may eventually be served with a summons and a court date to answer federal charges of eluding police, stealing a vehicle and driving without a licence.

Perhaps, I missed some crucial and pertinent information which should allow better judgement of this particular circumstance, but honestly who should have known that a 9 year old would be charged with federal crimes!! Now, a minor child should have accountability for themselves due to the blunders of airlines as well as homeland security. Due to his resourcefulness in gaining access across state lines with no deterrence from anyone but his mother, he should pay for everyone's culpability in not gaining enough insight to stop a 9 year old child. What faith it restores in the Department of Homeland Security from terrorists? Who would have known that the people of America should feel so much better when the Department of Homeland Security is conducting such a positive deterrent amidst all of the terrorists while an unaccompanied child fo 9 years old has not encountered any problems dealing with them? My goodness!! What should become of such a child?! Maybe I am misguided, but should anyone wonder what would cause such a young child try to remove himself from his mother in such an uncompromising manner? Hmmm.

Over 8k Giveaway by Texas

2007-01-12T17:56:00.000-05:00

Rich in oil and gas, Texas looks to geothermal
Fri Jan 12, 2007 4:48pm ET

U.S. News
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HOUSTON (Reuters) - Texas is known for oil and gas, but the state said on Friday it will sell its first leases for development of geothermal energy.

Tracts totaling 11,000 acres in state-owned coastal waters in the Gulf of Mexico will be up for lease on Tuesday as part of an annual winter oil and gas lease sale, the Texas General Land Office said in a news release.

The areas to be bid on are known to have hot geologic strata below the surface, the agency said.

The state hopes the land can be drilled and water circulated through the geothermal layer and turned into steam to help generate electricity.

"We're finally making the Texas heat pay off," Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson said in the release, referring to the state's hot weather.

Some companies have expressed interest in the specific tracts being offered, and may start developing them by going through existing, played-out oil wells to reach the hot strata, Land Office spokesman Jim Suydam said.

All proceeds from such lease sales go into a state fund that helps pay for public education.

Minimum bids for the geothermal leases have been set at $2 an acre, much less than the state typically gets for oil and gas leases. A company last year paid $8,750 an acre for the right to explore a Texas tract for oil and gas.

© Reuters 2007. All Rights Reserved.

Now, we must ask ourselves how can Texas possibly afford to give a reduction of over $8,500 per acre for leasing of oil and gas exploration? Our eloquent and intelligent president, being from the state of Texas, is just a minor coinicidence, since he is a most trustworthy president who has never exemplified any behavior unbecoming to the most powerful leader of the greatest power in the world? What do you think?

Where will the troops appear next?

2007-01-12T16:10:00.000-05:00

U.S. denies military plans against Iran, Syria
Fri Jan 12, 2007 3:36pm ET

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States denied on Friday it was preparing for military action against Iran and Syria, after President George W. Bush issued a stern warning to them, raising concerns of a spillover from the Iraq war.

Bush, in his speech on Wednesday unveiling his revised Iraq strategy, accused Tehran and Damascus of allowing use of their territory for launching attacks inside Iraq, and vowed "we will interrupt the flow of support."

U.S. lawmakers voiced concern on Thursday the Iraq war could spread to neighboring Iran and Syria if U.S. troops were to chase militants across the border. But U.S. officials insisted the plan was to disrupt supply lines from inside Iraq.

White House spokesman Tony Snow said he wanted to knock down an "urban legend" that Bush was "trying to prepare the way for war with either country and that there were war preparations under way."

"There are not," he told reporters. "What the president was talking about is defending American forces within Iraq."

"There's lots of war gaming," he added. "This notion that somehow the president was announcing as a precursor to planned military action, a planned war against Iran, that's just not the case."

Snow reiterated that Washington was focusing on diplomatic means against Iran over its nuclear program. Western powers say Tehran is trying to develop nuclear weapons. Iran says it wants nuclear technology for civilian power generation.

The United States has repeatedly accused Shi'ite Iran of meddling in Iraq, where the long-oppressed Shi'ite majority is now in power and sectarian violence is raging. Tehran denies U.S. charges that it supplies Shi'ite militias with weapons.

Bush also said he had ordered an additional aircraft carrier strike group to the region and would deploy Patriot missile defense systems to "reassure our friends and allies" -- steps widely seen as a warning to Iran and Syria.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden bluntly told U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Thursday he did not think Bush had the authority to launch attacks against militant networks in Iran and Syria.

© Reuters 2007. All Rights Reserved

Fight Israel's Battles for Solidarity

2007-01-12T09:40:00.000-05:00

Senators fear Iraq war may spill to Iran, Syria
Fri Jan 12, 2007 4:50am ET

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Democratic and Republican senators voiced strong concern on Thursday that the Iraq war could spread to neighboring Iran and Syria if the U.S. military were to chase militants across the border.

President Bush, who accuses Iran and Syria of fomenting the violence in Iraq, on Wednesday proposed sending 21,500 more U.S. troops to try to restore security nearly four years after the U.S.-led invasion.

Bush sparked worries that the conflict may widen by his comment that "we'll interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq."

U.S. officials said their plan was to disrupt such networks while staying inside Iraq, but their comments did not appear to mollify senior U.S. lawmakers.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden bluntly told Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice he did not think Bush had the authority to launch attacks to stamp out militant networks in Iran and Syria.

"If the president concluded he had to invade Iran ... or Syria in pursuit of these networks, I believe the present authorization granted the president to use force in Iraq does not cover that and he does need congressional authority to do that," said Biden.

"I just want to set that marker," added the Delaware Democrat, who later wrote Bush a letter asking for an "authoritative answer" on whether he believed U.S. forces could cross into Iran or Syria without congressional authorization. Continued...

© Reuters 2007. All Rights Reserved.

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What defines Africa's poor?

2007-01-12T09:29:00.000-05:00

Mali film puts West's blueprint for Africa on trial
Jan 12, 2007 8:29am ET

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DAKAR (Reuters) - Africa's poorest are even worse off than they were a quarter of a century ago and despite years of debt relief, humanitarian aid and the goodwill of fund-raising rock stars, the West is to blame.

So say the witnesses who line up to testify against Western financial institutions in "Bamako", a scathing film by Mauritanian-born director Abderrahmane Sissako, due to be released in Britain and the United States next month.

The plot is simple. Mostly poor Africans who have had no say in how their economies are run plead their case against the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, accusing them of imposing rules that have kept their nations mired in misery.

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Set in the dusty courtyard of his father's family compound in Mali's capital Bamako, Sissako's fantasy trial gives a voice to the voiceless, those who have felt the effects of measures imposed by Western economists but have had no easy way to reply.

"It's not so much about identifying who is guilty as denouncing the fact that the fate of hundreds of millions of people has been sealed by policies decided outside their universe," Sissako says on the Website www.bamako-film.com.

It would be easy to dismiss this as a theatrical gesture by an intellectual blaming his continent's ills on outsiders.

But what makes Sissako's film compelling is that his roll-call of witnesses are not actors but real local people, including a would-be illegal migrant, an elderly villager and a former minister. Continued...

© Reuters 2007. All Rights Reserved.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4

Soldiers Without Options

2007-01-12T09:07:00.000-05:00

Pentagon Abandons Active-Duty Time Limit
By ROBERT BURNSAP Military Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Pentagon has abandoned its limit on the time a citizen-soldier can be required to serve on active duty, officials said Thursday, a major change that reflects an Army stretched thin by longer-than-expected combat in Iraq.

The day after President Bush announced his plan for a deeper U.S. military commitment in Iraq, Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters the change in reserve policy would have been made anyway because active-duty troops already were getting too little time between their combat tours.

The Pentagon also announced it is proposing to Congress that the size of the Army be increased by 65,000, to 547,000 and that the Marine Corps, the smallest of the services, grow by 27,000, to 202,000, over the next five years. No cost estimate was provided, but officials said it would be at least several billion dollars.

Until now, the Pentagon's policy on the Guard or Reserve was that members' cumulative time on active duty for the Iraq or Afghan wars could not exceed 24 months. That cumulative limit is now lifted; the remaining limit is on the length of any single mobilization, which may not exceed 24 consecutive months, Pace said.

In other words, a citizen-soldier could be mobilized for a 24-month stretch in Iraq or Afghanistan, then demobilized and allowed to return to civilian life, only to be mobilized a second time for as much as an additional 24 months. In practice, Pace said, the Pentagon intends to limit all future mobilizations to 12 months.

Members of the Guard combat brigades that have served in Iraq in recent years spent 18 months on active duty _ about six months in pre- deployment training in the United States, followed by about 12 months in Iraq. Under the old policy, they could not be sent back to Iraq because their cumulative time on active duty would exceed 24 months. Now that cumulative limit has been lifted, giving the Pentagon more flexibility.

