Free Internet Press Newsletter - Wednesday March 21 2007 - (813)

Wednesday March 21 2007 edition
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Doctors' Ties To Drug Makers Are Put On View 2007-03-21 02:12:38 Dr. Allan Collins may be the most influential kidney specialist in the country. He is president of the National Kidney Foundation and director of a government-financed research center on kidney disease. In 2004, the year he was chosen as president-elect of the kidney foundation, the pharmaceutical company Amgen, which makes the most expensive drugs used in the treatment of kidney disease, underwrote more than $1.9 million worth of research and education programs led by Dr. Collins, according to records examined by the New York Times. In 2005, Amgen paid Dr. Collins at least $25,800, mostly in consulting and speaking fees, the records show. The payments to Dr. Collins and the research center appear in an unusual set of records. They come from Minnesota, the first of a handful of states to pass a law requiring drug makers to disclose payments to doctors. The Minnesota records are a window on the widespread financial ties between pharmaceutical companies and the doctors who prescribe and recommend their products. Patient advocacy groups and many doctors themselves have long complained that drug companies exert undue influence on doctors, but the extent of such payments has been hard to quantify. Read The Full Story E-Mails Reveal Tumult In U.S. Attorney Firings 2007-03-21 02:12:01 On the morning of Feb. 7, the day after a combative Senate hearing over the firings of eight U.S. attorneys, Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty was looking on the bright side. "Paul reports this morning that he's hearing good reports from the Committee," a senior Justice official reported in an e-mail. "In particular, Sen. Schumer's counsel told him that the issue has basically run its course." Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, traveling 5,000 miles away in Buenos Aires, did not agree. "The Attorney General is extremely upset with the stories on the US Attys this morning," a press aide wrote. "He also thought some of the DAG's statements were inaccurate." The e-mail exchange - part of about 3,000 pages of internal documents turned over to Congress this week - show a confused and divided Justice Department under siege in a political crisis largely of its own making. The crisis now threatens Gonzales's tenure as the nation's chief law enforcement official. Read The Full Story Ex-Captive In Guantanamo Runs For Office In Australia 2007-03-21 02:09:44 Mamdouh Habib cannot drink cold water. He vomits when he tries to, he said. He knows he must drink water, so he engages in vigorous exercise in order to force some lukewarm water down. He says his doctor has told him his stomach has been damaged. Habib thinks it is from having gas forced into it through some kind of tubes inserted into his rectum when he was detained and, he says, tortured in Egypt. “It made you feel like you were flying,” he said. Habib, an unemployed 51-year-old father of four, was an early case of rendition. He was seized in Pakistan in October 2001, where he has alleged that he was tortured, then bound up by tough English-speaking men in black and secretly flown to Egypt, where he was held and, by his accounts, tortured for several months, before being shipped to the American detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in April 2002. He was released from Guantanamo and returned to Australia in February 2005 without any charges filed against him, because the Bush administration did not want the torture allegations aired in court, Australian and American officials have said. Now, he is fighting back. He is running in elections on March 24 for a seat in the parliament of the state of New South Wales, whose capital is Sydney. Read The Full Story DeLay Assails GOP Colleagues In New Book 2007-03-20 20:43:14 Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's just-published memoirs skewer his former comrades in the historic 1994 Republican revolution for squandering the victory through useless and ineffective leadership. DeLay's book, ``No Retreat, No Surrender,'' which hit bookstores this weekend, singles out former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey, DeLay's predecessor as House majority leader. Former President Clinton is described as ``slimy,'' and President George W. Bush is dismissed as ``compassionate, but ... certainly no conservative.'' Only DeLay's wife and daughter escape unscathed. Read The Full Story Commentary: Poor Iraq. First The Lies And Now, Even Worse: More Help 2007-03-20 20:42:43 Intellpuke: The following commentary is written by Guardian correspondent Simon Jenkins and is posted on the Guardian Unlimited's website edition for Wednesday, March 21, 2007. Mr. Jenkins writes that after years of deceit, we are expected to believe things are getting better. What the country really needs is to be left alone. His column follows: We are bid to celebrate the fourth birthday of a lie. In 2003, they lied about Iraq's weapons arsenal. They lied about Saddam Hussein's "imminent threat" to Britain. Some of them lied that he was involved in 9/11. Today, steeped in the psychology of denial, they lie that things are really fine, are getting better, are