Free Internet Press Newsletter - Thursday December 21 2006 - (813)

Thursday December 21 2006 edition
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Big Profits, And Problems, In Effort To Cut Emissions 2006-12-21 03:33:07 Foreign businesses have embraced an obscure United Nations-backed program as a favored approach to limiting global warming, but the early efforts have revealed some hidden problems. Under the program, businesses in wealthier nations of Europe and in Japan help pay to reduce pollution in poorer ones as a way of staying within government limits for emitting climate-changing gases like carbon dioxide, as part of the Kyoto Protocol. Among their targets is a large rusting chemical factory here in southeastern China. Its emissions of just one waste gas contribute as much to global warming each year as the emissions from a million American cars, each driven 12,000 miles. Cleaning up this factory will require an incinerator that costs $5 million - far less than the cost of cleaning up so many cars, or other sources of pollution in Europe and Japan. Read The Full Story In Iraq, Militant Shiite Clerics' Rivalry Intensifies 2006-12-21 03:32:14 In the quest to create a new Iraq, two powerful clerics compete for domination, one from within the government, the other from its shadows. Both wear the black turban signifying their descent from the prophet Muhammad. They have fought each other since the days their fathers vied to lead Iraq's majority Shiites. They hold no official positions, but their parties each control 30 seats in the parliament. And they both lead militias that are widely alleged to run death squads. In the view of the Bush administration, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim is a moderate and Moqtada al-Sadr is an extremist. As the U.S. president faces mounting pressure to reshape his Iraq policy, administration officials say they are pursuing a Hakim-led moderate coalition of Shiites, Sunnis and Kurdish parties in order to isolate extremists, in particular Sadr. Read The Full Story New Al-Zawahiri Video Raises Europe's Fear Of Terrorist Attacks 2006-12-21 03:30:28 The threat of a terrorist attack on European soil by Islamic radicals has increased substantially in recent months, reaching its highest levels since the London transit attacks of July 2005, according to European counterterrorism officials. Adding to the anxiety: fresh threats against Britain and France delivered Wednesday by al-Qaeda's deputy leader. In a new videotape, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the second-in-command to al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, singled out Britain as a historical enemy of Muslims, blaming it for the creation of the state of Israel and the downfall of the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century. He also said al-Qaeda would continue to plan attacks on the United States and its "Crusader" allies in Europe as long as Western powers remain in Iraq, Afghanista and Lebanon. "The animosity of Britain toward Islam stretches over centuries," Zawahiri said, according to a translation of his remarks by the SITE Institute, a terrorism research organization. "Isn't it the one who used to occupy most Islamic lands?" Read The Full Story Ahmadinejad Facing Revival Of Students' Ire 2006-12-21 03:29:04 As protests broke out last week at a prestigious university here, cutting short a speech by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Babak Zamanian could only watch from afar. He was on crutches, having been clubbed by supporters of the president and had his foot run over by a motorcycle during a less publicized student demonstration a few days earlier. The significance of the confrontation was easy to grasp, even from a distance, said Zamanian, a leader of a student political group. The student movement, which planned the 1979 seizure of the American Embassy from the same university, Amir Kabir, is reawakening from its recent slumber and may even be spearheading a widespread resistance against  Ahmadinejad. This time the catalysts were academic and personal freedom. “It is not that simple to break up a president’s speech,” said Alireza Siassirad, a former student political organizer, explaining that an event of that magnitude takes meticulous planning. “I think what happened at Amir Kabir is a very important and a dangerous sign. Students are definitely becoming active again.” Read The Full Story Blizzard Warning In Colorado As New Mexico Digs Out Of Major Snowstorm 2006-12-20 20:21:42 A major snowstorm blew across Colorado toward the Plains on Wednesday, dumping more than a foot of snow in some places and forcing the airport to close, grounding hundreds of flights full of holiday travelers. Authorities shut down major highways in parts of four states. The National Weather Service posted blizzard warnings for most of eastern Colorado and adjoining sections of Nebraska and Kansas. A day earlier, the storm had pummeled New Mexico with up to a foot of snow. As much as 20 inches of snow was forecast in Denver, where all nonessential municipal offices were closed early. Snow was predicted to fall through Thursday morning. The storm struck Denver just as the morning commute was starting. Read The Full Story Divided FCC Approves