Free Internet Press Newsletter - Tuesday December 19 2006 - (813)

Tuesday December 19 2006 edition
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White House, Joint Chiefs At Odds On More Troops 2006-12-19 03:51:23 The Bush administration is split over the idea of a surge in troops to Iraq, with White House officials aggressively promoting the concept over the unanimous disagreement of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, according to U.S. officials familiar with the intense debate. Sending 15,000 to 30,000 more troops for a mission of possibly six to eight months is one of the central proposals on the table of the White House policy review to reverse the steady deterioration in Iraq. The option is being discussed as an element in a range of bigger packages, said the officials. The Joint Chiefs think the White House, after a month of talks, still does not have a defined mission and is latching on to the surge idea in part because of limited alternatives, despite warnings about the potential disadvantages for the military, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the White House review is not public. Read The Full Story Former National Security Council Official Says White House Blocking His Criticism Of Iran Policy 2006-12-19 03:50:48 A former top White House official accused the Bush administration Monday of trying to muzzle his criticism of its Iran policy and of falsely alleging that his writings contained classified material to prevent them from being published. Flynt Leverett, a former CIA analyst who became a senior director for Middle East policy for the National Security Council before leaving the administration in 2003, said the White House decided that substantial passages of an opinion article he had written for the New York Times involved classified information. Leverett said the article was only a summary of a longer paper he had written a few weeks earlier - which had been cleared by the CIA as containing no classified information. He said no fact in the proposed Times article differed from the earlier paper, which he wrote for the Century Foundation. The assertion that the Times article contained classified information "is false," Leverett said Monday in a speech about his policy proposals at the New America Foundation. "Indeed, I would say that claim is fraudulent. The people making that claim know it is not true." Read The Full Story Paying Health Care From Pension Funds Proves Costly For Local Governments 2006-12-19 03:50:00 Many local governments began turning to their pension funds to help pay for health care for retired public workers in the 1990s. Some are now regretting it. When the financial markets were producing soaring returns, governments sought to use the gains in their pension funds to help cover rising health costs. Then came years of investment losses and double-digit increases in health care costs. Now, in some places, money for retiree health care is running out, and money for pensions is dwindling fast, too. Rising medical costs are particularly wreaking havoc on public pension funds in Chicago, Illinois; Battle Creek, Michigan; and the state of Alaska. They threaten longer-term harm in Cincinnati, Ohio. “The numbers are frightening to anyone who really looks,” said Laurence Msall, president of the Civic Federation, a nonpartisan research group in Chicago, where three separate pension funds for public workers have been paying for health benefits along with the usual retirement stipends. Read The Full Story Astronauts Fix Jammed Solar Array On International Space Station 2006-12-19 03:48:33 Two spacewalking astronauts finished folding up a stubborn accordion-like solar array Monday, resolving the only complication in the space shuttle Discovery's otherwise smooth mission to the international space station. Robert L. Curbeam and Christer Fuglesang managed to get the last section of the 115-foot array folded into a box about five hours into the spacewalk. It was the fourth venture outside for Discovery's astronauts during their visit to the orbiting outpost. Workers in Mission Control applauded when the final section fell into the box. Curbeam radioed back that a wire was still loose, and he continued trying to fold it up. "You have a magic touch, Christer," Discovery commander Mark L. Polansky told Fuglesang. Read The Full Story U.S. Violent Crime Reports Surge 4 Percent, Robberies 10 Percent In First Half Of 2006 2006-12-18 15:50:23 A recent rise in violent crime accelerated in the first half of 2006, providing the clearest sign yet that the nation is in the midst of a prolonged increase in murder, assaults and other violent offenses, the FBI reported today. Violent crime reports surged by nearly 4 percent in the first six months of 2006 when compared with the same time period a year earlier, including a dramatic increase of nearly 10 percent for robberies, according to the FBI's Uniform Crime Report. The numbers showed robbery increases for cities of all sizes, including a 13 percent jump for some of the smallest with populations from 10,000 to 24,999. Murders and assault also rose by more than 1 percent, while the number of reported rapes dipped slightly. The results follow on the heels of a 2.5 percent surge in violent crimes for 2005, which marked the highest rate of increase in 15 years. The latest numbers suggest that those results were not an anomaly, but rather part of the first significant uptick in violent crime since the early 1990s. Read The Full Story Equator's Glaciers Melting Away 2006-12-18 15:49:47 Rivers of ice at the Equator - foretold in