The new approach, Pace said, is to squeeze the training, deployment and demobilization into a maximum of 12 months. He called that a "significant planning factor" for Guard and Reserve members and their families.

David Chu, the Pentagon's chief of personnel, said in an interview that he thinks Guard and Reserve members will be cheered by the decision to limit future mobilizations to 12 months. The fact that some with previous Iraq experience will end up spending more than 24 months on active duty is "no big deal," Chu said, because it has been "implicitly understood" by most that they eventually would go beyond 24 months.

A senior U.S. military official who briefed reporters Thursday on Iraq-related developments said that by next January, the Pentagon "probably will be calling again" on National Guard combat brigades that previously served yearlong tours in Iraq. Under Pentagon ground rules, the official could not be further identified.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates, appearing with Pace, announced several other changes in Guard and Reserve policy:
_Although the Pentagon's goal is to mobilize Guard and Reserve units no more frequently than one year out of six, the demands of wartime will require calling up some units more often than that. They provided no details on how many units would be remobilized at the faster pace or when that would begin to happen.

Army officials had been saying for some time that more frequent mobilizations were necessary because the active-duty force is being stretched too thin. Gates' announcement is the first confirmation of the change.

_To allow for more cohesion among Guard and Reserve units sent into combat, they will be deployed as whole units, rather than as partial units or as individuals plugged into a unit they do not normally train with.

_Extra pay will be provided for Guard and Reserve troops who are required to mobilize more than once in six years; active-duty troops who get less than two years between overseas deployments also will get extra pay. Details were not provided.

_Military commanders will review their administration of a hardship waiver program "to ensure that they have properly taken into account exceptional circumstances facing military families of deployed service members."

As part of Bush's plan for boosting U.S. troop strength in Iraq, a brigade of National Guard soldiers from Minnesota will have its yearlong tour in Iraq extended by 125 days, to the end of July, and a Patriot missile battalion will be sent to the Persian Gulf next month, the Army said Thursday.

Maj. Randy Taylor, a spokesman for the 3rd Battalion, 43rd Air Defense Artillery Regiment, at Fort Bliss, Texas, said the Patriot unit was aware of the announced deployment. He said no formal order had been received Thursday.

The dispatching of a Patriot missile battery, capable of defending against shorter-range ballistic missile attacks, appeared linked to Bush's announcement Wednesday that he ordered an aircraft carrier strike group to the Middle East, which would be in easy reach of Iran, whose nuclear program is a U.S. concern. Navy officials said the carrier heading to the Gulf region is the USS John C. Stennis, which previously had been in line to deploy to the Pacific. It was not clear Thursday how the Pentagon intended to compensate in the Pacific for the absence of the Stennis in that region, where a chief worry is North Korea.

The Marines announced that two infantry units _ the 3rd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, and the 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment _ will stay in Iraq 60 to 90 days longer than scheduled. That will enable the Marines to have a total of eight infantry battalions in western Anbar province, instead of the current six, by February. Once the 60- to 90- day extension is over, an additional two battalions will be sent in early from their U.S. bases.

Also, the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit, which combines infantry with a helicopter squadron and a logistics battalion, totaling about 2,200 Marines, will stay in Anbar for 45 more days.

Those extensions conform with Bush's announcement that he was ordering 4,000 more Marines to Anbar.

The military tries to avoid extending combat tours and sending forces earlier than planned because it disrupts the lives of troops and their families and makes it harder for the services to get all troops through the education and training programs they need for promotions. But in this case it was deemed unavoidable.

Cingular's Largest Amount of Dropped Calls

2007-01-12T08:45:00.000-05:00

AT&T to phase out Cingular brand
AT&T will begin to extinguish the cell brand to imprint its more-than-century-old name firmly across its services.

By Reuters -->
Published: January 11, 2007, 10:30 PM PST
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AT&T will begin to extinguish next week the brand of cell phone operator Cingular, built up with billions of dollars over a few years, to imprint its more-than-century-old name firmly across its services.

AT&T, which took full control of No. 1 U.S. mobile carrier Cingular with its $86 billion purchase of BellSouth last month, will launch on Monday a campaign to mark the change.

"We did not enter that decision lightly," Wendy Clark, vice president of advertising at AT&T, said in an interview. "We came to understand that consumer customers and business customers alike are looking for a single provider. We heard it so consistently across the marketplace."

In its first stage, Cingular will share its orange logo of a bouncing jack with the AT&T globe logo on everything from television ads to sales uniforms and monthly bills.

AT&T 's name and logo will eventually replace Cingular in a process expected to take several months, with the exact timing determined as more customer feedback comes in, Clark said.
But with its long and complicated history, AT&T may face customer confusion over its name, marketing experts said. Also, Cingular built up a reputation among younger customers who may not easily associate with the AT&T brand.

At stake are AT&T 's efforts to promote its bundle of phone, Internet and video services against a growing number of rivals, including cable operators and Web providers.

One new ad will portray a familiar Cingular image--grain harvesters mowing a field to represent "bars" showing maximum cell phone reception. But in a new take, the harversters will change direction and mow the AT&T globe out of the stalks.

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"It's a tough proposition," said Hayes Roth, chief marketing officer at brand agency Landor Associates. "Multiple brands within any company is expensive. Arguably they don't have much choice, they've made a stand now that they've invested back in the core brand."

Cingular spent nearly $1 billion on media advertising in the first nine months of 2006, up from about $920 million in the same period during 2005, according to the latest data from tracking firm TNS Media Intelligence.

For the remainder of their businesses, AT&T spent nearly $600 million on media ads in the nine-month period, while BellSouth spent just over $100 million, TNS said.

AT&T has said about 20 percent of operating cost savings in the BellSouth merger will come from lower advertising costs.

The new AT&T was formed in the merger of SBC Communications and AT&T in late 2005. Adding to the mix, in late 2004 Cingular bought AT&T Wireless, eradicating that brand for its poor reputation among customers.

"The good news is there is a difference between AT&T and AT&T Wireless," Clark said. "We have benefited significantly...by having 12 months under our belt as the new AT&T."

Story Copyright © 2007 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

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Office Email Loops

2007-01-11T11:30:00.000-05:00

Firms Fret as Office E-Mail Jumps Security Walls

Todd Wilson, an operations manager at Johns Hopkins University, said copies of employees’ forwarded messages sit untouched on servers.

By BRAD STONE
Published: January 11, 2007
SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 10 — Companies spend millions on systems to keep corporate e-mail safe. If only their employees were as paranoid.

A growing number of Internet-literate workers are forwarding their office e-mail to free Web-accessible personal accounts offered by Google, Yahoo and other companies. Their employers, who envision corporate secrets leaking through the back door of otherwise well-protected computer networks, are not pleased.

“It’s a hole you can drive an 18-wheeler through,” said Paul D. Myer, president of the security firm 8E6 Technologies in Orange, Calif.

It is a battle of best intentions: productivity and convenience pitted against security and more than a little anxiety.

Corporate techies — who, after all, are paid to worry — want strict control over internal company communications and fear that forwarding e-mail might expose proprietary secrets to prying eyes. Employees just want to get to their mail quickly, wherever they are, without leaping through too many security hoops.

Corporate networks, which typically have several layers of defenses against hackers, can require special software and multiple passwords for access. Some companies use systems that give employees a security code that changes every 60 seconds; this must be read from the display screen of a small card and typed quickly.

That is too much for some employees, especially when their computers can store the passwords for their Web-based mail, allowing them to get right down to business.

So far, no major corporate disasters caused by this kind of e-mail forwarding have come to light. But security experts say the risks are real. For example, the flimsier security defenses of Web mail systems could allow viruses or spyware to get through, and employees could unwittingly download them at the office and infect the corporate network.

Also, because messages sent from Web-based accounts do not pass through the corporate mail system, companies could run afoul of federal laws that require them to archive corporate mail and turn it over during litigation.

Lawyers in particular wring their hands over employees using outside e-mail services. They encourage companies to keep messages for as long as necessary and then erase them to keep them out of the reach of legal foes. Companies have no control over the life span of e-mail messages in employees’ Web accounts.

“If employees are just forwarding to their Web e-mail, we have no way to know what they are doing on the other end,” said Joe Fantuzzi, chief executive of the information security firm Workshare. “They could do anything they want. They could be giving secrets to the K.G.B.”
Hospitals have an added legal obligation to protect patient records. But when DeKalb Medical Center in Atlanta started monitoring its staff use of Web-based e-mail, it found that doctors and nurses routinely forwarded confidential medical records to their personal Web mail accounts — not for nefarious purposes, but so they could continue to work from home.

In the months after the hospital began monitoring traffic to Web e-mail services, it identified “a couple hundred incidents,” said Sharon Finney, DeKalb’s information security administrator. “I was surprised about the lack of literacy about the technology we depend on every day,” she said.
DeKalb now forbids the practice, and uses several software systems that monitor the hospital’s outbound e-mail and Web traffic. Ms Finney said she still catches four to five perpetrators a month trying to forward hospital e-mail.