New Cable Rules 2006-12-20 20:21:06 A sharply divided Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 along partisan lines Wednesday to impose new measures meant to ensure that local governments do not block new competitors from entering the cable television market. The vote came on the same day that FCC Chairman Kevin Martin released a report on cable prices that shows in 2004, average cable rates rose 5.2 percent. The report also shows that from 1995 to 2005 rates increased a total of 93 percent. Wednesday's meeting was unusually rancorous with Democratic Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein challenging FCC staff on the assertion that localities are blocking access and Martin departing from what is usually a carefully scripted meeting to defend the measure. Read The Full Story Wilson Challenges Subpoena In Libby CIA Leak Case 2006-12-20 20:20:19 Former ambassador Joseph Wilson asked a federal judge Wednesday not to force him to testify in the CIA leak case and accused former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby of trying to harass him on the witness stand. Libby, who faces perjury and obstruction charges, subpoenaed Wilson as a defense witness this month. Libby's attorney, William Jeffress, said in court Tuesday that was a precautionary move and he did not expect to put Wilson on the stand. Libby is accused of lying to investigators about his conversations with reporters regarding Wilson's wife, outed CIA operative Valerie Plame. Plame and Wilson have sued Libby and other Bush administration officials, accusing them of plotting to leak Plame's identity as retribution for Wilson's criticism of prewar intelligence on Iraq. Read The Full Story Bebo, MySpace, Metacafe Among Google's Annual Top 10 Search Terms 2006-12-20 15:12:50 Here's a way to test your Web savvy: Have you searched for the word Bebo? On Google's annual top 10 list of the hottest search words and phrases, Bebo - an online social network that's popular in Britain and starting to gain traction in the United States - took the top spot, followed by MySpace, World Cup, Metacafe and Radioblog. Each year, Google, the most popular search engine, releases an annual "zeitgeist" of the search terms that gained the most in usage in 2006, giving the world a peek behind its bare-bones home page and a window into the world's mind. This year, in addition to the predictable current events, celebrities and trends summing up 2006, Google's list seems to support the idea behind Time magazine's Person of the Year award, which was given to "You." The top search terms are words related to user-generated content, such as blogs, social networking sites and podcasts. Read The Full Story Short Mental Workouts Can Stave Off Mental Decline 2006-12-20 15:11:56 Ten sessions of exercises to boost reasoning skills, memory and mental processing speed staved off mental decline in middle-aged and elderly people in the first definitive study to show that honing intellectual skills can bolster the mind in the same way that physical exercise protects and strengthens the body. The researchers also showed that the benefits of the brain exercises extended well beyond the specific skills the volunteers learned. Older adults who did the basic exercises followed by later sessions were three times as fast as those who got only the initial sessions when it came to activities of daily living, such as reacting to a road sign, looking up a number in a telephone book or checking the ingredients on a medicine bottle - abilities that can spell the difference between living independently and needing help. Experts said the federally funded study is a call to action for anyone who has ever worried about developing Alzheimer's, dementia and similar disorders. Americans spend billions of dollars each year on their physical well-being, but there are no comparable efforts to keep people mentally agile and strong. Read The Full Story Bush: U.S. Not Winning In Iraq 2006-12-20 03:21:16 President Bush acknowledged for the first time Tuesday that the United States is not winning the war in Iraq and said he plans to expand the overall size of the "stressed" U.S. armed forces to meet the challenges of a long-term global struggle against terrorists. As he searches for a new strategy for Iraq, Bush has now adopted the formula advanced by his top military adviser to describe the situation. "We're not winning, we're not losing," Bush said in an interview with the Washington Post. The assessment was a striking reversal for a president who, days before the November elections, declared, "Absolutely, we're winning." In another turnaround, Bush said he has ordered Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates to develop a plan to increase the troop strength of the Army and Marine Corps, heeding warnings from the Pentagon and Capitol Hill that multiple deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan are stretching the armed forces toward the breaking point. "We need to reset our military," said Bush, whose administration had opposed increasing force levels as recently as this summer. Read The Full Story Active Duty Soldiers Call For An End To The Occupation Of Iraq 2006-12-20 03:20:36 For the first time since Vietnam, an organized, robust movement of active-duty