Free Internet Press Newsletter - Friday April 13 2007 - (813)

Friday April 13 2007 edition
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It's Not Just Pet Food - China's Food Safety Woes Now International Concern 2007-04-13 02:46:36 The list of Chinese food exports rejected at American ports reads like a chef's nightmare: pesticide-laden pea pods, drug-laced catfish, filthy plums and crawfish contaminated with salmonella. Yet, it took a much more obscure item, contaminated wheat gluten, to focus U.S. public attention on a very real and frightening fact: China's chronic food safety woes are now an international concern. In recent weeks, scores of cats and dogs in America have died of kidney failure blamed on eating pet food containing gluten from China that was tainted with melamine, a chemical used in plastics, fertilizers and flame retardants. While humans aren't believed at risk, the incident has sharpened concerns over China's food exports and the limited ability of U.S. inspectors to catch problem shipments. "This really shows the risks of food purity problems combining with international trade," said Michiel Keyzer, director of the Center for World Food Studies at Amsterdam's Vrije Universiteit in the Netherlands. Read The Full Story Drugs Losing Efficacy Against Gonorrhea 2007-04-13 02:45:58 Antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea is spreading rapidly across the United States, federal health officials reported Thursday, raising alarm about doctors' ability to treat the common sexually transmitted infection. New data from 26 U.S. cities show the number of resistant gonorrhea cases is rising dramatically, jumping from less than 1 percent of all gonorrhea cases to more than 13 percent in less than five years, the Atlanta, Georgia-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported. In response, the CDC advised doctors treating gonorrhea to immediately stop using ciprofloxacin, marketed as Cipro, and other antibiotics in its class, which have been the first line of defense against the disease, and resort to an older class of drugs to ensure patients are cured and do not spread the stubborn infection. "We've lost the ability to use what had been the most reliable class of antibiotics," said John M. Douglas, Jr., who heads the CDC's division of sexually transmitted disease prevention. "This is necessary to protect both public and private health." Read The Full Story Senators Assail FDA's Response To Tainted Pet Food 2007-04-13 02:45:12 A Senate panel took the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to task Thursday for its "inexcusable" response to pet food contamination and a month's worth of expanding recalls that have left Americans fearful about what to feed their cats and dogs. The Appropriations subcommittee, with a special appearance by the dean of the Senate, pressed the agency for better and faster reporting about tainted food and better and more-frequent inspections of pet food factories. "This is inexcusable," Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Illinois) said after a two-hour hearing in which an FDA official said he couldn't be sure that all the adulterated pet food has been recalled and is off store shelves. "The FDA's response to this situation has been wholly inadequate." Read The Full Story Beresovsky: 'I'm Plotting A New Russian Revolution' 2007-04-13 02:43:27 The Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky has told the Guardian he is plotting the violent overthrow of President Putin from his base in Britain after forging close contacts with members of Russia's ruling elite. In comments which appear calculated to enrage the Kremlin, and which will further inflame relations between London and Moscow, the multimillionaire claimed he is already bankrolling people close to the president who are conspiring to mount a palace coup. "We need to use force to change this regime," he said. "It isn't possible to change this regime through democratic means. There can be no change without force, pressure." Asked if he was effectively fomenting a revolution, he said: "You are absolutely correct." Read The Full Story New Jersey Governor Corzine Critically Injured In Car Crash 2007-04-13 02:41:29 Gov. Jon S. Corzine (D) was critically injured Thursday when his motorcade crashed en route to a meeting between radio personality Don Imus and the Rutgers women's basketball team, said a doctor. Corzine, 60, suffered numerous broken bones, including his sternum and several ribs, but his injuries were not considered life-threatening, said officials. He was recuperating early Friday in critical but stable condition at Cooper University Hospital in Camden after two hours of surgery to repair a seriously damaged leg and other injuries. Dr. Robert Ostrum said the governor would need two more operations on his left leg. Doctors also inserted a breathing tube that will remain "for days to weeks, until (Corzine) is able to breathe on his own again," said Ostrum. State Senate President Richard Codey will serve as acting governor while Corzine is hospitalized. Read The Full Story Friday The 13th Means Many Will Be Cautious 2007-04-12 17:11:45 Steer clear of black cats, take a wide berth of ladders and, just to be sure, try to avoide stepping on any cracks tomorrow, because it is Friday the 13th. The date can cause widespread fear and panic amongst the superstitious, with Wikipedia website reporting an estimated $NZ1.1 billion to $NZ1.2 billion lost in business worldwide, because people will not fly or do business they would normally do. The Stress Management Center and Phobia Institute in the United States