The Web mail services may also be prone to glitches. Last month, Google fixed a bug that caused the disappearance of “some or all” of the stored mail of around 60 users. A week later, it acknowledged a security hole that could have exposed its users’ address books to Internet attackers.

Even the security experts most knowledgeable about the risks of e-mail forwarding to personal accounts acknowledge doing so themselves.

“Of course I do it; who doesn’t?” said Kimberly Getgen Bargero, vice president for marketing at Sendmail, an e-mail software company in Emeryville, Calif. Ms. Bargero said she often used her Yahoo Mail account on business trips so she does not have to access her corporate network remotely.

What do you think of this article?

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Ted Turner Solar venture

2007-01-11T11:22:00.000-05:00

Ted Turner to launch venture with NJ solar company
Wed Jan 10, 2007 5:01pm ET

U.S. News
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NEW YORK (Reuters) - Ted Turner, the cable television billionaire and owner of vast land tracts in the U.S. West, is forming a venture with a solar company targeting California and other markets, his office said.

"Our future depends on changing the way we use energy," Turner said in a statement. "We've got to move away from fossil fuels and develop long-term energy solutions that work. Using clean energy technologies, such as solar power, is the right thing to do, and it represents a tremendous business opportunity."

Turner will partner with Dome-Tech Solar, a solar company in Branchburg, New Jersey to create DT Solar, a Turner renewable energy company, a spokesman said.
Financial details were not immediately available. The spokesman said they would be revealed in coming weeks.

Dome-Tech Solar, a private company founded in 2003, develops and builds large-scale solar energy systems for commercial, industrial and institutional clients.

The market for solar technology is expected to expand substantially in California, where governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has set a goal to create 3,000 megawatts of new solar produced electricity by 2017.

Maine Bans Private Smoking

2007-01-11T11:15:00.000-05:00

Bangor Makes It Illegal to Smoke in Cars

BANGOR, Maine (AP) -- The Bangor City Council approved a measure Monday that prohibits people from smoking in vehicles when children are present.

When the law goes into effect next week, Bangor will become the first municipality in Maine to have such a law. Similar statewide measures have been adopted in Arkansas and Louisiana and are under consideration in several other states.

People who smoke with children present in the confined space of a car or truck might as well be deliberately trying to kill those children, said City Councilor Patricia Blanchette, who is a smoker.

"Let's step up to the plate and lead; our children are worth the fight," she said.
The ordinance, which was approved by a 6-3 vote, applies to any motor vehicles on any public roads within the city. Violators face fines of up to $50.

An amendment that was added Monday to the original proposal makes the violation a primary offense, rather than a secondary offense. That means police can pull over vehicles if they see somebody smoking with anybody under 18 in the vehicle; if it were a secondary offense, police would have to stop the vehicle for some other reason, such as speeding.

Several residents, doctors and representatives from the Bangor Region Chamber of Commerce and the Fusion Bangor development group spoke in favor of the ordinance.

Pediatrician Robert Holmberg said the evidence is "incontrovertible" that exposure to cigarette smoke causes medical disorders in children, including asthma, bronchitis, ear infections and heart disease.

"Children are the most in need of the protection by public policy, because they can't protect themselves," he said.

But the ordinance also had its critics.

Councilor Susan Hawes, who voted against the law, said the police department should devote its energy to more important issues. There's already too much government intervention in people's lives, she said.

Aaron Prill of Bangor told the council that the ordinance was a "feel- good option" that was not intended to protect children but rather to "moralize" against smokers. Most smokers have enough common sense not to smoke around children, he said.
___
Information from: Bangor Daily News, http://www.bangornews.com

Consumer Electronics War

2007-01-11T11:12:00.000-05:00

Cisco Sues Apple Over Use of IPhone Name
By JORDAN ROBERTSONAP Business Writer

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Cisco Systems Inc. said Wednesday it is suing Apple Inc. in federal court over Apple's use of Cisco's registered iPhone trademark for its new handheld device.
Cisco has owned the trademark on the name "iPhone" since 2000, when it acquired InfoGear Technology Corp., which originally registered the name.

And three weeks ago, Cisco's Linksys division put the trademark to use, releasing an Internet-enabled phone called "iPhone" that uses the increasingly popular Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP.

On Tuesday, Apple unveiled the iPhone, its "game-changing" touch- screen-controlled cell phone device that plays music, surfs the Web and delivers voicemail and e-mail.

"Cisco entered into negotiations with Apple in good faith after Apple repeatedly asked permission to use Cisco's iPhone name," said Mark Chandler, Cisco senior vice president and general counsel, in a statement. "There is no doubt that Apple's new phone is very exciting, but they should not be using our trademark without our permission."

Cisco is seeking injunctive relief to prevent Apple from copying Cisco's iPhone trademark.
"Today's iPhone is not tomorrow's iPhone. The potential for convergence of the home phone, cell phone, work phone and PC is limitless, which is why it is so important for us to protect our brand," Chandler added.

Sheehan Making Strides

2007-01-11T11:07:00.000-05:00

Cindy Sheehan Buys Property in Crawford

CRAWFORD, Texas (AP) -- War protester Cindy Sheehan has purchased a 5-acre plot in Crawford with some of the insurance money she received after her son was killed in Iraq.
The group she helps lead, Gold Star Families for Peace, says on its Web site that it will return next month to protest the war in Iraq in the small town near Waco where President Bush has a ranch. Like last year, Sheehan, whose son Casey was killed in Iraq in 2004, will again demand to meet with the president.

"We decided to buy property in Crawford to use until George's resignation or impeachment, which we all hope is soon for the sake of the world," Sheehan said in a newsletter set to be sent to supporters Thursday. "I can't think of a better way to use Casey's insurance money than for peace, and I am sure that Casey approves."

Her anti-war gathering in Crawford is scheduled for Aug. 16 through Sept. 2. But Bush is scheduled to be at his ranch mainly during the first two weeks of August.

Sheehan, from California, reinvigorated the anti-war movement last summer with her peace vigil, which started in ditches off the road to Bush's ranch. As it grew, the group also set up its protests on a private, 1-acre lot closer to the ranch.

Bush helps DOD budget

2007-01-10T10:24:00.000-05:00

Bush Set to Announce Troop Buildup Plans
By JENNIFER LOVENAssociated Press Writer

Jan 10 10:07 AM US/Eastern

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush will tell the nation Wednesday night he will send more than 20,000 additional American forces to Iraq, acknowledging that it had been a mistake earlier not to have more American and Iraqi troops fighting the war, a senior administration official said.

Seeking support for a retooled strategy to win support for the unpopular war, the president also will acknowledge that the rules of engagement were flawed, White House counselor Dan Bartlett said.

Even before Bush speaks, Democrats were laying plans to register their opposition to the troop buildup. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pledged to hold a vote on the increase, trying to isolate Bush on his handling of the war. Democratic leaders in the Senate, saying they hoped to win some Republican support, said they planned to have their chamber debate a symbolic measure next week also expressing opposition to troop increases.

The Democratic congressional election victory in November showed "American voters expect us to help get us out of Iraq," Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., a 2008 presidential hopeful and chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said as his panel heard independent experts on Iraq.

In the latest sign of GOP unease on the war, Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, top Republican on the Foreign Relations panel, said, "The president and his team need to explain what objectives we are trying to achieve if forces are expanded, where and how they will be used," and how long additional troops may be needed.

For a little over 20 minutes Wednesday night, Bush is to explain why a gradual buildup of about 20,000 additional U.S. troops, along with other steps expected to include pumping $1 billion into Iraq's economy, is the answer for a more than 3 1/2-year-old war that has only gotten deadlier with no end in sight.

Bartlett did a round of interviews on television morning shows to set the stage for the president's address.

"A vast majority of the American people are not satisfied with the progress in Iraq," Bartlett said. "President Bush is in their camp. He's not satisfied, he's going to say the strategy was not working, he's going to tell them specifically how we're going to fix the strategy."

Bush will say that the infusion of additional American forces will depend on Iraq taking specific steps to curb sectarian violence and making other moves to deal with political and economic problems. The first batch of new U.S. troops is expected to be in Iraq within three weeks.

Bartlett also said that Bush will "make very clear that America's commitment is not open-ended, that benchmarks have to be met, that milestones have to be reached both on the security side but just as importantly on the political side and the economic side. It will be unequivocal in President Bush's speech tonight that the Iraqis have to step up."

In his speech, Bush was to acknowledge that mistakes have been made, Bartlett said.
"The president will say very clearly tonight that there were mistakes with the earlier operations, that it did not have enough Iraqi troops or U.S. troops, that the rules of engagement _ the terms in which our troops would actually conduct these operations _ were flawed," Bartlett said.