the 2nd century, found in the 19th - are now melting away in this new century, returning to the realm of lore and fading photographs. From mile-high Naro Moru, villagers have watched year by year as the great glaciers of Mount Kenya, glinting in the equatorial sun high above them, have retreated into shrunken white stains on the rocky shoulders of the 16,897-foot peak. Climbing up, "you can hear the water running down beneath Diamond and Darwin," mountain guide Paul Nditiru said, speaking of two of 10 surviving glaciers. Some 200 miles due south, the storied snows of Mount Kilimanjaro, the tropical glaciers first seen by disbelieving Europeans in 1848, are vanishing. And to the west, in the heart of equatorial Africa, the ice caps are shrinking fast atop Uganda's Rwenzoris - the "Mountains of the Moon" imagined by ancient Greeks as the source of the Nile River. Read The Full Story Bush Signs Nuclear Deal With India 2006-12-18 15:47:56 President Bush signed into law a nuclear deal with India Monday, reversing decades of U.S. policy by creating an India-only exemption that allows New Delhi to receive U.S. civilian nuclear technology even though it hasn't signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. "This is an important achievement for the whole world," Bush said at the White House signing ceremony for the bill. "After 30 years outside the system, India will now operate its civilian nuclear energy program under internationally accepted guidelines and the world is going to be safer as a result." Under the bill, India will allow inspections of its 14 civilian nuclear plants in exchange for fuel and nuclear technology from the United States. Eight military plants in India will be off-limits to inspection, though. Read The Full Story Former Iraqi Minister Escapes Police Custody 2006-12-18 15:46:28 The former electricity minister - a dual U.S.-Iraqi citizen who was jailed for corruption - escaped police custody with the help of security agents he once hired to protect him, an anti-corruption official said Monday. Elsewhere in Baghdad, a car bomb killed five people and wounded at least 19 in the southern Sunni area of Sadiya, near a vegetable market. Though no one immediately claimed responsibility, sectarian conflict between Sunnis and Shiites has fueled much of the recent violence in Baghdad. Meanwhile, the U.S. military announced the deaths of two more American troops, raising to 59 the number of U.S. personnel killed in December. A Marine assigned to Regimental Combat Team 5 died Saturday, and a soldier with the U.S. Army's 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division died Friday, it said. Read The Full Story U.S. Energy Secretary OKs China Purchase Of 4 Nuclear Reactors 2006-12-18 02:49:11 China will buy four Westinghouse nuclear reactors in a deal that shows the continued attractiveness of American technology, but may also stir worries in Washington that the United States is selling its competitive advantage one industry at a time. Energy Secretary Samuel W. Bodman of the United States and Ma Kai, the minister of China’s National Development and Reform Commission, signed a memorandum of understanding for the reactors in Beijing on Saturday. The deal calls for the state-owned China National Nuclear Corporation to buy the reactors from Westinghouse Electric, which the Toshiba Corporation, based in Tokyo, bought earlier this year. Neither side announced a value for the reactors, but outside analysts have suggested the total price tag may be $5 billion to $8 billion. Read The Full Story Bush Administration Plans To Cut Medicaid's Payments To Pharmacies 2006-12-18 02:48:20 The Bush administration on Monday will propose sweeping reductions in payments to pharmacies as a way to save money for Medicaid, the health program for more than 50 million low-income people. The goal is to ensure that Medicaid can get drug discounts similar to those provided to large customers in the private market, including companies like Caremark Rx and Medco Health Solutions that manage drug benefits for people who have health insurance through an employer. Congressional investigators have found that Medicaid pays 35 percent more than the lowest price available in the private market for some commonly used brand-name drugs. States, which share the cost of Medicaid with the federal government, make the final decision on what pharmacies are paid, subject to federal limits. The proposed rule would provide new data for states to use in their calculations, redefining the “average manufacturer price” for brand-name and generic drugs. Read The Full Story 7 Episcopal Parishes In Virginia Split From U.S. Episcopal Church 2006-12-18 02:47:16 At least seven Virginia Episcopal parishes, opposed to the consecration of a gay bishop and the blessing of same-sex unions, have voted overwhelmingly to break from the U.S. church in a dramatic demonstration of widening rifts within the denomination. Two of the congregations are among the state's largest and most historic: Truro Church in Fairfax City and The Falls Church in Falls Church, which have roots in the 1700s. Their leaders have been in the vanguard of a national effort to establish a conservative alternative to the Episcopal Church, the U.S. wing of the 77 million-member worldwide Anglican Communion. The result of the week-long vote, announced Sunday, sets up the possibility of a lengthy ecclesiastical and legal battle for property worth tens of millions of dollars. Buildings and land at Truro and The Falls Church are valued at about $25 million, according to Fairfax County records. Read