estimated that more than 17 million people are affected by a fear of this day. And a British Medical Journal study has shown there is a significant increase in traffic-related accidents on Friday the 13th. Read The Full Story Wolfowitz's Leadership Of World Bank Questioned 2007-04-12 13:37:58 Growing hostility within the World Bank toward its president, Paul D. Wolfowitz, is raising questions about his ability to lead the big lending institution and raise money for a fund that assists the developing world. Wolfowitz's tenure, contentious from the start because of his earlier role as an architect of U.S. policy in Iraq, has been marred in recent months by a series of controversies. World Bank staffers disclosed that a woman with whom Wolfowitz is romantically involved received big pay raises from the bank. Sensitive board minutes regarding China have been leaked to the press, and blistering criticism has been leveled at Wolfowitz on an internal electronic bulletin board. The heightened tension comes as delegates from around the world convene in Washington, D.C., this weekend for annual meetings of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and finance ministers for the major industrial powers. Read The Full Story Vonage CEO Snyder Resigns 2007-04-12 13:37:12 Vonage CEO Michael Snyder resigned Thursday as the troubled Internet phone company reported weak preliminary first-quarter results and announced a restructuring plan that includes an unspecified number of jobs cuts. Chairman and founder Jeffrey A. Citron will act as interim chief executive as the company seeks a replacement for Snyder, who joined Vonage in advance of last year's initial public offering of stock, a debacle for investors. The sudden management change and disappointing first-quarter update follow a month of legal setbacks in which Vonage was found guilty of infringing on patents held by Verizon Communications Inc. Read The Full Story U.S. Extending Tours In Iraq From 12 Months To 15 Months 2007-04-12 02:28:14 The military announced Wednesday that most active duty Army units now in Iraq and Afghanistan and those sent in the future would serve 15-month tours, three months longer than the standard one-year tour. Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, who announced the change at a news conference at the Pentagon, said that the only other way to maintain force levels would have been to allow many soldiers less than a year at home between combat tours. Gates said the problem was evident even before President Bush ordered an increase in troops for Iraq this year. Officials said the change became inevitable as the numbers of extra troops that were needed - and, most likely, the time the extra forces would have to stay - increased. Read The Full Story Civilian Claims On U.S. Reflect Toll Of War 2007-04-12 02:27:42 In February 2006, nervous American soldiers in Tikrit killed an Iraqi fisherman on the Tigris River after he leaned over to switch off his engine. A year earlier, a civilian filling his car and an Iraqi Army officer directing traffic were shot by American soldiers in a passing convoy in Balad, for no apparent reason. The incidents are among many thousands of claims submitted to the Army by Iraqi and Afghan civilians seeking payment for noncombat killings, injuries or property damage American forces inflicted on them or their relatives. The claims provide a rare window into the daily chaos and violence faced by civilians and troops in the two war zones. Recently, the Army disclosed roughly 500 claims to the American Civil Liberties Union in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. They are the first to be made public. They represent only a small fraction of the claims filed. In all, the military has paid more than $32 million to Iraqi and Afghan civilians for noncombat-related killings, injuries and property damage, said an Army spokeswoman.  That figure does not include condolence payments made at a unit commander’s discretion. Read The Full Story Panel Reviewing Walter Reed Issues Sharp Rebuke, Urges Closure Of Facility 2007-04-12 02:25:08 A top-level Pentagon review panel has concluded that Walter Reed Army Medical Center should be closed as soon as possible, following revelations of poor care that the panel blamed on a "perfect storm" of failed leadership, flawed policies and overwhelming casualties. In a preliminary report released Wednesday, the panel appointed by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates recommended accelerating the closure of the Northwest Washington hospital but improving conditions there in the meantime. Under defense realignment decisions made two years ago, the hospital's facilities were scheduled to move to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda by 2011. A faster move could mean speeding up or waiving an environmental review and releasing money to break ground on a $2 billion expansion plan at Bethesda, Maryland, according to the draft report from the Independent Review Group. Construction of a larger Army hospital at Fort Belvoir in Northern Virginia also should be expedited, said the report. Read The Full Story ABC News Obtains Palfrey's Records 2007-04-12 02:24:19 A Vallejo [California] woman indicted for allegedly running a prostitution ring in the nation's capital has turned over phone records of thousands of clients to ABC News as part of an interview that is to air next month, her civil attorney said Monday. Deborah Jeane Palfrey, 50, was interviewed by ABC News several weeks ago, the network confirmed Monday. The network did not pay Palfrey for the interview, which is to run on "20/20" beginning May 