After nearly four years of fighting, $400 billion and thousands of American and Iraqi lives lost, the White House calls the president's prime-time address from the White House library just the start of a debate over Iraq's many problems.

The address _ one of the most pivotal of Bush's presidency _ is the centerpiece of an aggressive public relations campaign that also will include detailed briefings for lawmakers and reporters, trips abroad by Cabinet members and a series of appearances by Bush starting with a trip Thursday to Fort Benning, Ga.

Since Friday, Bush has briefed about 100 lawmakers _ meetings that were to culminate Wednesday with Congress' Democratic leadership and their Republican counterparts.
Bush on Tuesday also talked by telephone with key foreign allies. He filled in the leaders of Britain, Australia and Denmark, with more calls planned.

Crafting the new policy took the president nearly three months. Relevant agencies conducted reviews, outside experts were called in, and the president consulted several times with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and other prominent Iraqi leaders.

In the meantime, the sectarian violence in Iraq continued unabated, and public approval of Bush's handling of the Iraq war hit a record low of 27 percent in December, according to an AP-Ipsos poll.

The president will say that the 132,000 troops now in Iraq will be augmented with more sent to both Baghdad, which has been consumed by sectarian violence, and the western Anbar Province, a base of the Sunni insurgency and foreign al-Qaida fighters.

Moving first into Iraq will be the 2nd Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division, which is now in Kuwait and poised to head quickly into the country, the defense official said. The brigade, numbering about 3,500 troops, is based at Fort Bragg, N.C.

Bush is expected to link increases in both U.S. troops and economic aid to moves by the Shiite-led Iraqi government to bridge sectarian divisions. Those include taking steps to curb Shiite militias, enacting a plan to distribute oil revenue to all the country's sects and easing government restrictions on deposed leader Saddam Hussein's Baath Party.

The Baghdad government also will be required to commit more money toward reconstruction and more troops into the fight.

Other components of the president's plan include a bit over $1 billion to shore up Iraq's battered economy and create jobs and a call for friendly Mideast countries _ some of which Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is visiting starting Friday _ to increase their aid to Iraq, said a second official, who also requested anonymity.

The president will ignore the recommendation of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group that he include Syria and Iran in an effort to staunch Iraqi bloodshed, the official said

Cisco makes leading moves

2007-01-09T20:18:00.000-05:00

A shifting landscape for e-mail security
Tech heavyweights are taking charge in a "brutal battle" for dominance among spam fighters.
By Joris Evers Staff Writer, CNET News.com -->
Published: January 8, 2007, 12:01 PM PST
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Cisco Systems' purchase of e-mail security specialist IronPort Systems is another sign that big-name vendors are taking over the spam fight, analysts say.

Upon completion of the $830 million cash and stock deal, networking giant Cisco will join Symantec and Microsoft as a leader in the e-mail security arena. Those other companies entered the market via acquisitions and product development of their own.

High Impact
What's new:
With its buy of IronPort Systems, Cisco Systems is joining Symantec and Microsoft as a leader in the e-mail security arena.
Bottom line:
The acquisition is a sign that tech heavyweights are taking charge in the battle to dominate the antispam market.
More stories on this topic

"As a market matures, this is typically what happens--the major vendors want to have another arrow in their quiver to sell," said Peter Firstbrook, an analyst with Gartner.
More acquisitions are likely, with Cisco rival Juniper Networks and tech giant IBM possible suitors for the remaining independent e-mail security companies, Firstbrook said.
E-mail security used to be the terrain of specialized providers, selling to eager buyers who wanted to stop the influx of e-mail threats, particularly spam. Today, such technology has become more of a commodity, and the area has changed from a seller's market to a buyer's market catered to by the big guys, analysts said.

Industry consolidation has been ongoing, driven by the fact that e-mail security has become a necessity for businesses. Spam and other e-mail pests have kept on rising, despite Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates' promise to squelch them. More than 90 percent of e-mail is unsolicited, and 2006 was a record year for spam yet again, according to IronPort statistics.

Acquisitions in the space include Microsoft's takeovers of Sybari Software and FrontBridge Technologies, as well as Symantec's purchase of Brightmail and Secure Computing's buy of CipherTrust. As a result, the independent companies that remain face a tougher market.
"It is a brutal battle against intelligent and well-armed enemies," said Peter Christy, an analyst with the Internet Research Group in Los Altos, Calif. "This is a time where antispam companies will start to fall by the wayside. If you're not in the top four, there is a question of how you survive with a decent business if somebody doesn't buy you."

Companies such as Proofpoint and Barracuda Networks could be acquisition targets, Christy said. "Anyone in this space who is not public would like to be acquired," he said.

The number of companies active in the space has decreased from about 150 in 2003 to about 75 now, said Dean Drako, CEO of Mountain View, Calif.-based Barracuda Networks, a venture-backed maker of antispam appliances. Yet Drako believes the market won't consolidate at the pace that pundits have proclaimed.

"I would characterize the merger and acquisition activity in this market as overhyped beyond hope for the last four years," he said. "Will there be some more consolidation in this area? Probably. In the short term, the market is not going to change significantly from the way it is today. In the longer term, over many years, the number of suppliers will be fewer."
Drako would not be drawn on the question of whether Barracuda was up for sale or would launch as a public entity. The company, which markets primarily to small and midsize organizations, is well-positioned to remain an independent player, he said. "The customer cares that the vendor is large enough to survive to provide them what they need. We crossed that threshold a year or so ago," he said.

Cisco's entry augurs a tougher battle among the big guys. Symantec, in particular, faces a challenge, compared with the days when it competed mainly with smaller rivals: The Cupertino, Calif., company used to go head-to-head with David, now it's squaring off with Goliath. "The last thing Symantec had over IronPort was their big brand name," Firstbrook said.
On the riseThe e-mail security market is growing rapidly. In 2005, it hit $660 million in worldwide revenue and was growing at 44 percent per year, according to Gartner data. Symantec held 12 percent of that pie, and IronPort had 6.6 percent, the analyst firm said.
Cisco paid a premium for IronPort, which is known for its high-end e-mail security appliances. The $830 million deal is the second-biggest purchase of a privately held business by Cisco and the fifth-biggest takeover in the network specialist's history. By contrast, Secure Computing paid $273.6 million in July for IronPort rival CipherTrust.

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An acquisition should be welcome news to customers of IronPort and other such companies that get bought, analysts said. The suitors typically have deeper pockets, which should translate into more stability. "A private company, consuming venture capital, is living in limbo," Christy said.
Also, customers will be able to buy multiple products from a single provider, instead of having to deal with several suppliers. "The more vendors you have, the higher the administration cost," Firstbrook said. In Cisco's case, buyers may even be able to get their Cisco discount applied to IronPort products, he said.

But not all IronPort customers are happy that the company will be part of Cisco. "There goes the neighborhood," CNET News.com reader Fred Dunn, who works at a large academic institution, wrote in response to the buyout news. "With Cisco's reputation, we can already see the annual maintenance fees going up."

Tom Gillis, senior vice president of marketing at IronPort, assured customers that nothing will change as the company operates as a subsidiary of Cisco. "It is business as usual--no changes to products, pricing or support," he said.

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Without Ipods Life Goes On

2007-01-09T18:45:00.000-05:00

Cisco touts the networked home of future
CEO outlines vision for building home networks that let people access video, music and other content anywhere in the home.
By Marguerite Reardon Staff Writer, CNET News.com -->
Published: January 9, 2007, 2:53 PM PST

Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers took the stage at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Tuesday to outline his company's vision of the networked home of the future and how through partnerships and acquisitions Cisco will become a top player in the market.

He said that the consumer electronics market is at an important transition. The last decade was about moving entertainment from analog to digital. And the next few years will be about networking consumer electronics devices together to allow people to use any device anywhere and to be able to do this as easily and safely as possible.

"We said 15 years ago when I first came to Cisco that the Internet and networking would change the way the world lives, works and plays," Chambers said. "We intended that if we were successful, we'd create the ability for products to be shared across any network. We outlined a strategy for the enterprise, then service provider and commercial markets. And today we outline for you why we will be the leader in the networked home."
John ChambersCisco CEO

He emphasized Cisco's track record in identifying key trends and executing its strategy to become a leader in new markets. While most companies struggle to be No. 1 in a single market, Cisco has been aggressively moving into several new markets. And in each of those cases the company has garnered first or second place in terms of market share, he said.
"So when you think about whether we will achieve our goals, step back and look at our track record," he said.

With the help of Jim Grubb, Cisco's chief demonstration officer, Chambers showed off how a connected home will look in the future. He demonstrated how a digital music system in a car could be networked to a home network so that when you arrive home the song you're listening to in your car automatically switches to your handheld mobile device when you turn off the car. And when you come into the living room and turn on your TV, the song can continue to play there with a simple click of the remote.