The Full Story	Pentagon: Iraq Violence At All-Time High 2006-12-19 03:51:04 The Pentagon said Monday that violence in Iraq soared this fall to its highest level on record and acknowledged that anti-U.S. fighters have achieved a "strategic success" by unleashing a spiral of sectarian killings by Sunni and Shiite death squads that threatens Iraq's political institutions. In its most pessimistic report yet on progress in Iraq, the Pentagon described a nation listing toward civil war, with violence at record highs of 959 attacks per week, declining public confidence in government and "little progress" toward political reconciliation. "The violence has escalated at an unbelievably rapid pace," said Marine Lt. Gen. John F. Sattler, director of strategic plans and policy for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who briefed journalists on the report. "We have to get ahead of that violent cycle, break that continuous chain of sectarian violence. ... That is the premier challenge facing us now." Read The Full Story NASA To Collaborate With Google On Images From Space 2006-12-19 03:50:17 NASA, seeking to give the public easy access to its massive trove of images and data about Earth and outer space, has entered into a formal agreement with Google to post material from the agency's many missions on the Internet. As the technology improves and the collaboration grows, officials said, viewers could one day be treated to live video from the moon, Mars and elsewhere. "This agreement between NASA and Google will soon allow every American to experience a virtual flight over the surface of the moon or through the canyons of Mars," NASA Administrator Michael D. Griffin said in a statement. He called the effort one "to make NASA's space exploration work accessible to everyone." The agreement was announced at NASA's Ames Research Center in California. Google had previously announced plans to build a 1 million-square-foot facility at the research park. While Google will be the first major online collaborator with NASA, the agency said that the images are not exclusive and that it is working on similar projects with other Internet portals. Read The Full Story Federal Regulators Sue Ex-Fannie Mae Officials For Pay 2006-12-19 03:49:33 Federal regulators Monday sued three former Fannie Mae executives, including former chairman and chief executive Franklin D. Raines, to recoup more than $115 million in pay they received while the company's earnings were misstated. In an administrative complaint, regulators said Raines and the others engaged in a variety of ruses to meet profit goals and boost their compensation. For example, they delayed booking $200 million of expenses one year and used transactions with no economic purpose in other periods simply to shift income into the future, the complaint alleged. The regulators' discovery of accounting problems in 2004 ultimately led Fannie Mae to pay a $400 million penalty and correct years of financial results, erasing $6.3 billion of previously reported profit. Read The Full Story Joseph Barbera, Half Of Hanna-Barbera Cartoon Team, Dies At 95 2006-12-19 03:48:11 Joseph Barbera, an innovator of animation who teamed with William Hanna to give generations of young television viewers a pantheon of beloved characters, including Tom and Jerry, Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound and the Flintstones, died Monday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 95. A spokesman for Warner Brothers said he died of natural causes, the Associated Press reported. Mr. Barbera and the studio he founded with Mr. Hanna, Hanna-Barbera Productions, became synonymous with television animation, yielding more than 100 cartoon series over four decades, including “Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?,” “Jonny Quest” and “The Smurfs.” On signature televisions shows like “The Flintstones” and “The Jetsons,” the two men developed a cartoon style that combined colorful, simply drawn characters (often based on other recognizable pop-culture personalities) with the narrative structures and joke-telling techniques of traditional live-action sitcoms. They were television’s first animated comedy programs. Read The Full Story Police Arrest Man Suspected Of Murdering 5 Prostitutes In Britain 2006-12-18 15:50:09 Police Monday arrested a man on suspicion of murdering five women working as prostitutes in the Ipswich area of Britain. The 37-year-old man, named in a series of reports as Tom Stephens, a supermarket worker, was arrested at his home near Felixstowe, in Suffolk, early this morning, Detective Chief Superintendent Stewart Gull told a news conference. "Detectives investigating the murder of five women in the Ipswich area have today, Monday 18 December 2006, arrested a man," he said in a brief statement read out to reporters. The man was arrested at his home in the village of Trimley at about 7:20 this morning. "He has been arrested on the suspicion of murdering all five women: Gemma Adams, Tania Nicol, Anneli Alderton, Paula Clennell and Annette Nicholls," said Gull. Read The Full Story U.S. Trade Deficit Soars To Record High 2006-12-18 15:49:27 Pushed up by soaring oil prices, America's trade deficit surged to a record high in the summer, but analysts predicted a slowly improving imbalance in the months ahead. The current account trade deficit increased 3.9 percent to an all-time high of $225.6 billion in the July-September quarter, the Commerce Department reported Monday. That third-quarter deficit was equal to 6.8 percent of the total economy, up from 6.6 percent of gross