U.S. military personnel has publicly surfaced to oppose a war in which they are serving. Those involved plan to petition Congress to withdraw American troops from Iraq. After appearing only seven weeks ago on the Internet, the Appeal for Redress, brainchild of 29-year-old Navy seaman Jonathan Hutto, has already been signed by nearly 1,000 U.S. soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen, including dozens of officers - most of whom are on active duty. Not since 1969, when some 1,300 active-duty military personnel signed an open letter in the New York Times opposing the war in Vietnam, has there been such a dramatic barometer of rising military dissent. Interviews with two dozen signers of the Appeal reveal a mix of motives for opposing the war: ideological, practical, strategic and moral. But all those interviewed agree that it is time to start withdrawing the troops. Coming from an all-volunteer military, the Appeal was called "unprecedented" by Eugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice. Read The Full Story U.S. Considers Naval Buildup In Gulf As Warning To Iran 2006-12-20 00:13:42 The Bush administration is weighing options for a naval build-up in the Gulf as a show of force and a warning to Iran on its nuclear program and its support for Shia militias in Iraq, it emerged Tuesday. Under the proposed build-up, first reported by CBS television, the Pentagon would send an aircraft carrier to join one already in the region. The proposed deployment was described as a message to Tehran not to take provocative steps, and was not preparation for an attack. The idea of sending a second aircraft carrier was raised this month by the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, General John Abizaid. It also comes amid mounting pressure from Saudi Arabia against a withdrawal of U.S.  forces from Iraq. Read The Full Story Commentary: Carbon Trading Is A 'Red Herring' And Officials Know It 2006-12-20 00:13:00 Intellpuke: The following commentary is written by Professor George Monbiot and appears on the Guardian Unlimited's website for Tuesday, Dec. 19, 2006.  Professor Monbiot's column begins here: I suppose I should be flattered. In a speech to fellow airline bosses a few days ago, Martin Broughton, the chief executive of British Airways, announced that the primary challenge for the industry is to "isolate the George Monbiots of this world". That shouldn't be difficult. For a terrifying spectre, I'm feeling pretty lonely. Almost everyone in politics appears to want to forget about aviation's impact on the environment. On Wednesday [Britain's] secretary of state for communities launched a bold plan to make new homes more energy efficient. She claims it will save 7 million tons of carbon. On Thursday Douglas Alexander, the [British] transport secretary, announced that he would allow airports to keep growing: by 2030 the number of passengers will increase from 228 million to 465 million. As a result, according to a report commissioned by the Department for Environment, carbon emissions will rise by between 22 million and 36 million tons. So much for joined-up government. The Blair government says it will cut carbon dioxide emissions by 60% between 1990 and 2050. Last month it promised to introduce a climate change bill, which will make this target legally binding. Douglas Alexander's decision ensures that the new law will be broken. Read The Full Story Blair Urged To Use 'Peace Tour' To Promote British Arms Industry 2006-12-20 00:12:10 Government officials urged Tony Blair to use the final leg of his Middle East peace tour to lobby on behalf of the British arms industry, The Times has learned. The Prime Minister flew to the United Arab Emirates Monday, visiting Abu Dhabi and Dubai, saying that he wanted to promote reconciliation and democracy in the Arab world. It is understood that before he arrived Blair was briefed that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is seeking to “update its fleet of training aircraft." BAE Systems, Britain’s largest arms company, was mentioned in the briefing document. Read The Full Story Foreign Business Acquisitions In U.K. Reach Record 2006-12-20 00:09:20 Foreign buyers snapped up more British companies in 2006 than in any previous year as volumes of European mergers soared to a record high boosted by strong markets and an ample supply of cheap debt, data released today show. From BAA and ScottishPower to BOC Group and the London Stock Exchange, foreign companies have raided the U.K. this year, pulling off $339 billion (£170 billion) of deals. In the past few weeks, CSN, of Brazil, and India’s Tata have made bids for U.K. steel company Corus, while Japan Tobacco has agreed an $18.8 billion deal to swallow Gallaher, the maker of Silk Cut and B&H. “If you look at the consolidators in 2006 there have been bigger or more aggressive companies abroad prepared to take out U.K. companies and the U.K. is a much more level playing field than elsewhere,” said Kevin Smith, head of U.K. M&A, at Merrill Lynch. Read The Full Story	Federal Subsidies Turn Farms Into Big Business, Often To Detriment Of Small Family Farmers 2006-12-21 03:32:47 The cornerstone of the multibillion-dollar system of federal farm subsidies is an iconic image of the struggling family farmer: small, powerless against Mother Nature, tied to the land by blood. Without generous government help, farm-state politicians say, thousands of these hardworking families would fail, threatening the nation's abundant food supply. "In today's fast-paced, interconnected world, there are few industries where sons and daughters can work side-by-side with moms and dads, grandmas and grandpas," Rep. Jerry Moran (R-Kansas) said last year. "But we still find that today in agriculture. ... It is a celebration of what too many in our country have forgotten, an endangered way of life that we must work each and every day to preserve." This imagery secures billions annually in what one grower called "empathy payments" for farmers, but it is misleading. Read The Full Story Editorial: Rudderless In Iraq 2006-12-21 03:31:24 Intellpuke: The following editorial appears in the New York Times edition for Thursday, December 21, 2006. The editorial begins here: Anyone looking for new thinking on Iraq, or even candor, had to be disappointed by President Bush’s news conference yesterday. Mr. Bush may want to defer unveiling his new strategy, but there will be no obliging pause in Iraq’s unraveling. The latest Pentagon status report confirms a spiraling death toll, ever deeper sectarian divisions and near total lawlessness on the streets of Baghdad, despite repeated American vows to secure the capital. In a further sign of Iraq’s descent, our colleague James Glanz reported this week that Baghdad gets less than seven hours of electricity a day, as insurgents and looters dismantle the power grid. While Mr. Bush contemplates his fast-disappearing options, competing factions in the administration and the military have been less reticent about floating their ideas. Some urge a sharp, temporary increase in American troop strength in Baghdad. Others argue that Iraqi forces should take the lead, whether or not they’re ready. Still others talk about different ways of reconfiguring Iraq’s dysfunctional governing coalition. Read The Full Story U.S. To Declassify Secrets After 25 Years 2006-12-21 03:30:04 It will be a Cinderella moment for the band of researchers who study the hidden history of American government. At midnight on Dec. 31, hundreds of millions of pages of secret documents will be instantly declassified, including many F.B.I. cold war files on investigations of people suspected of being Communist sympathizers. After years of extensions sought by federal agencies behaving like college students facing a term paper, the end of 2006 means the government’s first automatic declassification of records. Secret documents 25 years old or older will lose their classified status without so much as the stroke of a pen, unless agencies have sought exemptions on the ground that the material remains secret. Historians say the deadline, created in the Clinton administration but enforced, to the surprise of some scholars, by the secrecy-prone Bush administration, has had huge effects on public access, despite the large numbers of intelligence documents that have been exempted. Read The Full Story Saudi Arabia To Name Jubeir As Ambassador To U.S. 2006-12-21 03:28:02 Saudi Arabia has informed the State Department that it intends to appoint Adel al-Jubeir as the new ambassador to Washington, D.C., according to U.S. officials. Jubeir, who is one of King Abdullah's closest foreign policy advisers, has long been the public face of the oil-rich kingdom in the West. Jubeir is a well-known figure in Washington who was put out front by the kingdom in an effort to dissociate the Saudi royal family from the Islamic extremism of al-Qaeda after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks by Saudi militant Osama bin Laden. He has often had to defend against tough criticism of one of the world's most autocratic governments. On CNN "Late Edition" last year, Jubeir disputed reports that bin Laden is still widely popular in the kingdom. "You can talk to radicals in Europe and they'll tell you that their agenda is very popular with the masses when, in fact, it's not," he said. "If Osama bin Laden or al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia were popular, we would see an increase in recruitment, not a decrease. We would see an increase in their ability to do damage, not a decrease. ... We are winning the war on terrorism. It will take time, though." Read The Full Story With Storm Approaching, Sheriff Calls Of Search For Missing Mt. Hood Climbers 2006-12-20 20:21:29 With yet another snowstorm barreling in, search teams gave up any hope of finding two missing climbers alive on wind-whipped Mount Hood and abandoned the rescue effort Wednesday after nine frustrating days. "We've done everything we can at this point," said Hood River County Sheriff Joe Wampler, choking back tears after returning from one last, fruitless flyover of the 11,239-foot peak. As the weather permits, officials will now look for the bodies of Brian Hall and Jerry "Nikko" Cooke, he said. Some of the climbers' relatives had wanted the search called off, though not all, said Wampler, adding that he didn't want to imperil search teams in foul weather. Read The Full Story Report: Former National Security Adviser Hid Archive Documents 2006-12-20 20:20:47 President Clinton's national