better than before, are on the turn. There might have been mistakes, but there was no Great Mistake. What of those who pretended not to lie, who slunk to the back of the room, said it was not their department, "trusted Tony", did what they were told, kept their heads down? This was the Downing Street set that covered their lies by jeering at critics and boasting they were so clever they could "write their own narrative". They hired Hutton and Butler to "handle the truth", which they carefully "did not kill but did not strive, officiously to keep alive". Britons should not celebrate the fourth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. Celebration is for those lucky Iraqis entitled to feel genuinely better for four years of freedom from Saddam, the salutary boon to the otherwise calamitous affliction visited on their country. The important anniversary is not that of the past but of the future. Can March 2008 see five years of western intervention finally reversed and a silver lining appear on the black cloud of Mesopotamia? Read The Full Story White House Offers To Let Investigators Interview Rove, Miers But Not Under Oath 2007-03-20 16:10:14 The White House offered Tuesday afternoon to make the political strategist Karl Rove and the former counsel Harriet E. Miers available for private interviews - but not sworn testimony - before Congressional investigators looking into the firing of United States attorneys.  The White House counsel Fred Fielding announced the offer after a visit to Capitol Hill Tuesday. But Democratic senators seemed in no mood to accept it, especially after the Senate voted by an overwhelming 94- to-2 margin Tuesday to revoke the authority it granted the Bush administration last year to name federal prosecutors without Senate confirmation. Fielding proposed that Rove and Miers be interviewed by members of the Senate and House judiciary committees at the same time, and that the interviews be limited to the events surrounding the dismissal of the federal prosecutors. Read The Full Story Stocks Up As Investors Bet On Stable Rates 2007-03-20 16:09:45 Wall Street advanced for a second straight session Tuesday as investors placed bets that the Federal Reserve won't indicate that it's leaning toward an interest rate hike. Market watchers are anticipating that the Fed on Wednesday will leave rates on hold and say that economic growth is cooling while inflation remains a concern. The central bank has maintained this general stance for several months now, suggesting that rates are staying put. Investors would ideally prefer a shift in posture toward cutting rates; such a move could boost consumer spending and make mortgages cheaper. But they appeared to be content to hear the status quo for now, and are tentatively optimistic that a rate hike isn't in the offing given that recent economic data has shown slowing growth and that inflation, though high, hasn't been running rampant. Read The Full Story Bush Appointees 'Watered Down Greenhouse Science' 2007-03-20 01:15:10 The Bush administration ran a systematic campaign to play down the dangers of climate change, demanding hundreds of politically motivated changes to scientific reports and muzzling a pre-eminent expert on global warming, Congress was told Monday. The testimony to the house committee on oversight and government reform painted the administration as determined to maintain its line on climate change even when it clashed with the findings of scientific experts. James Hansen, who heads the Goddard Institute for Space Science in New York, said in prepared testimony: "The effect of the filtering of climate change science during the current administration has been to make the reality of climate change less certain than the facts indicate, and to reduce concern about the relation of climate change to human-made greenhouse gas emissions." Since the Democratic takeover of Congress last January the committee's chairman, Henry Waxman, a Democrat from California, has led efforts to uncover the extent of White House interference with scientific debate. The Bush administration has moved to exercise direct control over environmental agencies by installing political appointees including Philip Cooney, a former oil industry lobbyist, as chief of staff of the Council on Environmental Quality, and a 23-year-old college drop-out who was made a public affairs officer at NASA after working on  Bush's re-election campaign. Cooney told the committee Monday: "My sole loyalty was to the president and advancing the policies of his administration." Read The Full Story Libby Prosecutor 'Ranked' During CIA Leak Case 2007-03-20 01:14:32 U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald was ranked among prosecutors who had "not distinguished themselves" on a Justice Department chart sent to the White House in March 2005, when he was in the midst of leading the CIA leak investigation that resulted in the perjury conviction of a vice presidential aide, administration officials said Monday. The ranking placed Fitzgerald below "strong U.S. Attorneys ... who exhibited loyalty" to the administration but above "weak U.S. Attorneys who ... chafed against Administration initiatives, etc.," according to Justice documents. The chart was the first step in an effort to identify U.S. attorneys who should be removed. Two