domestic product in the second quarter. The current account is the broadest measure of trade because it tracks not only the flow of goods and services across borders but also investment flows. It represents the amount of money that must be borrowed from foreigners to make up the difference between imports and exports. Read The Full Story Technologies Changing Insight Into Seas 2006-12-18 15:47:24 On a sunny mid-October afternoon, Stanford University graduate student Chris Perle was out at sea, searching for a four-inch metallic gray object, resembling a small microphone with an antenna, adrift in the Pacific Ocean. One day earlier, the device, known as a "pop-up satellite archival tag," had popped off the fin of a female great white shark after 300 days of collecting data as the creature crisscrossed the ocean. Despite having its rough coordinates and $7,000 worth of monitoring equipment in hand, Perle and his colleagues could not find the tag, so he called back to marine sciences professor Barbara Block at Stanford's Hopkins Marine Station. Block checked her computer, rattled off a few new coordinates to Perle via cellphone, and then explained why she and her researchers were going to such lengths to recover "a small thing in a big ocean". "We're throwing everything we've got at this because it's very important we find this tag" in order not to lose months of valuable data, said Block. Read The Full Story Colin Powell Says U.S. Is Losing In Iraq, Calls For Troop Drawdown By Mid-2007 2006-12-18 02:49:26 Former secretary of state Colin L. Powell said Sunday that the United States is losing what he described as a "civil war" in Iraqand that he is not persuaded that an increase in U.S. troops there would reverse the situation. Instead, he called for a new strategy that would relinquish responsibility for Iraqi security to the government in Baghdad sooner rather than later, with a U.S. drawdown to begin by the middle of next year. Powell's comments broke his long public silence on the issue and placed him at odds with the administration. President Bush is considering options for a new military strategy - among them a "surge" of 15,000 to 30,000 troops added to the current 140,000 in Iraq, to secure Baghdad and to accelerate the training of Iraqi forces, as Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) and others have proposed; or a redirection of the U.S. military away from the insurgency to focus mainly on hunting al-Qaeda terrorists, as the nation's top military leaders proposed last week in a meeting with the president. Bush has rejected the dire conclusions of the Iraq Study Group and its recommendations to set parameters for a phased withdrawal to begin next year, and he has insisted that the violence in Iraq is not a civil war. "I agree with the assessment of Mr. Baker and Mr. Hamilton," said Powell, referring to the study group's leaders, former secretary of state James A. Baker III and former Indiana congressman Lee H. Hamilton (D). The situation in Iraq is "grave and deteriorating, and we're not winning, we are losing. We haven't lost. And this is the time, now, to start to put in place the kinds of strategies that will turn this situation around." Read The Full Story Drug Files Show Eli Lilly Promoted Unapproved Use Of Zyprexa 2006-12-18 02:48:53 Eli Lilly encouraged primary care physicians to use Zyprexa, a powerful drug for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, in patients who did not have either condition, according to internal Lilly marketing materials. The marketing documents, given to the New York Times by a lawyer representing mentally ill patients, detail a multiyear promotional campaign that Lilly began in Orlando, Florida, in late 2000. In the campaign, called Viva Zyprexa, Lilly told its sales representatives to suggest that doctors prescribe Zyprexa to older patients with symptoms of dementia. A Lilly executive said that she could not comment on specific documents but that the company had never promoted Zyprexa for off-label uses and that it always showed the marketing materials used by its sales representatives to the Food and Drug Administration, as required by law. Read The Full Story Iranian Vote Results Seen As Setback For Ahmadinejad 2006-12-18 02:47:50 Allies of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad failed to dominate elections for a powerful Iranian clerical body and local councils, according to early results Sunday, in what analysts said was a setback to the hard-line leader's standing. Friday's elections for the clerical Assembly of Experts and for local councils, the first nationwide vote since Ahmadinejad took office in 2005, will not directly impact policy. A turnout of about 60 percent and Ahmadinejad's close identification with some candidates, particularly in Tehran, suggested a voter shift toward more moderate policies and away from the president's often-confrontational positions. Read The Full Story France To Pull Special Forces Unit From Afghanistan 2006-12-18 02:46:52 France on Sunday announced the withdrawal of its 200-member contingent of elite special forces from Afghanistan - all of its ground forces directly engaged in anti-terrorism operations in the country. The elite troops have been deployed in Afghanistan since July 2003 to help bolster the fight against al-Qaeda and the Taliban militia. A contingent of 1,100 French troops deployed under NATO command will remain in the capital, Kabul, Capt. Sebastien Caron, press officer for the French Defense Ministry, said in Paris. Read The Full Story
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