security adviser Sandy Berger removed classified documents from the National Archives, hid them under a construction trailer and later tried to find the trash collector to retrieve them, the archive's internal watchdog said Wednesday. The report was issued more than a year after Berger pleaded guilty to unlawfully removing and retaining classified documents. Berger took the documents in the fall of 2003 while working to prepare himself and Clinton administration witnesses for testimony to the Sept. 11 commission. Berger was authorized as the Clinton administration's representative to make sure the commission got the correct classified materials. Read The Full Story Soldier Suicide Rate In Iraq Doubles, Repeat Tours Increase PTSD Rate 2006-12-20 15:13:10 U.S. soldiers serving repeated Iraq deployments are 50 percent more likely than those with one tour to suffer from acute combat stress, raising their risk of post-traumatic stress disorder, according to the Army's first survey exploring how today's multiple war-zone rotations affect soldiers' mental health. More than 650,000 soldiers have deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan since 2001 - including more than 170,000 now in the Army who have served multiple tours - so the survey's finding of increased risk from repeated exposure to combat has potentially widespread implications for the all-volunteer force. Earlier Army studies have shown that up to 30 percent of troops deployed to Iraq suffer from depression, anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), with the latter accounting for about 10 percent. The findings reflect the fact that some soldiers - many of whom are now spending only about a year at home between deployments - are returning to battle while still suffering from the psychological scars of earlier combat tours, the report said. Read The Full Story Neo-Cons Wanted Israel To Attack Syria 2006-12-20 15:12:28 Neo-conservative hawks in and outside the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush had hoped that Israel would attack Syria during last summer's Lebanon war, according to a newly published interview with a prominent neo-conservative whose spouse is a top Middle East adviser in Vice President Dick Cheney's office. Meyrav Wurmser, who is herself the director of the Centre for Middle East Policy at the Hudson Institute here, reportedly told Yitzhak Benhorin of the Ynet website that a successful attack by Israel on Damascus would have dealt a mortal blow to the insurgency in Iraq. "If Syria had been defeated, the rebellion in Iraq would have ended," she asserted, adding that it was chiefly as a result of pressure from what she called "neocons" that the administration held off demands by U.N. Security Council members to halt Israel's attacks on Hezbollah and other targets in Lebanon during the summer war. Read The Full Story Morgan Stanley DW Accused Of Deleting E-Mails Investigators Sought 2006-12-20 15:11:34 Securities regulators charged Morgan Stanley DW Inc. with failing to hand over millions of e-mail messages to investigators and plaintiffs by falsely saying that the documents had been lost in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, according to a complaint filed Tuesday. The NASD alleged that the retail brokerage destroyed nearly 8 million electronic messages between September 2001 and March 2005, a period when documents preserved on backup tapes and on the computers of individual employees were deleted during the normal course of business. Morgan Stanley had told regulators and plaintiffs seeking to recover money lost in disputes with company brokers over investment strategy that its computer servers had fallen victim to terror attacks in New York. Documents dated before Sept. 11 were no longer available for review, said the company. In fact, the firm had backed up its systems as of Aug. 30, according to investigators. "The firm's actions undermined the integrity of the regulatory and arbitration processes, potentially leaving in question the validity of the outcomes in hundreds of cases," said James S. Shorris, head of enforcement at the NASD. Read The Full Story Anthrax Vaccine Order Voided, Thrwarting Bush Administration 2006-12-20 03:20:57 Federal health officials Tuesday scuttled the largest piece of the Bush administration's two-year program to counter bioterrorism, canceling an $877.5 million contract with VaxGen to develop an anthrax vaccine after the company missed a deadline to begin human testing. The decision, delivered in a one-page letter, ends a troubled effort by the small California firm that has come to symbolize the failures of the government's ambitious $5.6 billion Project BioShield. The termination occurred on the same day President Bush signed legislation attempting to salvage the program by reorganizing its management and pumping more money into firms doing the work. "It's very disappointing that they took such aggressive and dramatic action without engaging in a discussion with us about potential ways for salvaging all the work that has gone into this program," said Lance Ignon, VaxGen's vice president of corporate affairs. "We believe there is a high probability that this technology would lead to a modern anthrax vaccine." Read The Full Story Iraq Prime Minister