Playlists are automatically synched on all devices on the network, so that people won't have to carry special devices with pre-loaded music or video from room to room. And consumers won't have to update different devices when they want to hear music. Every device will be updated automatically through the network.

While these new capabilities sound great, Chambers also noted that Cisco would help ensure that there are safeguards, so parents could control what movies or music their children were watching or listening to. And he said that even though the technology that will be used to network all these devices and services together would increasingly become more complicated, Cisco would work to hide the complexity from consumers so that devices could be plugged into the network and work easily.

"Our guiding principal is to connect any device to any application in whatever mode you want, but it must be simple. And it's got to be safe," he said.

As an example, he and Grubb demonstrated how a security camera connected to the home network would automatically install and configure itself. The network would detect the camera and send a message to a home PC or a mobile device where the user would click on a button to give permission to connect the device to the network.

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In addition to all the new capabilities of the connected home, Chambers noted how the new era in networking will ultimately help drive revenue for Cisco's traditional business, which is providing networking equipment for service providers and business users. The killer application, he said, will be video, which will create an explosion in terms of the need for network capacity. So instead of seeing network capacity growth rates of 50 percent to 100 percent per year it will be more like 200 percent to 500 percent growth, he said.

"By 2010, 20 homes networked together in a neighborhood will have more load across their network than the entire Internet did in 1995," he said. "This is what gets a networking person excited."

Finally, Chambers tried to ease concerns of traditional consumer electronics vendors and content providers that Cisco would be a threat to their businesses. He called Cisco "Switzerland" and said the company will remain technology agnostic and will use industry standards to build its new products.

In the end, Cisco will use acquisitions and partnerships to build its consumer and networked home business. And through these partnerships, Chambers said, the company will create a market that will generate revenue for all the companies involved, from content creators and owners to device makers.

"We believe in collaboration for a common win-win," Chambers said. "It will be a healthy give and take...that will (ultimately) generate a lot of money for everyone involved."

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2007-01-08T18:09:00.000-05:00

January 9, 2007

Aspirations of Peace

There are many ways to deviate

And many times situations escalate

The mind, the mind can be binded

If you lose sight by focus on distractions

No matter what is thought or sought

Many people should not be caught

They should be allowed to walk on by

In order for peace to reside inside

Regardless of affiliation or relation,

Some people love some form of agitation.

For those few, there may be help

If you see what they don't

There is no relief to help the diabolically stressed

Its not mean. Its just no contest.

Their thoughts may be contagious

Which brings about an unnecessary infection.

Just stick to the path regardless of what is said

And may your long nights be blessed in bed.

With all the peace and tranquility

which you strive for by avoiding the insanity.

Israel's Prospective War Agenda

2007-01-08T12:07:00.000-05:00

January 6, 2007
Israel's Bad Influence
by Charley Reese

Scott Ritter, a former U.N. arms inspector in Iraq, has written a book, Target Iran, in which he accuses the Israeli government and its American lobby of pushing the U.S. into attacking Iran.

Ritter writes, "Let there be no doubt: If there is an American war with Iran, it is a war that was made in Israel." He accuses some members of the lobby of dual loyalty and urges that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee be required to register as a foreign agent.

He also blasts the Israeli lobby for its use of the Holocaust and for crying anti-Semite every time Israel is criticized. "This is a sickening trend that must be ended," he writes.

By coincidence, an Israeli general has verified everything Ritter says. According to an article published in Today.az on Jan. 2, Israeli Brig. Gen. Oded Tira published a statement urging an all-out effort by Israel and its lobby to push a U.S. attack on Iran.

"President Bush lacks the political power to attack Iran," the general is quoted as saying. "As an American strike in Iran is essential for our existence, we must help him pave the way by lobbying the Democratic Party (which is conducting itself foolishly) and U.S. newspaper editors. We need to do this in order to turn the Iran issue to a bipartisan one and unrelated to the Iraq failure."

The general urges the Israeli lobby to turn to Hillary Clinton and other potential presidential candidates in the Democratic Party so that they support immediate action by Bush against Iran. The lobby must also approach the Europeans, he adds, so Bush won't find himself isolated, and he calls for Israel to "clandestinely cooperate with Saudi Arabia so that it also persuades the U.S. to strike Iran."

As Ritter says, a U.S. war in Iran will be a war made in Israel.
Of course, Israel's American supporters, most of whom are ignorant of nuclear energy, ignorant of the history of Israel and ignorant of the people in the Middle East, will trot out their usual specious arguments.

But let's lay out the undeniable facts. Israel considers Iran its main threat. Israel wants a U.S. attack against Iran. The Israeli lobby does what the Israeli government tells it to do. Anybody who claims the Israeli lobby is just another lobby is either ignorant or lying. The Israeli lobby is the second most, if not the most, powerful lobby in America.

So, sit back and watch the Israeli amen corner start the propaganda to push America to war with Iran just as it did in the case of Iraq. It will try to have you believe that Iran can make nuclear weapons as easily as baking cakes. The truth is that even if Iran decided to seek nuclear weapons, the Iranians are a good 10 years away from having any. The truth is that Iran, even if it had nuclear weapons, is no threat to the U.S.

All of which reminds me of my favorite undiplomatic comment by a diplomat. Some time ago at a private party in London, the French ambassador said of Israel, "Why does the world put up with such a sh*tty little country causing so much trouble?" Outraged British Zionists demanded his recall, but the French government ignored them.

Sooner or later, Americans are going to wake up to the fact that Israel's influence on the American government is detrimental. If Israel wants a war with Iran, let the Israelis fight it. Of course, seeing how poorly they did against Hezbollah, I suspect that the Israelis, despite their public threats, would not choose to fight the Iranians.
In my opinion, Americans who want American youth to die and bleed for the benefit of a foreign country are guilty of more than dual loyalty.

Maximize Cell Phone Usage

2007-01-06T17:46:00.000-05:00

Verizon to announce plan for TV shows on cell phones
Verizon is expected to announce full-length programming to its cellular subscribers from several major television networks. The New York Times
By Laura M. Holson The New York Times -->
Published: January 6, 2007, 11:40 AM PST
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Verizon Wireless is expected to announce on Sunday that it will offer full-length programming to its cellular subscribers from several major television networks, according to people apprised of the deal.
The service, which should be in operation by the end of March, will consist of eight channels and will include popular shows from NBC, CBS, Fox and MTV, they said. ESPN is reportedly also in negotiations to offer programs, which will be offered for the cellphone screen soon after they appear on television.
What is significant is that the programs will be among the first full-length television shows to be offered to cellular subscribers in the United States. In Europe, where mobile phone technology is more advanced, such programming is more widely available.
It will also make the mobile phone more competitive with devices like the iPod from Apple Computer. In 2005, Apple announced that it would offer shows from the Walt Disney's ABC network for sale through its iTunes Store. Other entertainment companies quickly followed suit.
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Media companies will receive a fee based on consumer subscriptions. A spokesman for Verizon Wireless could not be reached for comment on Friday evening.
In the deal, Verizon is joining with MediaFLO U.S.A., a subsidiary of Qualcomm, which has created technology to transmit high-resolution video through its own dedicated network. MediaFLO’s quality rivals European and Asian standards, media executives say.
Verizon Wireless and Qualcomm have been partners for some time; they first announced an agreement to work together in 2005. MediaFLO was reported by those apprised of the Verizon deal to be in talks to offer television shows through other wireless phone companies as well.
Samsung and LG are two phone makers whose equipment is compatible with the MediaFLO network.
Entire contents, Copyright © 2007 The New York Times. All rights reserved.