prosecutors who received the same ranking as Fitzgerald were later fired, documents show. Fitzgerald's ranking adds another dimension to the prosecutor firings, which began as a White House proposal to remove all 93 U.S. attorneys after the 2004 elections and evolved into the coordinated dismissal of eight last year, a move that has infuriated lawmakers and led to calls for Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales to resign. Read The Full Story Russia Gives Iran Ultimatum On Enrichment 2007-03-20 01:13:49 Russia has informed Iran that it will withhold nuclear fuel for Iran’s nearly completed Bushehr power plant unless Iran suspends its uranium enrichment as demanded by the United Nations Security Council, say European, American and Iranian officials. The ultimatum was delivered in Moscow last week by Igor S. Ivanov, the secretary of the Russian National Security Council, to Ali Hosseini Tash, Iran’s deputy chief nuclear negotiator, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because a confidential diplomatic exchange between two governments was involved. For years, President Bush has been pressing Russian President Vladimir V. Putin to cut off help to Iran on the nuclear power plant that Russia is building at Bushehr, in southern Iran, but Putin has resisted. The project is Tehran’s first serious effort to produce nuclear energy and has been very profitable for Russia. Recently, however, Moscow and Tehran have been engaged in a public argument about whether Iran has paid its bills, which may explain Russia’s apparent shift, but the ultimatum may also reflect an increasing displeasure and frustration on Moscow’s part with Iran over its refusal to stop enriching uranium at its vast facility at Natanz. Read The Full Story Far From Iraq, A Demonstration Of A War Zone 2007-03-20 01:13:08 There's a lot of weirdness every day in the capital city, but this one pushed the envelope: 13 Iraq war veterans in full desert camo going on "patrol" from Union Station to Arlington National Cemetery. They carried imaginary assault rifles, barked commands, roughly "detained" suspected hostiles with flex cuffs and hoods - and generally shocked, frightened and delighted tourists and office workers. "How does occupation feel, D.C.?!" shouted Geoff Millard, head of the local chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War, who previously served on a brigadier general's staff in Tikrit. They cut a swath across downtown, taking imaginary sniper fire and casualties on the grounds of the Capitol and the Washington Monument, scouting the White House, performing mock arrests at the foot of the Capitol steps and a vehicle search on the Mall. At the Capitol, the veterans almost got detained themselves by civilian peace officers with real guns. The vets brought their act to a military recruiting station on L Street NW and concluded with a memorial ceremony in the cemetery. The 12 men and one woman included one veteran of Afghanistan, and they represented the Army, Marines and Navy. They were young, intense, disillusioned. Home from the war, on Monday's fourth anniversary of the Iraq invasion, they wanted to bring the war home to Washington. Read The Full Story Saddam's Vice President Hanged 2007-03-20 01:12:08 Saddam Hussein's former deputy was hanged before dawn Tuesday for the killings of 148 Shia Muslims, said an official with the prime minister's office. Taha Yassin Ramadan, who was Saddam's vice president when the regime was ousted four years ago, was the fourth man to be executed for the killings of 148 Shias following a 1982 assassination attempt against the former leader in the city of Dujail. The official, who witnessed the hanging but spoke on condition of anonymity because an official announcement had not been made, said precautions were taken to prevent a repeat of what happened to Saddam's half brother Barzan Ibrahim, who was decapitated on the gallows. Ramadan was weighed before the hanging and the length of the rope was chosen accordingly, said the official. Read The Full Story	Commentary: Why I Was Fired 2007-03-21 02:12:13 Intellpuke: The following commentary was written by David C. Iglesias, the former U.S. Attorney in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and one of the U.S. Attorney's recently fired by the Justice Department. In his commentary, which appears in the New York Times edition of Wednesday, March 21, 2007, Mr. Iglesias shares his view on why he was fired. His commentary follows: With this week’s release of more than 3,000 Justice Department e-mail messages about the dismissal of eight federal prosecutors, it seems clear that politics played a role in the ousters. Of course, as one of the eight, I’ve felt this way for some time. But now that the record is out there in black and white for the rest of the country to see, the argument that we were fired for “performance related” reasons (in the words of Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty) is starting to look more than a little wobbly. United States attorneys have a long history of being insulated from politics. Although we receive our appointments through the political process (I am a Republican who was recommended by Senator Pete Domenici), we are expected to be apolitical once we are in office. I will never forget John Ashcroft, then the attorney general, telling