4, according to ABC News and Palfrey's attorney, Montgomery Blair Sibley. Palfrey has hinted that well-known people in Washington were among her clients from 1993 to 2006, but has not named any. Asked whether ABC News could identify former clients, Sibley said, "Records were turned over unconditionally to them. They're going to do what they're going to do. Who knows?" Read The Full Story	Commentary: We Cannot Look From The Sides As We Are Led Toward Crisis Over Iran 2007-04-13 02:46:18 Intellpuke: In the following commentary, British documentary film maker John Pilger writes that Bush and Blair have spent four years preparing an onslaught that is about oil, rather than non-existent nuclear weapons. Mr. Pilger's commentary is an edited version of an article in the current issue of the New Stateman. Pilger's new film, "The War on Democracy", previews at the National Film Theater in London on May 11. His commentary follows: The Israeli journalist Amira Hass describes the moment her mother, Hannah, was marched from a cattle train to the concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen. "They were sick and some were dying," she said. "Then my mother saw these German women looking at the prisoners. This image became very formative in my upbringing, this despicable 'looking from the side'." It is time we in Britain stopped looking from the side. We are being led towards perhaps the most serious crisis in modern history as the Bush/Cheney/Blair "long war" edges closer to Iran for no reason other than that nation's independence from rapacious America. The safe delivery of the 15 British sailors into the hands of Rupert Murdoch and his rivals (until their masters got the wind up) is both farce and distraction. The Bush administration, in secret connivance with Blair, has spent four years preparing for "Operation Iranian Freedom". Forty-five cruise missiles are primed to strike. According to General Leonid Ivashov, Russia's leading strategic thinker: "Nuclear facilities will be secondary targets, and there are 20 such facilities. Combat nuclear weapons may be used, and this will result in the radioactive contamination of all the Iranian territory, and beyond." Read The Full Story Oxfam Calls For End To Palestinian Blockade - Cites 'Devastating' Humanitarian Consequences 2007-04-13 02:45:33 Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are suffering "devastating" humanitarian consequences as incomes plummet, debts mount and essential services face meltdown, British humanitarian charity group Oxfam says in a report that calls for an immediate end to the international financial blockade of the Hamas-led government. With poverty up by 30% in 2006 and previously unknown levels of factional violence on the streets, the Palestinian territories - occupied by Israel in the 1967 war - risk becoming "a failed state" if the punitive measures are not lifted, the charity warns. Palestinians were already struggling to make ends meet when key donors, including the U.S., the E.U. and Canada, suspended direct aid to the Palestinian Authority (P.A.) in April 2006. The move came in response to the victory of the Islamist movement Hamas in parliamentary elections. Israel halted the transfers of tax and customs revenue it owed to the P.A. shortly afterwards. Read The Full Story FDA Panel Reject Merck's New Pain Killer Because It Can Cause Heart Attacks 2007-04-13 02:44:23 A panel of federal drug advisers voted 20 to 1 Thursday to reject an application by Merck to sell its pain pill Arcoxia because of concerns that the drug could cause as many as 30,000 heart attacks annually if widely used. Food and Drug Administration officials were unusually harsh in their criticism of the medicine. “What you’re talking about is a potential public health disaster” if Arcoxia is approved for sale, Dr. David Graham, an F.D.A. safety officer, told the panel. Arcoxia is a sister to Vioxx, which Merck withdrew in 2004 after a study showed that it also increased the risks of heart attacks and strokes. Merck sells Arcoxia in 63 countries, and the company underwrote an extensive safety testing program that involved 34,000 arthritis patients. Read The Full Story U.S. Admits Baghdad's Green Zone No Longer Safe 2007-04-13 02:43:01 U.S. officials admitted Thursday night that the bombing of the Iraqi parliament shows that not even the heavily fortified Green Zone is safe any more, despite the security crackdown launched earlier this year in the Iraqi capital. American and Iraqi security officials were last night investigating how a suicide bomber evaded a ring of security checks and blew himself up in the assembly's cafe, killing three Parliament members and five other people and wounding more than 20. About 100,000 U.S. and Iraqi soldiers are on the streets of the capital as part of the troop "surge" begun two months ago; while security inside the Green Zone has been tightened following the recent discovery there of two suicide bomb belts. Read The Full Story 6.0 Earthquake Shakes Mexico 2007-04-13 02:41:14 An earthquake measuring 6.0 shook portions of Mexico early on Friday, said the U.S. Geological Survey. The tremor was felt in Mexico City, sending people fleeing their homes for the streets, reported a Reuters correspondent there. Mexican emergency services said there were no immediate reports of injuries or serious damage. Read The Full Story U.S. Military Claims Iran Giving Arms To Iraq's Sunnis 2007-04-12 13:38:23 The chief U.S. military spokesman in Iraq asserted Wednesday that Iranian-made arms, manufactured as recently as last year, have reached Sunni insurgents here, which if true would mark a new