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Future Entertainment

2007-01-06T12:40:00.000-05:00

The Boob Tube Goes Broadband
In the living room of the near future, your TV, PC, and Internet will be as one.
By Wade Roush
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Media adapters debuting at next week's International Consumer Electronics Show will link PCs, TVs, and other media devices wirelessly--or through old-fashioned Ethernet cables or power lines. Credit: Melissa Angeli
In the 1970s and 1980s, the fastest way to transport lots of data between information devices was often to carry it down the hall on a magnetic tape or floppy disk--a method that computer scientists jokingly referred to as "Sneakernet."
At my house, Sneakernet still rules, at least when it comes to multimedia networking. If I want to download a movie or TV show from an online service such as iTunes, for example, I attach my laptop to the 10-megabit-per-second cable modem in my office; if I then want to watch that same show in my living room, I have to lug the laptop downstairs.
But consumer-electronics makers have a different vision in mind, and they'll be marketing it to thousands of attendees at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), set to begin on Sunday, January 7, in Las Vegas. The vision: consumers could simply point a remote control at their entertainment center and access video, music, or photos stored on their PC using a home broadband network based on old-fashioned Ethernet or Wi-Fi connections or newer technologies, such as powerline networking and ultra-wideband (UWB) wireless.
The gadgets that allow this integration are called "media adapters." The category hasn't yet attracted much attention among the electronics-shopping crowds at Best Buy or Circuit City. But at CES, where part of the massive exhibit area will be devoted to home networking, a number of companies will show off new or recently released models that they hope will appeal to entertainment junkies who want to get the most bang for the thousands of bucks they've already spent on the newest sound systems, high-definition (HD) LCD or plasma displays, and home computers.
For example, Netgear, already a leading maker of wireless routers for home Wi-Fi networks, will be promoting its Digital Entertainer system, introduced four months ago. The $280 device looks like a set-top cable TV box steamrollered to about 1.5 centimeters in thickness. It resides next to your TV and stereo system, where it communicates with your PC using a conventional wired network--if you're lucky enough to have Ethernet cables built into your walls--or an 802.11g Wi-Fi wireless connection.
Using a remote control and a simple graphical interface displayed on your TV, you can call up digital movies, videos, photos, or nonencrypted music stored on any PC or hard drive attached to your home network. Your computer will compress the files and send them to the Digital Entertainer in streaming form as fast as your network can handle them. That means up to 100 megabits per second for a wired Ethernet connection and 54 megabits per second for an 802.11g connection. Both are enough to stream HD video, if that's what you've got stored.
Netgear's competitors offer similar boxes in the same price range; D-Link's Media Lounge DSM 320, for example, goes for $200. Buffalo Technology's LinkTheatre wireless HD media player lists at $490 but goes for $283 on Amazon. But for people who don't already have 802.11g routers for their computers or Ethernet connections in their living rooms, a few companies are offering media adapters based on newer technologies, notably UWB and powerline networking.

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What Alternative Food for Energy?!

2006-12-27T15:14:00.000-05:00

Want alternative energy? Try pond scum
To the growing industry of biodiesel and ethanol refiners with their eyes on biomass, algae looks like green gold.

By Clifford Carlsen TheDeal.com -->
Published: December 27, 2006, 4:00 AM PST
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Mounting concern about U.S. dependence on foreign oil and about global warming is causing a surge of interest and investment in biomass, hydrogen, solar power and other alternative energy sources.
But bubbling beneath the surface of this wave--in more ways than one--is a technology that, while lacking an existing market or powerful lobby to advance its profile, may soon emerge as the most promising source of portable liquid fuels and that can offer unique environmental benefits to the electrical generation industry.
Refiners are not committed to any feedstock source, and the market will determine what is successful, but 10 to 15 years from now it is hard to imagine that algae won't be a dominant source of oil for biodiesel.
--Bill Dommermuth, plant manager, Seattle Biodiesel
We are talking pond scum, or algae, a plant that for decades has been prized as a possible commodity crop based on its unparalleled ability to photosynthesize solar energy into plant biomass for food. Unlike most plants, algae shares characteristics of bacteria, and its photosynthetic machinery operates much faster in converting inorganic substances into organic matter. And while plants require a lot of fuel to sow and harvest and additional fertilizer and fresh water to nourish, algae can be continuously harvested from closed water-based bioreactors that require little additional replenishment other than inorganic fuel supplied in the form of waste gas.
New research suggests algae may prove even more important as a source of energy than as food. Indeed, to the growing industry of biodiesel and ethanol refiners accustomed to treating biomass and the lipids derived from it as faceless commodities, algae looks like green gold.
"Refiners are not committed to any feedstock source, and the market will determine what is successful, but 10 to 15 years from now it is hard to imagine that algae won't be a dominant source of oil for biodiesel," says Bill Dommermuth, plant manager for Seattle Biodiesel, an emerging leader in the production of biodiesel fuel whose parent, Imperium Renewables, has raised $10 million in venture capital from such investors as Nth Power, Technology Partners and Vulcan Capital.
"Right now we're using soybean oil, because canola is more expensive," Dommermuth adds. "Soybeans can give you 50 to 60 gallons of oil an acre compared to 75 to 125 gallons for canola, but algae is almost limitless because it grows so fast, so potentially you could get 10,000 gallons per acre."
But while corn, soybeans, canola and other common food crops have drawn the greatest public interest in biomass as a source of fuel, those commodities have been championed by a nexus of growers, processors, brokers and powerful lobbying groups looking to boost the value of existing crops by developing alternative uses for excess capacity and waste byproducts. Algae has few such advocates, and market demand has yet to materialize.
That's where alternative energy promoters and their ecology movement allies find common cause. It turns out the best sources of fertilizer for growing algae are the very greenhouse gases of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and ozone that electrical power generators are under increasing pressure to reduce and the animal wastes that are increasingly becoming a problem for industrial-scale livestock operations. A handful of start-up companies and countless academic programs are exploring ways to divert gases linked to global warming or animal wastes into systems for growing algae, which can then be processed into ethanol and biodiesel.
Michael Briggs, laboratory manager at the University of New Hampshire Physics Department, admits that for investors it is daunting to risk large amounts of capital on an emerging technology with no immediate market, noting that large bioreactors covering multiple acres of ponds closed to the open air are expensive to build. But he argues that the advantages of biodiesel as a portable fuel are so overwhelming compared with other new alternative energy technologies that algae will prevail as the chief source of feedstock. He also says that, unlike seed oils and corn, algae would never compete with food crops for agricultural land, as the best locations for algae farms would likely be in desert areas unsuitable for crops or grazing.
Science vs. commercial returnBriggs estimates that the U.S. would require roughly 141 billion gallons of biodiesel to replace the 60 billion gallons of petroleum diesel and 120 billion gallons of gasoline now used in U.S. vehicles. The savings from not having to shift vehicles and fueling infrastructure to an entirely new type of fuel would easily favor biodiesel, which can comprise 20 percent of a mixture with petroleum diesel with no modifications to current diesel-powered vehicles whatsoever, and 100 percent with minor modifications, he says. Briggs also says that diesel engines are well suited for hybrid vehicles operating on both liquid fuel and electricity.
Briggs spent much of the past five years trying to obtain funding to design bioreactors to grow algae with either electrical power plant waste gas or animal waste. But while investors recognize the compelling science behind such technology, he says, they believe it remains several years away from commercial viability.

CONTINUED: A success story... Page 1 2

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New York Biofuel Plant

2006-12-22T14:33:00.000-05:00

New York: Will pay for bacteria
Empire State has kicked in nearly $15 million to help build new ethanol plant that lets microbes do the dirty work.

By Michael Kanellos Staff Writer, CNET News.com -->
Published: December 20, 2006, 5:57 PM PST
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Mascoma has landed a $14.8 million grant from the state of New York to build a plant near Rochester that will turn paper sludge, wood chips and other agricultural waste into ethanol.
The 15,000-square-foot facility should be open toward the end of 2007 or early 2008. When it's fully operational, it will churn out about 500,000 gallons of biomass ethanol a year, said Mascoma President Colin South.
That's a drop in the bucket compared to the 150 billion gallons of petroleum that Americans consume every year, South admitted. Around 6 billion gallons of ethanol get consumed in the U.S. annually. But South asserts that biomass ethanol is a very new phenomenon.
"It's a small plant, but it's the first of its kind," he said.
Mascoma, a spin-off of New Hampshire's Dartmouth College, is one of a number of companies trying to make ethanol more economically sound. Ethanol--an alcohol that can be added to car fuel--releases fewer tailpipe emissions than gas. However, in the U.S., ethanol generally gets made from corn, which could also be sold as food. And it takes a considerable amount of water and energy to grow the corn, distill the corn mash into sugar and then turn that sugar into ethanol. (Ethanol production also releases carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas.)
Churning ethanol out of waste products significantly lowers the cost of the raw material. South estimated that the biomass used in Mascoma's processes will cost 60 percent or less than the feedstocks for traditional ethanol.
Just as important, Mascoma and others believe that exploiting genetically enhanced microbes to convert corn into sugar, rather than relying on traditional industrial processes, will reduce production costs and factory energy consumption. Microbes, after all, can be viewed as miniature chemical factories. Other microbe companies include Ceres, LiveFuels, Dyadic International, Diversa and Synthetic Genomics.

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Mascoma's twist on the microbe manufacturing formula is that several of the steps required to turn biomass into ethanol can be combined, thereby further cutting costs. The company's primary organism is Thermoanaerobacterium saccharolyticum, which breaks down plant material in a warm environment.
The deal also marks another landmark for the administration of New York Governor George Pataki, who has been working to turn the state into a high-tech hub with tax breaks, R&D incentives and grants. In the past few years, the state has landed deals with, among others, Advanced Micro Devices.
In Rochester, Mascoma will work with Genencor, which specializes in industrial enzymes, and nearby Cornell and Clarkson universities. Enzymes can help accelerate or alter the process of the "cell factories," said Jack Huttner, vice president of biorefineries at Genencor. Genencor has other similar deals in the works, Huttner added.
"It has been the most aggressive state in putting incentives on the table," South said.