me during the summer of 2001 that politics should play no role during my tenure. I took that message to heart. Little did I know that I could be fired for not being political. Read The Full Story Clash Over Judge Challenges Musharraf's Rule 2007-03-21 02:11:15 When the police broke into the offices of some of Lahore's best-known lawyers in Pakistan last week, they didn't hold back. They smashed through doors and windows, tossed computers, ransacked files and beat anyone standing in their way with iron-tipped batons. "We couldn't even see them because of the tear gas, but we could hear the cries of our lawyers," said Khurram Latif Khosa, a counselor who was in the courtyard below. To Khosa, the raid was a clear message from Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf: Don't cross me. But Khosa, like lawyers across this country, is failing to heed it. In a controversy that has gripped Pakistan and poses perhaps the most serious challenge yet to Musharraf's leadership, the nation's executive and judiciary are clashing over the president's decision nearly two weeks ago to suspend the Supreme Court chief justice. Lawyers in black suits have staged almost daily protests since, as the president's political opponents joined in. The police have responded with several raids, including one on the nation's most popular television station. A major protest is expected Wednesday in the capital, Islamabad, with organizers calling for a nationwide strike. Read The Full Story Iraq Bombers Blow Up 2 Children Used As Decoys 2007-03-21 02:09:17 Insurgents detonated a bomb in a car with two children in it after using the children as decoys to get through a military checkpoint in Baghdad, an American general said Tuesday. Speaking at a news briefing at the Pentagon, Maj. Gen. Michael Barbaro, deputy director for regional operations at the Joint Staff, said American soldiers had stopped the car at the checkpoint but had allowed it to pass after seeing the two children in the back seat. “Children in the back seat lower suspicion,” he said, according to a transcript. “We let it move through. They parked the vehicle. The adults run out and detonate it with the children in back.” General Barbaro offered no further details. Read The Full Story World's Greatest Rivers Are Dying 2007-03-20 20:43:01 Many of the world's biggest rivers, including the Nile, Ganges, Yangtze and Danube, are facing catastrophic collapse due to man-made problems, according to a leading conservation group. A wasteful attitude to water use and inadequate protection of rivers has destroyed ecosystems while threatening the livelihoods of people living in river basins. "We're talking about a complete collapse of the system - they're so polluted, so over-extracted or so cut up by dams that it's really not functioning as a river any more," said Tom Le Quesne, freshwater policy officer at WWF-UK, the conservation charity that published a report Tuesday on the threats to the world's rivers. "It's a challenge that humanity faces not far off the scale of climate change." The report, launched ahead of tomorrow's World Water Day, highlighted problems facing Asia, where five of the 10 rivers listed in the report are found - the Yangtze, Mekong, Salween, Ganges and Indus. "If these rivers die, millions will lose their livelihoods, biodiversity will be destroyed on a massive scale, there will be less fresh water and agriculture, resulting in less food security," said Ravi Singh, secretary-general of WWF-India at a briefing in Delhi Tuesday to mark the launch of the report. Read The Full Story Afghans Admit Dealing With Taliban To Free Italian Journalist 2007-03-20 20:42:25 The Afghan government admitted Tuesday it had struck a deal with Taliban kidnappers to secure the freedom of an Italian hostage. An Italian aid agency said Daniele Mastrogiacomo, a journalist with La Repubblica newspaper, was freed only after five Taliban militants had been released from prison. President Hamid Karzai's spokesmen admitted a deal had been made but refused to elaborate. Mastrogiacomo, 52, survived a harrowing two weeks of captivity during which he was marched between desert hideouts and forced to watch the execution of his driver. "This is the most wonderful moment of my life," the Italian said after reaching safety at an Italian-run hospital in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province, on Monday. Read The Full Story Lax Oversight Cited In BP Refinery Blast 2007-03-20 16:09:58 Company deficiencies “at all levels” were responsible for an explosion and fire that killed 15 workers and injured 180 others at the giant BP oil refinery in Texas City two years ago, a federal safety panel reported Tuesday. Concluding its investigation of the disaster, which sent 43,000 people fleeing to indoor shelters and caused more than $1.5 billion in financial losses, the United States Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board found that safety measures at the plant repeatedly fell victim to cost-cutting - even after 23 accidental deaths at the plant in 30 years of other accidents preceding the explosion on March 23, 2005. At a news conference Tuesday outside Houston, Carolyn W. Merritt, the safety board’s chairwoman and chief executive, called the accident “avoidable” and “the inevitable result of a series of actions by the