Wants U.S. To Target Sunni Insurgents 2006-12-20 03:20:13 Iraq's Shiite prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, has created a two-pronged security plan for Baghdad in which U.S. forces would aggressively target Sunni Arab insurgents instead of Shiite militias. At the same time, Maliki would intensify his efforts to weaken Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and contain his Mahdi Army militia, Iraqi officials said Tuesday. Under these conditions, Maliki would accept a surge in U.S. troops in Baghdad, according to two Maliki advisers with knowledge of the plan. Maliki plans to discuss his proposal with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and senior U.S. commanders during a meeting in Baghdad on Thursday, the officials said. The Bush administration is contemplating a temporary increase in troops to help stem the highest levels of violence since 2003. The plan calls for U.S. troops to combat Sunni Arab insurgents for four to eight weeks in outer Baghdad neighborhoods, which Maliki believes are the source of the sectarian violence afflicting the capital, his aides said. Iraqi forces would take over primary responsibility for patrolling inner Baghdad from U.S. forces. Read The Full Story A Winter Wonderland In Meltdown 2006-12-20 00:13:23 Christmas is coming in a new colour across much of northern Europe this year - green. Traditional scenes of pristine snow and ice have given way to rain and muddy grass from Reykjavik to Moscow as unseasonably warm weather puts a damper on festivities. Russians normally revel in the bitter harshnes of thier winters, but the warmest December since 1879, when records began, has left Moscovites despairing about a lack of snow to see in the new year. Staff at the Yakhroma Park resort, 30 miles north of Moscow, have turned to artificial snow machines to try to open at least one ski run in what should be the peak season. Natalia Silinskaya, the park’s commercial director, said that attendance was down 70 per cent on last year. Skiing has been possible on only two weekends so far this winter. Read The Full Story FBI Releases 'Controversial' Files On John Lennon 2006-12-20 00:12:32 The FBI agreed Tuesday to make public the final 10 documents about the surveillance of John Lennon that it had withheld for 25 years from a University of California, Irvine historian on the grounds that releasing them could cause "military retaliation against the United States." Despite the fierce battle the government waged to keep the documents secret, the files contain information that is hardly shocking, just new details about Lennon's ties to New Left leaders and antiwar groups in London in the early 1970s, said the historian, Jon Wiener. For example, in one memo, then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover wrote to H.R. Haldeman, President Nixon's chief aide, that "Lennon had taken an interest in `extreme left-wing activities in Britain' and is known to be a sympathizer of Trotskyist communists in England." Read The Full Story Stardust May Be The Basis Of Life On Earth 2006-12-20 00:11:24 Comets could have brought the basic ingredients of life to Earth, scientists revealed. The first analysis of samples that NASA's Stardust mission brought back to Earth from a comet earlier this year has revealed that comets contain a richer range of ingredients than previously thought, including the complex molecules needed to kick-start biology. The findings will force a re-evaluation of the traditional thinking on comet formation. "We think we know what these things are made of and then suddenly we find that, no, we don't," said Monica Grady, an astronomer at the Open University who worked on the Stardust samples. NASA launched Stardust to test the standard concept that comets are just dirty balls of snow left over from the early solar system. It was sent to examine the comet Wild 2 in February 1999. Read The Full Story Product Recalls In The U.S. 2006-12-20 00:08:39 The following recalls have been announced by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission: -- About 70,300 Holiday Time brand Christmas Mug Gift Sets, imported by Wal-Mart Stores Inc., because the buttons on the stuffed characters sold with the sets can detach, posing a choking hazard for young children. No injuries have been reported. The recalled gift sets include a decorated ceramic mug and a stuffed Santa, snowman or reindeer. The characters are 7 inches tall and made of fleece-like material. Each has two red and green buttons sewn on its front. UPC numbers included in the recall are 0 47475 45419 8 for Santa characters, 0 47475 45429 7 for snowman characters and 0 47475 45439 6 for reindeer characters. The UPC numbers are printed on the characters' sewn-in labels. The 6-inch-tall mugs feature three designs including a Santa with a green background, a snowman with a blue background and a Christmas tree with a green background. Wal-Mart stores nationwide sold the product from October 2006 through December 2006. Consumers should return the stuffed characters to a Wal-Mart store for a full refund. For more information, call the company at 800-925-6278 or visit http://www.walmartstores.com or http://www.cpsc.gov. Read The Full Story
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