development in the four-year-old conflict. Citing testimony from detainees in U.S. custody, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell said Iranian intelligence operatives were backing the Sunni militants inside Iraq while at the same time training Shiite extremists in Iran. "We have, in fact, found some cases recently where Iranian intelligence services have provided to some Sunni insurgent groups some support," Caldwell told reporters, adding that he was aware of only Shiite extremists being trained inside Iran. Caldwell cited a collection of munitions on a nearby table that he said were made in Iran and found two days ago in a majority-Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad. Read The Full Story Death Toll From Algeria Bombings Rises To 33 2007-04-12 13:37:34 The death toll from al-Qaeda-claimed suicide bombings in Algeria rose Thursday to 33, said the government, and police rolled out in force in the shaken capital, establishing highway checkpoints to reinforce security. Another 57 people remained hospitalized from injuries suffered in Wednesday's blasts that struck the prime minister's office and a police station, said Interior Minister Yazid Zerhouni, who made his comments to the official APS news agency after visiting hospitals. Some 222 people were wounded in all. The heavy security presence highlighted the menacing spread of Islamic militancy across North Africa and was reminiscent of the height of Algeria's Islamic insurgency in the 1990s. Meanwhile, Western countries reduced embassy services and urged their citizens to avoid traveling on predictable routes in the oil- and gas-rich country. Read The Full Story Bombing Of Iraqi Parliament Kills At Least 2 Lawmakers, 6 Others 2007-04-12 12:24:42 A bomb at the Iraqi parliament building in the well-protected Green Zone killed at least two lawmakers and as many as six others Thursday, demonstrating the vulnerability of even heavily guarded targets despite increased American efforts to secure the capital. In a separate incident, a powerful truck bomb toppled a major Baghdad bridge, killing at least seven and leaving the structure lying in the Tigris River. Boats and divers responded to try to rescue an estimated 20 people whose vehicles tumbled into the water after the suicide attack. The explosion in the Green Zone targeted a cafeteria in the parliament complex at a time when legislators, staff and others were eating lunch. Read The Full Story Kurt Vonnegut, Novelist Who Caught The Imagination Of His Age, Is Dead At 84 2007-04-12 02:28:00 Kurt Vonnegut, whose dark comic talent and urgent moral vision in novels like “Slaughterhouse-Five,” “Cat’s Cradle” and “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater” caught the temper of his times and the imagination of a generation, died last night in Manhattan. He was 84 and had homes in Manhattan and in Sagaponack on Long Island, New York. Mr. Vonnegut suffered irreversible brain injuries as a result of a fall several weeks ago, according to his wife, Jill Krementz. Mr. Vonnegut wrote plays, essays and short fiction, but it was his novels that became classics of the American counterculture, making him a literary idol, particularly to students in the 1960s and ’70s. Dog-eared paperback copies of his books could be found in the back pockets of blue jeans and in dorm rooms on campuses throughout the United States. Like Mark Twain, Mr. Vonnegut used humor to tackle the basic questions of human existence: Why are we in this world? Is there a presiding figure to make sense of all this, a god who in the end, despite making people suffer, wishes them well? Read The Full Story Bush Advisers' Use Of Republican National Committee Email Accounts Draws Fire 2007-04-12 02:27:15 Political advisers to President Bush may have improperly used their Republican National Committee  e-mail accounts to conduct official government business, and some communications that are required to be preserved under federal law may be lost as a result, White House officials said Wednesday. Of the 1,000 White House officials with political duties, 22 - including Karl Rove, the chief political strategist -  have Republican National Committee accounts that are supposed to be used only for campaign-related work, but recent revelations that some officials have used those accounts for Bush administration business, including discussions of a plan to dismiss United States attorneys,has prompted a Congressional investigation. On Wednesday, Scott Stanzel, deputy White House press secretary, said the administration had recently begun its own inquiry, and had concluded that its policy governing political e-mail accounts was unclear, that the White House was not aggressive enough in monitoring political e-mail and that some people who had the accounts did not follow the policy closely enough. Read The Full Story MSNBC Drops Simulcast Of Imus Show 2007-04-12 02:24:33 MSNBC said Wednesday it will drop its simulcast of the “Imus in the Morning” radio program, responding to growing outrage about the radio host’s racial slur against the Rutgers women’s basketball team. “This decision comes as a result of an ongoing review process, which initially included the announcement of a suspension. It also takes into account many conversations with our own employees,” NBC news said in a statement. Talk-show host Don Imus triggered the uproar on his April 4 show, when he referred to the mostly black Rutgers women’s basketball team as “nappy-headed hos.” His comments have been widely denounced by civil rights and women’s groups. Read The Full Story
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