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Food for Thought

2006-12-17T10:12:00.000-05:00

In Raising the World’s I.Q., the Secret’s in the Salt

Joseph Sywenkyj for The New York Times
MAKING A DIFFERENCE Salt, excavated from a field at the Aral Tuz salt processing plant in Aral, Kazakhstan, in train carriages. In 1999, only 29 percent of the nation’s households were using iodized salt. Now, 94 percent are.

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By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
Published: December 16, 2006
ASTANA, Kazakhstan — Valentina Sivryukova knew her public service messages were hitting the mark when she heard how one Kazakh schoolboy called another stupid. “What are you,” he sneered, “iodine-deficient or something?”
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On the Brink
The Iodine Solution
This article is part of a series examining diseases that hover on the brink of eradication, and the daunting obstacles that doctors and scientists face to finish the job. A final article will report on the challenges of campaigns that try to offer prevention of a number of diseases at once.
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Joseph Swenkyj for The New York Times
GETTING THE WORD OUT In Kzyl-Orda, Kazakhstan, seventh graders passing information booklets to one another about the importance of iodized salt.
Ms. Sivryukova, president of the national confederation of Kazakh charities, was delighted. It meant that the years spent trying to raise public awareness that iodized salt prevents brain damage in infants were working. If the campaign bore fruit, Kazakhstan’s national I.Q. would be safeguarded.
In fact, Kazakhstan has become an example of how even a vast and still-developing nation like this Central Asian country can achieve a remarkable public health success. In 1999, only 29 percent of its households were using iodized salt. Now, 94 percent are. Next year, the United Nations is expected to certify it officially free of iodine deficiency disorders.
That turnabout was not easy. The Kazakh campaign had to overcome widespread suspicion of iodization, common in many places, even though putting iodine in salt, public health experts say, may be the simplest and most cost-effective health measure in the world. Each ton of salt needs about two ounces of potassium iodate, which costs about $1.15.
Worldwide, about two billion people — a third of the globe — get too little iodine, including hundreds of millions in India and China. Studies show that iodine deficiency is the leading preventable cause of mental retardation. Even moderate deficiency, especially in pregnant women and infants, lowers intelligence by 10 to 15 I.Q. points, shaving incalculable potential off a nation’s development.
The most visible and severe effects — disabling goiters, cretinism and dwarfism — affect a tiny minority, usually in mountain villages. But 16 percent of the world’s people have at least mild goiter, a swollen thyroid gland in the neck.
“Find me a mother who wouldn’t pawn her last blouse to get iodine if she understood how it would affect her fetus,” said Jack C. S. Ling, chairman of the International Council for Control of Iodine Deficiency Disorders, a committee of about 350 scientists formed in 1985 to champion iodization.
The 1990 World Summit for Children called for the elimination of iodine deficiency by 2000, and the subsequent effort was led by Professor Ling’s organization along with Unicef, the World Health Organization, Kiwanis International, the World Bank and the foreign aid agencies of Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, the United States and others.
Largely out of the public eye, they made terrific progress: 25 percent of the world’s households consumed iodized salt in 1990. Now, about 66 percent do.
But the effort has been faltering lately. When victory was not achieved by 2005, donor interest began to flag as AIDS, avian flu and other threats got more attention.
And, like all such drives, it cost more than expected. In 1990, the estimated price tag was $75 million — a bargain compared with, for example, the fight against polio, which has consumed about $4 billion.
Since then, according to David P. Haxton, the iodine council’s executive director, about $160 million has been spent, including $80 million from Kiwanis and $15 million from the Gates Foundation, along with unknown amounts spent on new equipment by salt companies.
“Very often, I’ll talk to a salt producer at a meeting, and he’ll have no idea he had this power in his product,” Mr. Haxton said. “He’ll say ‘Why didn’t you tell me? Sure, I’ll do it. I would have done it sooner.’ ”
In many places, like Japan, people get iodine from seafood, seaweed, vegetables grown in iodine-rich soil or animals that eat grass grown in that soil. But even wealthy nations, including the United States and in Europe, still need to supplement that by iodizing salt.
The cheap part, experts say, is spraying on the iodine. The expense is always for the inevitable public relations battle.
In some nations, iodization becomes tarred as a government plot to poison an essential of life — salt experts compare it to the furious opposition by 1950s conservatives to fluoridation of American water.
In others, civil libertarians demand a right to choose plain salt, with the result that the iodized kind rarely reaches the poor. Small salt makers who fear extra expense often lobby against it. So do makers of iodine pills who fear losing their market.
Rumors inevitably swirl: iodine has been blamed for AIDS, diabetes, seizures, impotence and peevishness. Iodized salt, according to different national rumor mills, will make pickled vegetables explode, ruin caviar or soften hard cheese.
Breaking down that resistance takes both money and leadership.
“For 5 cents per person per year, you can make the whole population smarter than before,” said Dr. Gerald N. Burrow, a former dean of Yale’s medical school and vice chairman of the iodine council.
“That has to be good for a country. But you need a government with the political will to do it.”
‘Scandal’ of Stunted Children
In the 1990s, when the campaign for iodization began, the world’s greatest concentration of iodine-deficient countries was in the landlocked former Soviet republics of Central Asia.
All of them — Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrghzstan — saw their economies break down with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Across the region, only 28 percent of all households used iodized salt.
“With the collapse of the system, certain babies went out with the bathwater, and iodization was one of them,” said Alexandre Zouev, chief Unicef representative in Kazakhstan.

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Faith may need to be Rediscovered

2006-12-17T09:53:00.000-05:00

Abuse Claims Are Settled in Washington

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington has agreed to pay $1.3 million to 16 men who said they were sexually abused by eight priests from 1962 to 1982.

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By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: December 17, 2006
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington has agreed to pay $1.3 million to 16 men who said they were sexually abused by eight priests from 1962 to 1982.
Although the men began pursuing the claims three years ago, in many instances the statutes of limitation had expired in the jurisdictions where they said the abuse had occurred, said Peter M. Gillon, a lawyer for the group. In addition, two of the men had already lost legal claims against the archdiocese.
“Our clients were in severe distress, emotionally, psychologically, financially and spiritually, and felt that a settlement was appropriate at this time,” Mr. Gillon said as the agreement was announced Friday.
All eight priests accused by the men have been removed from ministry; seven were prosecuted and one was acquitted.
The settlement, first reported in Saturday’s editions of The Washington Post, provides cash payments of $10,000 to $190,000 to each of the men.
The archdiocese includes more than 560,000 Roman Catholics in 140 parishes in the District of Columbia and five Southern Maryland counties.
The settlements will be covered by insurance reserves and not by other church assets, operating funds or collections, said Susan Gibbs, a spokeswoman for the archdiocese.
Also on Friday, lawyers representing 45 people who sued the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, accusing clergy members of sexual abuse, announced that a $60 million settlement had been finalized and paid, a lawyer for the plaintiffs said.
Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, leader of the archdiocese, had announced the settlement Dec. 1 and said that $40 million of the payment would come from the archdiocese’s operations fund and that the rest would come from religious orders and insurance coverage.

Think About Emissions Control

2006-12-17T09:05:00.000-05:00

Gore urges scientists to warn public about global warming
Global warming is going on, says Al Gore, and scientists need to help spread the word.

By Michael Kanellos Staff Writer, CNET News.com -->
Published: December 14, 2006, 3:35 PM PST
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SAN FRANCISCO--Scientists need to come forward and help communicate to the public about the dangers of climate change, former U.S. Vice President Al Gore told an audience of scientists Thursday.
"It is time for the scientific community to consider playing a more active communications role," Gore told an audience of a few thousand at the American Geophysical Union, a weeklong scientific conference taking place here. "We have to find a way to connect the dots and make clear and compelling the basis for dramatic change."
Climate change presents an unusual, and dire, set of circumstances, he noted. For one thing, the effects of global warming appear to be accelerating. Just this week, a report released at the conference predicted that the permanent arctic ice sheet could nearly melt away by 2040. (The earlier estimate was 2060.)
"If we let it go, it won't come back in any time scale relevant to the human species," he said. "I was shocked that (researchers') horizon is now 34 years."

Getting the public to understand the problem, though, and then act upon it is not easy. Humanity will essentially have to make large changes in how it consumes natural resources, and instilling massive societal changes is difficult. Typically, reform movements only begin after an irrefutable disaster.
To top it off, society has become more short-term in its thinking, he asserted. Television has crimped the attention span of the average person. Politicians now concentrate on overnight polls, and financial analysts look at shorter and shorter time horizons. The future doesn't get a lot of attention, he said.
"We have somehow persuaded ourselves that we don't have to concern ourselves much about what we are doing to future generations," said Gore.