company.” “They cut costs that affected maintenance and safety,” she said. “They ignored the implications of previous accidents that were red warning flags. There was a broken safety culture at BP.” Read The Full Story Park Ranger: We Have Our Missing Boy Scout 2007-03-20 11:55:01 Park rangers escorted a weak and dehydrated 12-year-old Boy Scout out of the rugged North Carolina mountains on Tuesday, four days after he wandered away from his troop's camp site, officials said. "We have our missing Boy Scout," said a jubilant National Park Service spokeswoman Tina White. White said she didn't have exact details about where or how Michael was found, but officials first received word shortly before 11 a.m. that he was spotted within a mile and a half of the camp site. "Search and rescuers who located him have their hands on him. He is in the care of search and rescue workers," White said. "Probably the most important thing we heard on the radio is A-1, which means he is in good condition." Read The Full Story Medicare Contractors Owe Over $1 Billion In Back Taxes 2007-03-20 01:14:47 The federal government has failed to collect more than $1 billion in back taxes owed by Medicare doctors and suppliers, nearly half of it payroll taxes deducted by health-care providers who spent the money on luxury cars and other personal expenses rather than sending it to the IRS, a congressional report says. The money has not been collected because the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees Medicare, has failed to connect its computers to the Internal Revenue Service and other Treasury Department divisions, the Government Accountability Office report says. Such a connection would allow the agencies to quickly identify who owes taxes and begin deducting that money from checks the federal contractors receive from Medicare. The collection gap persists despite the GAO's recommendation in 2001 that HHS and Treasury coordinate to ensure no federal contractor abuses the federal tax system by failing to pay taxes. Many of those who owe tax continue to work for Medicare, and their tax liability has grown, GAO researchers have told members of Congress. Read The Full Story U.S. House War Bill Contains Funding For Pet Projects 2007-03-20 01:14:08 House Democratic leaders are offering billions in federal funds for lawmakers' pet projects large and small to secure enough votes this week to pass an Iraq funding bill that would end the war next year. So far, the projects - which range from the reconstruction of New Orleans levees to the building of peanut storehouses in Georgia - have had little impact on the tally. For a funding bill that establishes tough new readiness standards for deploying combat forces and sets an Aug. 31, 2008, deadline to bring the troops home, votes do not come cheap. At least a few Republicans and conservative Democrats who otherwise would vote "no" remain undecided, as they ponder whether they can leave on the table millions of dollars for constituents by opposing the $124 billion war funding bill due for a vote on Thursday. Read The Full Story Kremlin May Force BP To Share Oil Venture 2007-03-20 01:13:26 BP has warned western investors that it could soon be forced to share control of its highly profitable Russian joint venture, TNK-BP, with a Kremlin-controlled energy group such as Gazprom or Rosneft. The change could come after the end of a "lock-in" period in December when its local private partners, the Alfa and Access/Renova groups, can sell their 50% stake in Russia's third largest oil producer. The other half is owned by BP. BP's warning comes after the forced sale of part of Shell's Sakhalin-2 oil and gas development in eastern Russia to Gazprom at the end of last year. Bob Dudley, TNK-BP's chief executive, said sharing power with a large energy group such as Gazprom or the newly expanded Rosneft should not be seen as a huge problem for his group. "Having one's main investors linked to oil and gas is a good thing and might create additional markets for the company," he said. Read The Full Story Brazil's Air Traffic Control System Fails 2007-03-20 01:12:32 Brazil's airlines were trying to make up for lengthy flight delays Monday after its troubled air traffic control system failed over the weekend, stranding travelers just months after a breakdown that enraged thousands of passengers. A control center in Brasilia that monitors flights through the nation's populous southeast region had suffered a communications equipment failure, Brazil's Defense Ministry said in a statement. Then power went out at the airport in Brasilia, making the problem worse, officials confirmed Monday. Unusually heavy rains in Sao Paulo put even more strain on the system. Read The Full Story 63 Die In Fire At Russia Home For Elderly 2007-03-20 01:11:44 A fire swept through a home for elderly and disabled people in southern Russia on Tuesday, killing at least 63 people, said emergency officials. It took firefighters nearly an hour to get from the nearest sizable town to the facility in the Krasnodar region village of Yeisk, where there is no fire station, said Sergei Petrov, a duty officer at the Emergency Situations Ministry's southern branch. He said 63 people were killed, one was missing and 33 were injured. Read The Full Story
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