He particularly criticized the role of TV. In the past, individuals did more reading, and the printing press allowed a marketplace of ideas to flourish, he said, noting that many of America's Founding Fathers stayed up on the latest scientific advancements. But TV functions differently than print. TV stations, for example, tend to be controlled by a handful of individuals, and that old marketplace of ideas has given way to sitcoms.
"The well-informed citizenry has become the well-entertained audience," he said. "The age of print that began with Gutenberg essentially ended."
He later added: "The Internet, for all of its limitations, is growing, and it offers a hope of a meritocracy of ideas accessible to all," he said.
Gore also told the audience that scientific research appears to be under attack. The Environmental Protection Agency has resisted attempts by Congress to give the public access to files concerning pollution and global warming. A new federal directive will force some scientific research to be submitted for political review, a move that some researchers have compared to censorship.
The general public, he said, is becoming "desensitized" to the issue of scientific censorship.
But the speech wasn't a complete downer. Gore opened up with some jokes. He told a story about how a Nigerian news reporter mistakenly reported that he and his wife, Tipper, were going to open a Shoney's restaurant. (Shoney's is a chain of Denny's-like restaurants, mostly in the South.) Gore also did a short, but fairly spot-on imitation of former President Bill Clinton.
And he concluded by noting that climate problems can be tackled.
"In the U.S., the will to act is a renewable resource," he said.

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Government Makes Gas Tax or Not

2006-12-17T08:53:00.000-05:00

Supreme Court to consider climate change rules

The case, set for Wednesday, arises from growing pressure in the U.S. to regulate the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.

By Martin LaMonica Staff Writer, CNET News.com -->
Published: November 29, 2006, 4:00 AM PST

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A case set to be argued before the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday signals a growing movement in the U.S. to curb greenhouse gases with government mandates that put a price on carbon dioxide.
The court will hear arguments in a case to determine whether the Environmental Protection Agency should regulate emissions of carbon dioxide as a pollutant. Rulings aren't expected until next summer.
High Impact
What's new:
The U.S. Supreme Court is hearing a case to determine whether the EPA should regulate carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that has been linked to global warming, as a pollutant.
Bottom line:
The case, which could be a significant environmental ruling, underscores a growing push in the U.S. to lower greenhouse gas emissions through regulations and put a price on carbon dioxide.
More stories on this topic
Carbon dioxide is a heat-trapping gas that contributes to climate change. As concerns over global climate change build, many experts expect the U.S. federal government to put mechanisms in place to reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
"The debate has shifted from whether or not there will be federal regulations, to when it will come," said Fred Wellington, a senior financial analyst at the think tank World Resources Institute. "The smart money understands that climate policy is coming."
What is still up in the air is what form regulations will take, and whether state and local efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will be coordinated with any federal policies, Wellington said.
One possibility is a carbon tax that would be paid by large organizations, such as utilities and manufacturers. Another system, already used to reduce other gases in the U.S., is a "cap and trade" system, in which possible polluters are allocated a certain number of units of carbon dioxide emissions. If they emit more than their allocated cap, they can then purchase credits, or "offsets," on carbon-trading markets. These credits can be the surplus emission units from companies that have not reached their set limit.
This sort of trading system was introduced in Europe in January 2005 as part of the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change. Participants manage and trade carbon dioxide credits like other commodities with varying prices, such as fuels and crops.
This month, exchanges under the European Union's Emission Trading Scheme passed one billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions, which is roughly the annual output of Germany, according to market tracker Point Carbon. Eighteen billion euros, or $23 billion dollars, worth of carbon dioxide have been traded.
"We're seeing an increasing number of participants in the EU ETS (European Union Emission Trading Scheme). The players in the market are major utilities, investment banks and key European industrial companies," said Henrik Hasselknippe, manager of Point Carbon's EU ETS team.
The exact cost of regulations to business will depend on the initial allocations as well as companies' ability to stay under set targets.
States' pressureThe U.S. does not have federally mandated policies to curb greenhouse gas emissions, as Europe does. However, there is growing pressure among states, and even cities, to address climate change by putting a price tag on carbon.
The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) is a plan endorsed by northeast and mid-Atlantic states to reduce carbon dioxide emissions through a cap-and-trade system.
And California last month passed the California Climate Act of 2006 (click here for PDF), which gives the California Clean Air Commission the authority to put a cap on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and other "stationary sources." The state has also mandated reductions of greenhouse gas from trucks and cars.
That oversight could be extended, depending on the outcome of the case being heard on Wednesday. The U.S. Supreme Court will consider whether the U.S. EPA can decline to regulate emissions standards on motor vehicles, as the agency has argued it can do. The court is also supposed to determine whether the EPA has the authority to regulate carbon dioxide as an air pollutant associated with climate change.
The case (click here for PDF) is being brought by 12 states; cities including Baltimore, New York and Washington; and other groups.

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It is a challenge to a decision from D.C. Circuit Court, which sided with the EPA when it argued that the agency lacks the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and that it can decline to do so, according to a summary on the Supreme Court of the United States Blog. The Bush administration favors voluntary programs to reduce emissions.
In addition, there have been hearings in Congress on climate change-related policies.
Sen. Barbara Boxer is set to replace James Inhofe, who has shown skepticism of global warming, as the chair of the Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee. Earlier this month, Boxer and other senators called on the president to "move quickly to adopt economy-wide constraints on domestic GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions and then work with the international community to forge an effective and equitable global agreement."

CONTINUED: Business on board?... Page 1 2

Big Brother Moved Closer

2006-12-15T16:13:00.000-05:00

Homeland Security chief defends Real ID plan
Dismissing privacy concerns, Michael Chertoff says electronically read IDs will make the country more secure.

By Anne Broache Staff Writer, CNET News.com -->
Published: December 14, 2006, 12:01 PM PST
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WASHINGTON--U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff on Thursday defended forthcoming national ID cards as vital for security and consistent with privacy rights.
Chertoff said one of his agency's top goals next year is to forge ahead with recommendations for the controversial documents established by a federal law called the Real ID Act in May 2005. By 2008, Americans may be required to present such federally approved cards--which must be electronically readable--to travel on an airplane, open a bank account or take advantage of myriad government services such as Social Security.
Credit: DHS Michael Chertoff
"I think this is an example (of) when security and privacy go hand in hand," the Homeland Security chief said in a half-hour speech at George Washington University here. "It is a win-win for both."
The importance of such documents was magnified by an announcement Wednesday, Chertoff said. Federal authorities reported that they had made more than 1,200 arrests related to immigration violations and unmasked criminal organizations stealing and trafficking in genuine birth certificates and Social Security cards belonging to U.S. citizens.
"Do you think your privacy is better protected if someone can walk around with phony docs with your name and your Social Security number, or is your privacy better protected if you have the confidence that the identification relied upon is in fact reliable and uniquely tied to a single individual?" Chertoff asked rhetorically.
The upcoming federally approved IDs are intended to be a secure, tamperproof means of protecting Americans' identities while keeping out terrorists and other wrongdoers, Chertoff said.
The Homeland Security chief, who is nearing his two-year mark with the agency, was likely trying to quell rampant skepticism about the IDs voiced by some privacy advocates, immigrants and other groups. Some have said they fear that the IDs are a stepping stone to a veritable police state, complete with ready surveillance of individuals.
Some have argued that the idea of creating more tamperproof IDs is only a marginally better way to screen out those intent on committing terrorist acts because ID cards don't even begin to tackle a core crime prevention challenge: determining a person's unspoken intentions.
State governments have also been critical of the 2008 deadline and what they have said amounts to an unfunded mandate to switch over their systems. A September study released by the National Governors Association, National Conference of State Legislatures and American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators estimated that the overhaul of their identification systems (PDF) would cost states more than $11 billion over five years. The New Hampshire state legislature even considered passing a law earlier this year that would prohibit the state from complying with the federal Real ID law.

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Homeland Security has yet to issue congressionally mandated recommendations for the cards, so it's unclear how, exactly, they would work. The cards must contain, at a minimum, a person's name, birth date, gender, ID number, digital portrait, address, "physical security features" to prevent tampering or counterfeiting and a "common machine-readable technology" specified by Homeland Security.
A recent draft report by a DHS advisory committee(PDF) advised against using radio frequency identification technology, or RFID, in tracking humans because of privacy concerns.
The purpose of Chertoff's Thursday morning speech was to reflect on the agency's work during the past year and to outline goals for 2007. For the past year, he focused on three major areas: immigration and border security, Hurricane Katrina recovery and a foiled terrorism plot originating from London in August.
Conspicuously absent was any mention of the department's cybersecurity plans. After more than a year of delay, Chertoff hired Gregory Garcia, who had been working as a vice president at the Information Technology Association of America lobby group, as the department's first assistant secretary for cybersecurity. That step came after the department had sustained repeated bashing of its efforts in that realm from members of Congress.